Eric The Blue

Addendum re Hume

I've been rooting around just a little in the Hume-Johnson-Boswell literature and have a few things to add. 

Describing the background to Boswell's interview with Hume "a-dying," I wrote that Boswell "would have known" of Johnson's low opinion of Soame Jenyns's A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.  But the subjunctive mood was unnecessary, since Boswell called that very review "Johnson's most exquisite critical essay."  I might have added, too, that Johnson can in no way be accused of picking on an obscure upstart of no reputation.  For he notes in his review that Jenyns's views are largely a prose version of Pope's "Essay on Man," and he does not exclude Pope from his scathing rebuttal.  Indeed, the caustic sentence, "Life must be seen before it can be known," is followed immediately by:  "This author and Pope perhaps never saw the miseries which they imagine thus easy to be born."

To Boswell's record of his last meeting with Hume, and Adam Smith's letter to William Strachan, one might append a remark of Harvard professor George Sherburn, who, on the subject of Hume's last days, wrote that "the calm cheerfulness of his demise . . . greatly annoyed the orthodox."  Hume's contemporary the Reverend William Warburton expressed a more representative opinion: "A wickeder mind, and one more obstinately bent on public mischief, I never knew."  What outraged people like Warburton and Johnson?  It may have had something to do with the cool polish of the prose Hume deployed in developing his "sceptical" ideas. He exudes confidence and urbane defiance.  Here, for example, is Hume summing up an argument advanced in his essay "Of Miracles," which he wrote in 1736 but, deeming it dangerous, did not publish until 1748, when he incorporated it into the work now known as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding :

     The plain Consequence is (and it is a general Maxim worthy of our Attention) "That no Testimony is sufficient to establish a Miracle, unless the Testimony be of such a Kind, that its Falshood would be more miraculous, than the Fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that Case, there is a mutual Destruction of Arguments, and the Superior only gives us an Assurance suitable to that Degree of Force, which remains, after deducting the Inferior."  When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead Man restor'd to Life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this Person should either deceive or be deceiv'd, or that the Fact, which he relates, should really have happen'd.  I weigh the one Miracle against the other, and according to the Superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my Decision, and always reject the greater Miracle.  If the Falshood of his Testimony would be more miraculous, than the Event, which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my Belief or Opinion.

Though reviled by many of his countrymen, Hume was very popular in France, where, according to the editor of Eighteenth Century British Literature (Tillotson, Fussell and Waingrow), he "was the object of an almost mystical reverence."  He was pleased, therefore, in middle age to gain a staff position on the British embassy in Paris.  The very different reactions to his work on opposite sides of the channel persuaded him that Britain was "relapsing fast into the deepest stupidity, Christianity and ignorance."  Not that he didn't meet up with some resistance in France.  Later in life, recalling an incident from the time he had been working on "Of Miracles," Hume wrote:

I was walking in the cloisters of the Jesuits' College of La Fleche . . ., and engaged in conversation with a Jesuit of some parts and learning, who was relating to me, and urging some nonsensical miracle performed in their convent, when I was tempted to dispute against him; and as my head was full of the topics of my Treatise of Human Nature, which I was at that time composing, this argument [the one summarized above] immediately occurred to me, and I thought it very much gravelled my companion; but at last he observed to me, that it was impossible for the argument to have any solidity, because it operated equally against the Gospel as the Catholic Miracles;--which observation I thought proper to admit as a sufficient answer.

Hume earned the honor of having all his writings placed on the Roman Catholic Index before he died. 

Hume in extremis

On July 7, 1776, James Boswell, now known to the world as author of The Life of Johnson, paid a visit to David Hume, who was dying of cancer at his lodgings in Edinburgh.  According to the editor of Boswell's Journal, Hume was "the most famous sceptic philosopher of the age," and the judgment of posterity is that he was also the greatest philosopher to have written in English.  Hume's atheism made him repugnant to Boswell's great friend, the orthodox and pious Johnson, and this, together with his eminence, made him an object of Boswell's fascination.  In his account of the interview Boswell, who knew that Hume was gravely ill, reveals that he had entertained the notion that, faced with the prospect of imminent death, the philosopher would have relented somewhat in his dim view of beliefs Boswell held sacred.  In this he was disappointed.  Herewith an extract from "An Account of My Last Interview with David Hume, Esq., Partly recorded in my Journal, partly enlarged from my memory, 3 March 1777."  (I am relying on The Journals of James Boswell, 1762-1795, selected and introduced by John Wain.)

