anessayiamwriting Leoooooooo FROM 22check"Protoithikologia" or Proto - Ethics. -------------------------------- In another's misfortune we hath much to learn, of how best to prevent our own: Polyeidos, the wisest man in all of Lycia, hath an herb for it, even that labor, whatsoe'er honest, mayst in abidance of our torment, our own virtues and talents witness unto us, for also, he whom lodgeth with an infirm 9 man, should learn the better to govern his own stride, yea, to even "kiss the rod of affliction" [Abraham Tucker in The Light of Nature Pursued] or to tolerate what is natural to him just as much as is natural to him, which truly be called modesty. 1 Yet what a disheartening speech Theognetus singeth, "Your reading hath perverted thine whole life; philosophising thus with Earth and Heaven, though neither care a bit for all your speeches." even that we may be deceived in our sciences and philosophy, but that the Heavens commend us not even for the gloss in our troubles. And yet it is not accounted for in Nature's order, that something should all at once fall into ruin, but by a decrement, to forfeit themselves unto Time, the incautious cradle of this Earth. Thus the pravity of Man, how is it that we were lost so from that we were? Our fall is not a natural adversity, but a call to punishment; itself our very life a repentance. Our whole reason be a figuring of what is foreign to mankind, and what be tasteless unto God, that we may abjure it, as Damoxenus saith, for when in excess of something, another part of us suffereth, and whenever it suffereth, another part yet out of that intemperance swelleth: where Polyidas maketh a decree, Timotheus a law; a man by himselfe hath a sentiment and a religion, with others, judgments or a conviction. Faith be a thing of fugitive unto time, 7 for it may fleeth in an instant, and supporteth us only in lack of experience: our judgments in the face of which be things of habit and controversies of history. The Scale of Thought is prejudice and mute gainst' bare Necessity. How much better is it that in silence to doubt about things latitant and private; to even forgive ourselves of our ignorance, and to raise a suspicion against those things which art hidden from us, then to contend about things we cannot assure. The prosperity of Knowledge is called wisdom: those informed in human nature, out of a desire to relieve the burdens therewith upon their brothers, should commit to worthy deeds that art called Virtue, or as a consequence to being well learned upon any subject, one should speak upon it with excellency, or yet one so appointed to any task, being well trained in which, should perform honorably, so that whenever Knowledge is prosperous, or alloweth good to be done in the world, Wisdom sheweth himself. Knowledge sheweth himself in adversity to Wisdom, whenever one faileth at something, because he was not so well trained, or that his knowledge upon his task was not valuable, or not clear, he should further seek training, or his instructions to clarify, which we call acquiring knowledge or settlement of a discrepancy. Infamy doth pronounce, and the violation of a morall, or liability for whatever evil, doth frame sentences unto us, and vengeance against ourselves, for God doth give us two choices; the truth, and thereof all of our self- tormenting for things that we've done, or to pursue affluence and ease of life, that is the pursuit for any kind of wealth or excess, whereas riches cannot ever be held upon the truth, nor can anyone be rich of truth, for the truth is never in excess but in always a modest and simple terms. That one cannot ever deny the truth, and the lamenting upon their feeling responsible for that they hath done, and remain upon the good council of God, but yet whosoever must shut himselfe off to them both, if he deny his own feelings thereof, and seeketh repose upon the world, becoming doubly in err. The fluent, gentle, and easy character is always from a love for truth cultivated. To philosophize is but to vaticinate upon these appearances, or of whatever is out of order, to imagine what hath begun to suffer because of which, and whenever we strike at the heart of the mystery, to call it in the Name of God. Without reluctance trust thine own self to thine tastes: for the otherwise should be to abdicate Choice, the severest ordination God hath given to you, and test of faith. If thou hadst a passion, a love, a talent whatsoever; bring it out of thee, for it shall serve to relieve thee of the burdens which the sons of Men have placed upon thee, with inequity of the law, and customs unjust, you shall live through them: thus the clever shall not hide from the talented of the hunt, but by disguise walking amongst them thou shall uproot them from their baser stock, and the weaker will rule over the stronger, and fear shall be inutile unto them. But if thou hath a talent, and dost not bringeth it out unto the world, what thou doth not have, being those talents of the sons of Men, their customs and their laws, shall destroy thee, and thou shall not live through them: thus so long as thou exerciseth thine talents, what talents thou dost lack, shall not matter to thee, and shall hath no injury unto thee. TO knoweth thine self is an abjuration of Man: an indemnification of the laws of Society. To investigate the personal interests and tastes is to compensate Society for any of it's disadvantages owing to the conception of Manhood to which it hath established, and to which, like the triumphs of the past, all the errancy of the past surely belongeth to, as this is the only way to find out the mistakes of former generations. It is the most generic and utile of wisdoms. 