'The presence of a noble nature'

 To my mind, no philosopher was clearer than Wittgenstein on why a science of ethics is impossible — why talking of ethics as if it were a feature of the natural world is nonsense.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

 

A science of ethics, a calculus of ethics, a logical system of ethics is nonsense, and Wittgenstein said not a word. However, our experience of ethical behavior is not nonsense at all. Those experiences might be the most serious things we humans encounter, and Wittgenstein said a lot about that.

If you’ve read the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, it might surprise you that Wittgenstein gave copies of Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations to friends. He urged his students to read Tolstoy’s Twenty-Three Tales and questioned them to see if they’d grasped the stories.

The praised Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. He loved to talk about the character Father Zosima. Such people really exist in the world, Wittgenstein said. He hailed Dostoevsky as a master for capturing this natural — but almost miraculous — personality.

To me, George Eliot was even clearer in Middlemarch:

 

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us; we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

 

And this:

 

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration: they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us.

 

Such people do walk the earth.

• Sources: The first quotation is the last proposition of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. The quotations from George Eliot’s Middlemarch are from Chapters LXXVI and LXXVII.

What we plant on public land

 I found a lovely seedpod, about the size of a rabbit’s foot. It was tan, made of three leaf-like panels. Inside were green seeds that looked like small marbles.

The pods are from Koelreuteria paniculata, a goldenrain tree. It’s a lovely tree. It’s one of the trees the ancient Chinese planted beside the graves of scholars. In spring, the goldenrain tree will be covered with little yellow flowers on long panicles. To some poetic soul, the sight looked like sheets of golden rainwater running off dark foliage.

Gardeners can’t resist goldenrain trees. They brought them from China to Japan in the Middle Ages and to Europe before 1750. They brought them to the colonies before the American revolution.

Some gardener planted the tree I was looking at on public land — in the landscaped area of a park. Before long, the seeds will go from the landscaped area into the natural forest within the park’s boundaries.

I think it’s hopeless to try to prevent private citizens from planting non-native species. I don’t think the country is in the mood for garden police. But when I saw that beautiful seedpod I wondered whether we could hope to change the policy about what we plant on public lands.

Finding your interests

 I think it must be a natural law that every family of educators must have someone like me: a person who has a talent for dropping out.

I know nothing about education, but I think this is true: We do well when we try to help children — and those who inquire like children — find their own interests. We do less well when we think it’s our duty to help them find a “career,” meaning a way to sort out questions about money.

A.S. Neill, who was an educational reformer when I was a child, had a similar idea:

 

I hold that the aim of life is to find happiness, which means to find interest. Education should be a preparation for life.

 

I think that helping children find their interests is a good thing to do — but I also think that old people can seek like children and that those who do are happier.

When people who are considering retirement query me about it, I ask: “Is there anything you are interested in — anything you want to learn?”

• Source: A.S. Neill, Sumerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing; New York, Hart Publishing, 1960, pp. 24. The Internet Archive has it here:

https://archive.org/details/Summerhill-English-A.S.Neill/mode/2up

In search of something small

 Mary Russell Mitford, the English writer, liked to walk through natural places. She knew when violets bloomed and where to find them. When the time came, she had to get outdoors. 

What a renewal of heart and mind! To inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness is again to be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child. Then it is that thought becomes poetry, and feeling religion.

 

• Source: Mary Russell Mitford’s essay “Violeting” is in Our Village; London: The Macmillan Company, 1893. Project Gutenberg has it here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2496/2496-h/2496-h.htm

Two brothers argue about place

 Julian Tennyson, at 23, walked and cycled around Suffolk.

It was 1938, and the great-grandson of the famous poet was hoping to write a guidebook about rural county that was not overrun by tourists. He had a strong sense of place and looked at all aspects of it: the natural history, of course, but also the towns, farms, churches, language and fairs.

His Suffolk Scenes was published in 1939, the year the war broke out, breaking off his literary career.

Capt. Tennyson eventually was shipped to the Far East, where he had a wonderful argument with his younger brother Hallam. Here’s Ronald Blythe’s account:

 

When he (Julian) was stationed in India he was urged by his brother Hallam to try and drop is English attitudes and ‘to read Kalidasa, to study the Vedanta, and to do anything that might help him to understand the soul of the country he was in,” but, says Hallam, ‘He replied very briefly … saying that he was fully taken up with thinking and reading about the things he loved at home, that he had no interest whatever in the East and did not want to go any further East than East Anglia in the future.

 

One brother wanted to understand the world and the other wanted to understand the shire.

They seem to me to be kindred spirits. Both were concerned with a sense of place. They differed on whether the broad view or the deep view of place is best.

Both are essential, so I don’t think one view could be best. Whichever you choose, it would be deficient in a way.

But over a long life, I have wanted to see the world and have wanted to know the county. I’d have loved to have heard that argument.

• Ronald Blythe’s essay “Julian Tennyson and Suffolk Scene” was collected in Field Work; Norwich: Black Dog Books, 2007, pp. 140-3. The quotation is on p. 141. 

Deer ticks and preferred habitat

 I saw a photograph of workers dragging large pieces of cloth — picture a ragged shirt or coat — through stands of Japanese barberry. The workers were collecting deer ticks for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Researchers have found high concentrations of deer ticks in stands of Japanese barberry.

Ironically, deer don’t eat Japanese barberry, deterred by the plant’s sharp spines. The plant is a recent arrival in North America. Gardeners planted it as an ornamental. It has been thriving in the wild for at least 40 years.

Why are deer ticks attracted to Japanese barberry?

It roots from its stems, forming thickets, which shelter mice from predators. The theory is that the ticks follow the mice.

I wish I could interest scientists in the question of what other plants — particularly those in the Georgia Piedmont — attract ticks.

I think ticks prefer blackberry canes. My hypothesis is that they have evolved a preference for a plant that berry-eating animals, including me, will eventually blunder through, looking for a snack.

Of course, it could be observer’s bias. It could be that I see more ticks on blackberry canes because I love blackberries. But I’ve gotten interested in the question and have been looking for ticks on other plants on the forest floor. I think the question is worth testing.

Perhaps the research has been done, and I just can’t find it in the literature. Were I in charge of a couple of graduate students, you know what we’d be doing.

A law to revive the Good Old Days

 In the Middle Ages, the wool trade made parts of England rich. Flocks filled the fields. Many houses had looms. The fabulous wool churches were built with the wealth.

But commercial goods tend to run in cycles. Bust follows boom, and by the reign of Charles II people looked back on a Golden Age.

In 1666, political leaders decided to Make England Great Again by promoting the wool trade. Parliament passed laws requiring that the dead be buried in woolen shrouds.

The original law had to be amended a couple of times — it was hoped that terrifying fines would force unenthusiastic shroud consumers to comply.

The law was dumb and ineffective. 

The laws being passed today in the United States are dumb. We can marvel at the transcendental levels of stupidity at play.  But we can’t pretend dumb laws are a new thing. This kind of thing has a long history.