On Sunday forenoon the 7 of July 1776, being too late for church, I went to see Mr David Hume, who was returned from London and Bath, just a-dying.  I found him alone, in a reclining posture in his drawing-room.  He was lean, ghastly and quite of an earthy appearance.  He was dressed in a suit of grey cloth with white metal buttons, and a kind of scratch wig.  He was quite different from the plump figure which he used to present.  He had before him Dr Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric.  He seemed to be placid and even cheerful.  He said he was just approaching to his end.  I think these were his words.  I know not how I contrived to get the subject of immortality introduced.  He said he never had entertained any belief in religion since he began to read Locke and Clarke. . . .  He then said flatly that the morality of every religion was bad, and, I really thought, was not jocular when he said that when he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious.  This was just an extravagant reverse of the common remark as to infidels.

I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes.  I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist.  I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state.  He answered it was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn. . . .

I asked him if the thought of annihilitation never gave him any uneasiness.  He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been, as Lucretius observes.  'Well,' said I, 'Mr Hume, I hope to triumph over you when I meet you in a future state; and remember you are not to pretend that you was joking with all this infidelity.'  'No, no,' said he.  'But I shall have been so long there before you come that it will be nothing new.'  In this style of good humour and levity did I conduct the conversation. . . .  I however felt a degree of horror, mixed with a sort of wild, strange, hurrying recollection of my excellent mother's pious instructions, of Dr Johnson's noble lessons, and of my religious sentiments and affections during the course of my life.  I was like a man in sudden danger eagerly seeking his defensive arms; and I could not but be assailed by momentary doubts while I had actually before me a man of such strong abilities and extensive enquiry dying in the persuasion of being annihilated.  But I maintained my faith. . . .  I mentioned Soame Jenyn's little book in defence of Christianity, which was just published but which I had not yet read.  Mr Hume said, 'I am told there is nothing of his usual spirit in it.'

I somehow or other brought Dr Johnson's name into our conversation.  I had often heard him speak of that great man in a very illiberal manner.  He said upon this occasion, 'Johnson should be pleased with my History.'  Nettled by Hume's frequent attacks upon my revered friend in former conversations, I told him now that Dr Johnson did not allow him much credit; for he said, 'Sir, the fellow is a Tory by chance.'  I am sorry that I mentioned this at such a time.  I was off my guard; for the truth is that Mr Hume's pleasantry was such that there was no solemnity in the scene; and death for the time did not seem dismal.  It surprised me to find him talking of different matters with a tranquility of mind and a clearness of head which few men possess at any time. . . .

It was amazing to find him so keen in such a state.  I must add one other circumstance which is material, as it shows he perhaps was not without some hope of a future state, and that his spirits were supported by a consciousness (or at least a notion) that his conduct had been virtuous.  He said, 'If there were a future state, Mr Boswell, I think I could give as good an account of my life as most people.'

This remarkable document has sometimes been called the journalistic scoop of the 18th century.  Though commentary is superfluous, I cannot help appending a few scattered notes.

I love, in the first sentence, the subordinate phrase "being too late for church."  Thank God!  I trust Boswell thought he was well compensated for his failure to honor this one Sabbath.  More than 230 years later, I feel that I am the beneficiary of his absence from church that day.

At the end of the first paragraph, Boswell did not really need to gloss Hume's barb concerning religious rascals by explaining, "This was just an extravagant reverse of the common remark as to infidels."  Maybe he did so because the sentence captures the effect of the entire interview.  Boswell's expectation regarding Hume's demeanor is overturned.  The picture of the devoted believer, sure of his reward, going to the grave with composure is undercut by the example of the atheistic Hume cheerfully confronting his end with The Philosophy of Rhetoric, not the Bible, in hand.  The document, as it were against the impulse and intention of the devout author, but thanks to his honesty, elevates the character of Hume over those of the people who would consign him to hell.  All the usual pious conventions are extravagantly reversed.