3 In reverence to the past one holdest no shame unto the image of the contemporary: for the True Past, and therewith all of her things belonging unto her, be coeval unto our infants in natural science, biology, government, and economy - for no worthy principle which oweth itself to the past is by any society knowledgeable thereon ever dismissed, but rather is taken up by Age to Age, and rejoined to by interpositions, accordingly as it needs be called upon - thus Skepticism giveth unto Empiricism. [Surely as these typifications and categories, these utilities of the principle, which art but Stock Houses, art relieved unto one another, or trade is made between them, and the forms of Society, Science, Art, etc. and the digressions upon these forms,] as in the various sciences and schools of art, giveth way, and intermix betweene themselves, merely is a sort of Body lost, and yet the heart is conserved for all of humanity to draw upon, for tis' a slight contestation against the applicability of law and of principle. The study of History, that wonderful ocean of all the gathering currents of Man's thought, provideth but an hallow of sorts, an interval for the Heart of wisdom which be our pantosomatos, to disclose itself to us, it otherwise giveth a Body to our knowledge, and the natural histories inform our analogical conceptions, as in the greater proverbs:16 and though Amaia searcheth for Azezia, servest to illustrate the convention of knowledge, and applicability of the law, as by the drawing up of an example, and whosoever hath wisdom. For Man needeth no soul if he himself is a Soul, Man is a bud Who's flower is the world: the vaults and reticulum of which Soul cannot be searched out by any thousands of years of history and philosophy. Thus the Soul which is Man sublateth him from and raiseth a protestation against all experience and history, 2 it is that recognition of youthfulness without the taking a measure of our age, when we say that we behaved boyishly,4 yet not meaning that we didst not act out of order with our age, but rather that we art guilty unto that universal youth- inexperience. 12 Intellect is amethodos, or without system, is a sympathy for having sympathies; a devotion unto devotion, is throdden everywhere for it's own sake. Whilst it is not systematic yet it is operant: and inspireth, tempteth, and exhorteth any System that it finds expedient to it, as in those of the methods of science and logic, having to justify it's custom by appealing to history. The intellect is passionate because it is in like manner inspiriting of the mind: thus by adjugating upon it's own conceit any theatric, or whimsical subject or superstition,10 it may betray itselfe. By the forwardnesse of his own propensity, the Mind is by itselfe ashamed: however much we dread the offspring of Time, the uncertainty of things to come, yet the World's incomity we may learn to accept, and thereof by being inured, the most hopeless and dearn of affairs to regulate; be it the death of a parent, or wont of love, or whatever. Yet the mind itselfe, whensoever diseased, or fall' n into some incautious habits, or enjoyment of things it knoweth art not advisable to it, cannot be tasked to accepting itself, nor ever mayst be comfortable unto it's vice. Hence insecurities of our mind, and the translations of our mind's impressions upon the world, in things that we've done, and feelings of guilt art some of the most troubling of melancholies. And whylest the philosopher might tell us, that anything whatsoever may be endured, what shall he tell us, but to endure the mind itselfe, and sound a fool? Though I enjoy the common maxim of the doctors: that acrimony is like unto acrimony; or that a severe disease calleth yet for a severe remedy, yet I would add that either doth it call for an improvident one, if the opportunity to be severe, and expediency to be considered. In many cases hath we a like infausta libido, [Dracontius] or misfortunate requisitions, whereof imagination touts her precarious art, and we delight to be excused from necessity, which methinks it time to pull the hair from the Taphian's Pterelaos: For how generally we concieve our moralls; how loosely we hath wrought their ligatures, yet how readily so we demarcate them, and quicken to turn ethics into the science which it can never be, the better means to translate our morals unto laws, that which benefit from a like specificity unto them, and number of facts, to treat of those details and accentuations [technicalities] whereby the law may be taken advantage of- whereas the law should continue to be full, or ready of facts, and yet ethics should not approach morality as a science, yet like to contemplate the essential unity of our morals, and not necessarily to divide and project them, - yet the more unmanageably these laws should make it, that to practice Ethics with any singularity, like to direct the lot of our moralls unto any common object, namely, a good life, and dignity of conduct. The greater store of us imagine that to hath any wealth or polite triumphs whatsoever, or to cause ourselves in any way to become enviable, were contrastive unto the laws of propriety: likewise to be sincere for the most part proceedeth from an specious incentive, that serveth but in the remedying and deferment of the attrition of the laws of ceremony; thus the figure be to uphold our ceremony, and title or authority, and but the portraiture or iconic be to speak honestly. Out of all the parts of the mind, the intellect is most effected to suffer vision, to involve it's self, and depict itself only through history and experience, whereof it mayst trust itself to a system, under whereof it mayst anticipate it's own character 5 as truth. Thus the intellect is that whereof an interpretation of Nature, as in science, or a system of logic or theology, art justified through history, in the former case of a natural sorts and, in the latter, those histories of a mythological or scriptural sorts. This Intellect is antecedent to all things constructive, and maieutical of all language and methods of interpretation or of reason, which art the latent constructions unto it. Yet the Intellect is diverted unto Genius; and Genius unto the intuition and in the creation of something's image, and thereunto Art and every skill owing itself to readiness and adaptability, and also Ethics, which is the art of conforming 6 of a principle of man's conduct to the expectancy and opinions of those people of his own time in which that man is brought up within. Hence the Genius justifyeth itselfe by relation to the present, and I abbreviate all the things belonging unto it with the word Behavior (which with any wisdom refereth itself continually to the present) and Conscience, and secondarily, all matters of Faith, to which fear, like that we might possibly be in danger, and hope, like that we shouldest escape from any danger, art lesser constituents, and belief that there is a God or an immortal Soul the higher. 8 But for the intellect which vindicateth it's ways by appealing to history, the Truth whence isolated from History becomes disjoint to it, and to the coincident sport of destiny: and can be justificative unto the relieving of one from the duties that hath by the traditions of the past been appointed to him, being divorced from anecdote, phylogeny, and eventuality, thereunto which it feeleth no longer indebted, for tis' only therein that a fact gains it's extra- personal or human quality and becomes a Truth, that it recallest the intellectual being. 11 Thus doth the Intellect constantly delighteth in meditating upon that it finds itself awakened unto the Provident, and that dignity that it seemeth to hath play'd a part in the figuring up of things, is but a consilience which seemeth so very natural to it: for the intellect, in all of it's throws, is anticipatory, being that it's intent is always to stratify what is worthy of History, thus that the value of these sort of moral and scientific principles is importunate and prevenient and always of least significance the moment in that they were uttered. To lay the law of nature out as something thereof already comprehended, thus were a great injury against philosophy. A Truth is always prescriptive, and advisory of the system within which it was realized. Even and tractable principles art offered by the every one of us, who freely propose enarrations, and the age long mysteries that we discover, doth /inarch/ unto acuter tentations, allowing neither that our discourse or the contrariety to our understanding, and problems of our philosophy, be seen for that they art, that the one always tendeth to broach upon or illustrate the other. The unfamiliar images which the genius casts upon us art always a revelation,(s) for they art not conjunctive, and we call them thoughts: the Intellect tolerateth a Vision or History, and desultory and prescriptive truths, never so organized in their connections as the natures of things which they represent, yet the Genius tolerateth an Image or Presence; (Present) we listen to it and Nature herselfe arrideth us - we forget the index of seasons, formerly pointed out to us by the different periods of times, which act the part of mere letters upon them. Yet simple observation I think and the ostentsive interpretation of nature, and opening up to the Images of the Genius, be the surest reconcilement of the scientific unto that great breadth of intuition to which the antiquarian philosophies, and metaphysics and anatomies hath so very much born to me what I feel is an healthful interest, and provoked my desiring to collate the orders and seemingly errant labyrinth of truth. The politic of nature is well tried, and none a one of us mayst ever intervene upon Her: for Nature verily, if any one thing be either vain, or strong, or generous, She addeth the tyrant to her sworde. Thus I cannot proceed upon this lesson, talking so much about nature, presuming so, without clearly defining nature, which I give in concordance to the Grecian language: the word epigennêmatikos signifyeth a thing resulting in consequence, (from which physis deriveth the uninfluenced or mechanical growth of organisms and of things) which I understand to be the force of nature, 15 or nature as an agent, or as a certain kind of activity undergone by something, as in whenever we say that something behaved naturally, I imagine it to hath done so as a matter of consequence, and also there is nature as a state or law or justice, which I designate by the Greek term talanteuo, which is any balance, but specifically such a balance as that hath been weighed out, or a sort of going to and fro, or otherwise such a balance as that whenever enough consequences hath been underwent