The work by Soame Jenyns that Boswell rather feebly refers to is View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion.  It had been preceded, in 1756, by Jenyns's Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.  Boswell would have known that the earlier work, an effort at theodicy, had been famously, savagely panned by Dr. Johnson, who in a memorable passage from his review dismissed Jenyns's argument that the nurturing wisdom of providence had made the poor more able to enjoy simple pleasures and less quick to take offense at small slights.  "The poor, indeed, are insensible of many little vexations, which sometimes imbitter the possessions, and pollute the enjoyments, of the rich," wrote Johnson, in his inimitable style.  "They are not pained by casual incivility, or mortified by the mutiliation of a compliment; but this happiness is like that of the malefactor, who ceases to feel the cords that bind him, when the pincers are tearing his flesh."  Earlier, he had observed, with undisguised contempt for the author of the work under review, "Life must be seen, before it can be known."  It is impossible that Hume could have been swayed by Jenyns, and Boswell very likely knew it.

Boswell's account of Hume's comportment in his final days is corroborated by a letter Adam Smith wrote William Strachan describing the behavior of their mutual friend during his last illness.

E. A. Robinson

Thirty years ago, in "Modernism in American Literature," the first assignment was to read some of E. A. Robinson's Tillbury Town Portraits--"Richard Corey," "Cliff Klingenhagen," "Miniver Cheevy," "Eros Turannos," "Bewick Finzer," "Luke Havergal," "Mr. Flood's Party," maybe a few more that I've forgotten.  (Many of Robinson's poems may be read here.)  These are short lyrics, often rhymed, exploring the unrelievedly distressed inner lives of the inhabitants of Robinson's native Gardiner, Maine, renamed in his poetry Tillbury Town.  My impression is that, except for "Richard Corey," referred to in a Simon and Garfunkel song, these poems have lapsed into obscurity, and that Robinson, who during his life benefitted from the patronage of President Theodore Roosevelt, has dropped off the Am Lit syllabus.  The other poets studied in the course--Eliot, Frost, Stevens, Williams--now make Robinson look like the answer to a who-does-not-belong question.

But now comes the redoubtable Charles Simic to review, in the NYRB dated December 6, 2007, a new biography of Robinson, by Scott Donaldson, and a selection of his poems edited by Donaldson, who calls Robinson "a great American poet and an exceptionally fine human being."  Simic concurs regarding Robinson's character and has many good things to say about a relatively small subset of his work--pretty much the same subset I was assigned to read thirty years ago.  As Simic observes, social and psychological realism were by Robinson's day acceptable in fiction, but poetry was still ruled by a genteel tradition that required picturesque landscapes, love, and uplifting sentiments.  About an early volume Robinson felt compelled to warn a friend not to expect much natural description.  "There is very little tinkling water, and . . . not a red-bellied robin in the whole collection," he wrote.  There is instead hypocrisy, cruelty, isolation, and despair.  Marriage is loveless.  The outwardly successful are suicidal.  Some endure with Roman fortitude abetted by alcohol.  The commentary on Robinson's poetry often mentions that he studied Emersonian transcendentalism at Harvard, but his poetry reminds me more of Thoreau, especially the dictum that most of us "lead lives of quiet desperation."

In an essay on Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," John Berryman noted that the poem begins with a nice rhyme--

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky,

--that seems pleasantly redolent of much other "dim, romantic verse."  He then quotes the next line--

Like a patient etherized upon a table

--and declares, "With this line, modern poetry begins."  But working within conventional forms, and employing rhyme and meter, Robinson, who was born nineteen years before Eliot, had already invented a new subject matter for American poetry.  Simic quotes a contemporary reviewer who, taking the measure of Robinson's view of things, wrote in The Boston Globe: "Where was it written that this world was hell?"  Robert Frost, another New Englander and occasional chronicler of underpublicized aspects of small-town American life, was born just five years after Robinson but did not begin publishing poetry until he was 40.  Though he somehow has acquired a reputation as a poet of rural values and simplicity, the true subjects of Frost's poetry are (as Randall Jarrell argued in his essay on "the other Frost") the insignificance of man, the indifference of nature, God's absence, the frailty of life and health and sanity, the end of the world.  Simic, by seconding Donaldson's emphasis on what was original and radical in Robinson's poetry, achieves a sort of after-the-fact justification for the details of my 1970s Am Lit syllabus.  In important ways he does belong with such "standard authors" as Frost and Eliot.