or observed about a thing or about some things, such that consequences may be predicted of them, upon such predictions which hath been found reliable, by framing a generality of some class of facts, we designateth a law, that is, the way in which any consequence ought to turn out, or balance out. Science can and doth get at the epigennematikos, that is, the consequences of things, throughout it's discreet and confident interpretations of it's observances in nature, and keeping up with that most industrial current of nature, by it's looking forward upon the present, that is a fine enough truth, and reliable unto our predictions, our priesthood and oracles of thought, yet talanteuo canst only be appreciated by a cogent generalization of those consequences, to observe the eclectic and mystic "foundation" of the universe, the intrinsic balancing act of the whole of some consequences. We may adduce a law from some facts in natural science, agriculture, agronomy, botany, embryology, pneumatics, dioptrics, etc. that expresseth a moral sense and lesson. Thus Man is like unto a vegetable, with all his incubations and maturations, the embryo is like unto a seminal therewith, Man's soul is like unto the air or breath, or as even a refracted light, which may never be disclosed unto itself. It is with a mensuration of counterworks, 13 that our Spirit layeth the foundations of Nature, 14 and to that loft whereupon it looks to hath female'd the seed of the World. Our moral nature is disanointed by any interveniency upon by external induction, as from some class of facts, if any commensurable truth, that we call an Ethique, is to be disclosed it shall rather originate as from an interior persuasion, ie. naturally: the Conscience is renitent whereas the Morality is subject to a variety of influences; the Conscience is circinal, whereas the Morality canst only further a development or correction of itselfe in a serial fashion. -- For such that was by the intellect written, must be read by the intellect: the Siren whom must be held responsible for her own seduction belonging to her. Opportunity is the sequel of prejudgement: so is miscarriage. Yet the representative man, whom we commonly proclaim, though he may take pains to avoid, Philosopher, seeth as he is prepared to see: in other words, he beholdeth only that he hath made. The man of letters distinguisheth a fact apart from that teeming volume of his uniformed thought, by virtue of the office of languages, and that he canst with the turning of a tasteful and stately phrase, make merry in the better season of his words; whylest the illiterate, scholar of the Earth, historian of Nature, prepositor of the Spirit and all therewith who question Her, mayst not possess such a variety of facts as our man of letters, though all that little knowledge which he doth indeed posses, is but facts, derived from his experience, which doth not appear unto him as from a background, in the abstract, for he has no hidden whisperings about himselfe as the man of letters, he is wholly factual. Knowledge, from whereof we conceive intent, we act from; though, becoming immerited, our actions sign to our wont of health: the truer virtues art botanized; for whatsoever by that natural and vegetable means, you happen to garner, surprises that it hath been produced (rather then reproduced). As the knowledge of certain events within the natural world informeth our knowledge of time supra- annual; as the every moment of an original experience, in whatever customs, informeth the practice thereupon, as one geologic phenomena deepeneth and inflecteth the episode of the whole world, so is the mind called back upon this instinct. It is not an art to think: this is why it is so exacting, for one cannot be instructed to think, or think more excellently, and whylest to think well be considered the chief of virtues, it hath no commandments to be passed upon the unborn, and alone is that which cannot be communicated along from generation to generation, as can it's production be, in knowledge. I believe that the race can forget how to think, and already so it hath begun; a store of knowledge hath become inaccessible to it, likewise that certain Grecian terms have lost their meaning, and the tones of the antique plays hath been lost; their flavor is but an aspect. Thus hath we upreared Consciousness from the heredity and the premundane, as something separate from, and no longer subject to, certain tendencies- which we call instincts- and, in a word, Nature. The Grecians - noble infants that they were- what Jeremiahs and prophets of the mind itself- hieratic and priesthood of the intellect- upheld a concept of Truth which by the project of the Western Philosophers has been forgotten- that of Aletheia; or that which from out of the darkness has come, that which has been beheld, or otherwise that which hadst been revealed; an appearance. Klages in Charact. says that it is a general rule of philosophy; that to study something you must be disengaged from it. Philosophy is not a conation and it is not truly natural for us to question anything; as question cometh from intent, at least the which of something to know, and for as intention is an alien sort of justice in nature, it is not natural for us to exaggerate the pronouncements of Aletheia - thereby our own dissent, our own opinations and consensuses to cast upon the world - all this we think of as contributing to the world our ideas- as want to debate about what has glint upon Aletheia- into the apparent, but yet an artifice of a philosophic trend, that is shunneth to behave uninterestedly. 3 Thus the Western Project, in all it's platitudes of genus and species, may be signified as an attack or sort of cunning upon the conception of Aletheia as Truth and a means to overcome mere apparency, and to disengage with the Earth or whatever it hath set itself upon, that it may the better to bring her into view. For Man to understand the World apart from and subject to the laws of nature, He must disengage from it; and Philosophy is but a decision to live in mountains, whereof the fountainheads of truth run cold- the secret lodging of the mind, our own little world, as Bacon says, the vantage ground of truth, which provides ample pleasure for us in looking down upon the tumults of the world, returns the face of the world to her. It shall be herein shown, that there is a particular salt or richness to the mind; though our philosophers contend that it is not ruled by any sort of instinct, and a value is already taken upon the deed. For as we esteem that which we imagine to be certain above that Aletheia, or mere apparency - and pleasure above pain, beauty before the ugly or baleful- if there is deceit in these judgments, they perhaps raise still no objections against them. Thus is wisdom heart, knowledge is instrument, action is schedule. Action is schedule because knowledge is the design, the method, the plan of everything that we do. An instinct is that by which is followed naturally; and, as the nature of the western mind hath been changed, by virtue of the kinds of systems of philosophy with which it hath been indulged, so it hath developed these prejudices or prior- evaluations of worth. For in the adoption of certain dualisms - contingent, implicit, or explicit to, those kinds of systems of philosophy- we hath, as from their repeated use, by a gradual enforcement of one or the other side of their dualism, been sabotaged into gratifiying the dualism upon that certain humour. It is the palm of the hand which is for Us the measure of all truth: for that is the palm which, in size and shape, is so perfectly comptible unto the shielding our eyes from the vast foliage and rotary of our Earth. For if we could not implicate affairs on the natural level with affairs on the level of the wholly derivative, and stasis of arithmetics, 1 the life of intelligence is traversed but to be abstained from, and the human being disowned. Hence there were no coinage, but to be reciprocated by that part in natural history, whereby golds and precious metals of all sorts hath been taken inventory of. It is with these false judgments, that is, instincts, that our intellectual and responsible faculties art brought to life. Thus that these sorts of prejudices and instincts hath been constituted, no longer is it providence, no longer is it Godhead which fascinates the world to veer here and there: it is now but an indign necessity 2 which basally reports upon all things, therewith the divinity hath been forsaken by, and the divinity forsaken by the world. - This necessity serves to (1) embaleth the youth unto a leaden conformity or (2) exhausteth his patience therewith, and setteth him against the law. - - What we call the Law these days is very much derived from - perhaps even silently embodying- what we call Morality. For our Morality is now derived from a sort of induction from ethical facts: so is our Law; whereas the Monarchy (claimed) to hath canalized their law, from God himself. And further yet into our past; the laws were derived intrinsically like unto the feeling of something urgent- requisite to any of the savages and to those who would form tribes and the smaller communities - as to supercede upon their previously quite necessary uses of brute force, as to defend their houses, their food, their families. - - In the start, it happens that man is no more gingerly treated then any of the other beasts, yet he hath solicited nature to his own designs, yea, even oppugned upon her; that he may claim the talents of prophecy and prediction. Indeed, Nature, as opposed to the World; the frame upon which we root our world, is our original of instruments, thereof those ends to meet. 4 By means of experience, the foundation of Nature, - Nature which we call- our intellectual principles, granteth analysis to us, and the ability to form predictions about the World, that which Nature hath revealed. By virtue thereof, it is in man that which man finds a taste for. Thus ask any man you will; can this world not be improved? Yes he shall remark; why yes, the world could do a little better with this, and perchance with a bit of that: The World certainly could be improved! From our hoarding souls, the world is stolen to pride. The stars in themselves doe us no good; they were to us but for calenders, and now provoke the slightest fortition of the eye: the plants doe for us bestow a somewhat trustworthy craft for healing, though otherwise impresseth but from time to time upon our tender sensibilities, whichever find a rapture upon such colors as they have. Though all which is by our society most praised lyeth upon the praises which individual men place upon such things, as poets for flowers, astronomers for stars, and philosophers for other such things. Though I do not depreciate the value of which, or should ever hope to do so. 080401 ... benefactory looks like nice work! 080402 what's it to you? who go blather from