The most enjoyable part of Simic's review, though, concerns Robinson's life and family background.  The household of origin, including especially the fates of his two brothers, goes a long way toward explaining his attraction for eccentrics and "losers."  Robinson himself was something of a vagabond, devoted to his work to the exclusion of all pecuniary considerations, but generous with family and friends when the sinecure secured by Roosevelt, or literary prizes won later in life, left him comparatively, temporarily flush.  He had a fondness for drink but mostly stayed steadily at work, producing in his middle and later years a considerable body of poems that, in Simic's summary, are "unreadable," "long-winded," "incomprehensible," and "astonishingly boring."  He had a special interest in reworking the Arthurian legends.  He was embarrassed by his appearance--"I have a look that might lead one to think that I had just been eating the lining out of my own coffin"--and never married.  He died in 1935, at age 65.  Today is the 138th anniversary of his birth.

Another power outage

In his latest effort to twist statistical data into a shape friendly to his nutwingery, John Hinderaker links to a site comparing the percentage increase of carbon emissions among countries that signed the Kyoto treaty, to the United States, which has not.  Hinderaker summarizes the results:

• Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%
• Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%
• Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%
• Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%

The problem with this kind of "analysis" may be illustrated with an example.  Suppose that, in the September of a baseball season, one of Ted Williams's teammates had increased his hit total by 60%, while Williams's total had increased by just 10%.  Armed with this bit of information, would Hinderaker the sportswriter compose a column arguing that, compared to his teammate, Williams had been a September bust?

The United States is the Ted Williams of carbon emissions.  We pollute so much that a large increase in volume translates into a modest percentage hike.  But it is the carbon, not the percentage increase of it, that causes greenhouse warming. 

Hinderaker's post is entitled "Blind pigs, occassionally. Al Gore, never."  If he is honest, then he's innumerate, but there can be no doubt about the supercilious sneer.  It is his calling card.

Religiosity, generalized

Mike Huckabee, the former fatso, former Baptist preacher, and former governor of Arkansas who will likely win Iowa's Republican presidential caucus on January 3, has ascended to the top tier of candidates by stressing his Christian bona fides.  So why, since the circulation of his Christian resume has boosted him in the standings, will he not release the sermons he preached before switching to politics?  Mitt Romney, too, in delivering a long speech on his Mormon faith, failed to say much of anything about what, as a Mormon, he believes.  It seems these guys want to be religious in a general sort of way, which, as Susan Sontag once argued, is like "speaking language" instead of English, German, or French.

One comes slowly to the conclusion that, while it's very important to "be religious," the inevitable details are potentially harmful.  Huckabee indicated in an early debate that he doesn't believe in evolution, and, in a sermon of his that some journalists have managed to uncover, he declared, "It doesn't embarrass me one bit to let you know that I believe Adam and Eve were real people."  Inasmuch as a significant minority of the voting population expects the president to possess ordinary adult sophistication, this could hurt. It helps to be religious but having particular religious beliefs is dangerous.

The case of Mitt Romney is more interesting.  Huckabee believes absurd things that are believed by roughly half the population, and by a majority of Republican voters.  Romney is a member of a comparatively small faith community whose beliefs are arguably even more outlandish.  Huckabee recently caused a small ruckus by wondering aloud whether Mormons believe that Jesus Christ is a blood relative of Satan.  Apparently there is something to be said on various sides of this question, and it will not help Romney if Christian Republicans warm to the debate. 

Then there is the fact that, if an American knows one thing about the Mormons, it is that their church compiles and archives extensive genealogical records frequently used by harmless drudges researching their family trees.  It's less known that these genealogical records serve a theolgical function: the Mormons believe that, if dead non-Mormons can be identified, they might yet be prayed for and baptized as Mormons, and that they may thereby be delivered into paradise from "spirit prison."  I know, because I read about it at a Catholic website, and I received the distinct impression that the author regards with disdain the prospect of heroes of his faith being suddenly invaded in their heavenly home by some real riffraff.

If Huckabee, having risen from the political dead on account of his piety, now seems less willing to talk about Adam and Eve, you can be sure that Romney feels even less inclined to discuss his church's doctrine concerning the baptism of the dead.  That God should leave to the officiousness of the Mormons the fate of everlasting souls is an unusual point of view not likely to serve the presidential ambition of a latter day saint. 

TV

Spent the evening on the couch with my wife watching TV--a game show called "Deal or No Deal," which, probably on account of the writer's strike, was tonight a two-hour investment in time.  In the game the contestant wins money by choosing one of 26 boxes, each of which has hidden inside a money amount printed on a slip of paper.  The amounts range from one cent to one million dollars.  The twist is that, having chosen a box, the contestant names other numbered boxes, which a buxom model then opens, revealing a prize that the contestant did not win.  A "banker" then offers the contestant a certain amount for the box she has chosen.  The contestant may accept the offer--deal!--or choose to have the contents of more boxes revealed before receiving another offer.

Since the 26 different amounts are known quantities, it is a simple matter, if you have time, to calculate the "expected prize" at every point during the game.  At the start of the game, for example, the contestant may expect to win the sum of the 26 different prizes divided by 26--which turns out to be about $131,478.  In the first round, however, she must choose to have six boxes uncovered.  If these six include two or three of the largest prizes, the banker's offer will be somewhat less than $131,478.  You can see how the suspense can build as the contestant goes deeper into the game and reveals the prize hidden in more and more boxes.  Do you take a sure thing or go for a really big prize?

The interest of the game, at least for me, rests in the tug-of-war between emotion and rationality.  The rules of probability reveal, at every step of the game, the optimal strategy.  But 26 is a somewhat awkward number with which to calculate, and there is of course the allure, mainly psychological, of the "million dollar prize."  And it isn't always apparent that the best strategy for an individual is the one that maximizes the expected pay-out.  Suppose the contents of all but two boxes are known, and the remaining two hide a ten dollar prize and a million dollar prize.  The contestant's expected winning is now $500,005, so if the banker offers $300,000 to quit, the strategy maximizing expected value is to turn down the deal.  But suppose you owe Tony Soprano a quarter million, and don't have it?  For this contestant taking the $300,000 makes a lot of sense.

I think the game reveals that, regarding money, Aristotle was right: the object should not be to have as much as possible but, rather, to have enough. 

Quotation not in Bartlett

My wife and I were talking last night and, after due consideration of the topic at hand, she said: "If the people who wrote the Bible wanted other people to believe it, they should have made it a lot shorter, with fewer details."

Accruing organic matter

While I've been shoveling snow off my walk, over at Power Line John Hinderaker has been shoveling more untreated organic matter into the blogosphere.  His point of departure on December 1 was a Gallup poll finding that, when asked to rate their own mental health, Republicans self-report more satisfaction than do Democrats. 

To paraphrase the philosopher, we depressive Dems should not be envious of those happy in a fool's paradise, since only Republicans would be happy there.  Moreover one aspect of the Republican paradise might be an impressive capacity for self-delusion, which, in addition to accounting for the poll's finding, would help explain the views of John Hinderaker, who appears wholly unmoored from reality.

His risible take on the poll, for instance, includes the view that, compared to Democrats, "Republicans are generally better educated."  Perhaps he has an idiosyncratic definition of "Republican."  For purposes of discussion, I'm going to adopt the view that a Republican is a voter who casts a ballot for the Republican candidate for president.  A Democrat is one who votes for the Democrat.  In the last presidential election, the Republican, George Bush, got 51% of all votes, to 48% for the Democrat, John Kerry.  But suppose we look only at ballots cast by college graduates.  Now the two candidates are in a 49-49 dead heat.  The picture changes if we draw finer distinctions.  Among voters of every educational level, from high school dropouts to college graduates, Kerry consistently received from 46 to 50 per cent of the vote.  But among voters with the highest educational attainment--those with post-graduate degrees--Kerry got 55% of the vote and won a double-digit victory over Bush.  The poll data may be examined here.

This result is not anomalous.  In the 2000 election, Bush and Al Gore finished in a 48-48 tie in the nationwide vote.  Among voters with a post-graduate degree, Gore defeated Bush, 52-44. 

If Republicans are "generally better educated" than Democrats, then why did the most educated voters prefer, by significant margins, both Gore and Kerry? 

On another day, when he wants to argue, as he surely will, that Democrats are "effete elites," Hinderaker may link to the exit polls I've just referred to.  But on Saturday last it pleased him to assert that Republicans are better educated than Democrats.  So he did.  He has no regard for the truth of any question but at any given moment latches onto whatever he can to make a case for the party he prefers.  Such people are sometimes called "hacks."