Vercingetorix

“ But I assert they are not such, but friends, Faithful to Hector, our liege lord and King. My bores, I know Vergli; his soul is high He simply works for Justice and for Truth, He advocates fair play to every man, To every living, moving, sentient thing. His creed is, ‘Follow Nature, It is God, Inscrutable, but not impossible.’ The God to whom you offer sacrifice And before whom you kneel like hypocrites, Is an impossible, a defamed God, A brazen serpent reared aloft by Man, Dyspeptic Man, who dreamed a nightmare dream, And forthwith called it the Almighty God! Almighty lie! ”

“ It is not in drama or in prose that the charm of Vrchlicky can be found. He is distinctly a poet. His favorite creations are traveling comedians, circus-riders, gypsies. A man of the world, a thorough cosmopolite, he, nevertheless, was a pagan at heart; a man who for the poetry of an overturned idol, forgotten urn would sell all the material progress of the scientific world. ”

“ Vrchlicky’s prosody is not extensive, but it differs from his poetry. He himself intended it to differ.
‘In my lyrical works I meant to express myself, my own soul, in my prose I speak as “The man of Nineteenth Century” observing the evolution of the people and trying to interpret its efforts. And so it is that my prose and my poetry are so different, my filisofy is “dualistic”; through my entire activity—for my own self I am a pessimist, for humanity an optimist.’ ”

“ An English officer compels a Latin verb to fit in with his notion of what a Latin verb ought to do just in the same way as he expects a Spaniard to regard with pleasure his occupation of Gibraltar: any protest by a grammarian or an idealistic politician would strike him as impertinent. Harry Vereker's voice is a still more ineradicable manifestation of the spirit. Listen! He is asking the waiter in Serbian for salt, but he does so in a way that reminds one of mankind's concession to animals in using forms of communication that the latter can understand. ”

“ I’ve known Wrexham pretty intimately for some years, and he does not invent things, nor does it intrigue him to pull people’s legs with fairy stories. He is, moreover, a most matter-of-fact person, rather sceptical as a rule, and not inclined to believe anything that he cannot see himself. ”

“ Real philosophy deals with things, and includes metaphysics, ethics, physics, geometry, and the like; while rational philosophy, which includes logic, dialectic, rhetoric, history, poetry, and grammar, deals not with things, but with words, and is not philosophy proper, but the instrument of philosophy. Poetry is therefore, strictly speaking, neither an art nor a science, but an instrument or faculty; and it is only an art in the sense that it has been reduced to rules and precepts. It is, in fact, a form of logic, and no man, according to Varchi, can be a poet unless he is a logician ”

“ Fechner has never heard of logic's veto, Royce hears the voice but cannily ignores the utterances, Hegel hears them but to spurn them—and all go on their way rejoicing. Shall we alone obey the veto?
Sincerely, and patiently as I could, I struggled with the problem for years, covering hundreds of sheets of paper with notes and memoranda and discussions with myself over the difficulty. How can many consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? How can one and the same identical fact experience itself so diversely? ”

“ The Not-A might very well, when taken by itself, be an X or a Y; but it is the recognition of the A as real or possible, that makes of it a Not-A. Further, it is obvious that within itself alone does the I find authority to pronounce the Proposition of Contradiction as well as that of Identity. It will be noticed, thus, that the identity of the I is as truly involved in the proposition of negation as in that of affirmation. Both elements, A and Not-A, must be found by the I in its own consciousness. ”

“ Hegel, seeing the contradictions of Kant and Fichte and accepting their conclusions, developed the most elaborate and artificial philosophy ever presented in the history of human thought—a philosophy of contradiction, a scheme of the negative by which it was attempted to show that words are divine, but the world is finite and contradictory, and that every proposition affirmed of the world contains within itself its own contradiction, and that words must be believed and that sensation, perception, understanding, and reflection create phantasms. ”

“ O Verheyden! go to the Lord with your burden, and he will give you rest. Do not fill your soul with discord because your hand can no more awaken harmony. That loftier harmony nothing can disturb without your consent. Is it not beautiful to think of—the security of the soul? Remember, Verheyden, the lightnings may strike us, but our souls shall not be smitten; and they shall not be drowned though the waters cover us; the earth may burn, but our souls shall not be consumed; and they shall not be crushed though the heavens fall on us. ”

“ Is not all Truth divine? What! Treason is it to condemn a lie? What made the lie? God? No. Just little Man. Man, still in an imperfect, undrilled state. Shall lies or laws based on them be immortal? Not so, I say. They must be executed. Vergli will be their executioner. Is he a Revolutionist? No, no. He is an Evolutionist. That’s all. Kill him? You cannot! Thought will never die, It is a part of Immortality. Silence this body? That which gives it life You cannot kill, because it is of God. It is that which is speaking to you now. Silence it? Never! ’Tis eternal Life. ”

“ Disdaining alike the cowardice and the perversity of those who, refusing to face the red realities of the present century, fly for their comfort to the pale shadows of the Middle Ages, Verhaeren has plunged boldly into the very brazier of our modern existence. He affirms, he combats, he prophesies, but he rarely, if ever, rests. He hymns every phase of life, from the human brain to the human body, and from the winds and seas of nature to the towns and marts of man. ”

“ Who would ever believe that Verres would be an adversary of women? or did he do something contrary to the interests of women, in order that the whole edict might not appear to have been drawn up at the will of Chelidon. He wishes, he says, to oppose the covetousness of men. Oh, certainly. Who, not only in the present age, but even in the times of our ancestors, was ever so far removed from covetousness? Recite what comes next, I beg; for the gravity of the man, his knowledge of the law, and his authority delight me. ”

“ We have thus examined the criticism which Herbart made of Fichte’s definition of the I, considered as to its material. This criticism may resolve itself into a single statement. The self is subject-object. Both elements, that of subjectivity and that of objectivity, belong to it. In the definition, we attempt to separate these. We seek to place a self that is pure subject over against a self that is pure object. The attempt fails, for each of the terms breaks up into its constituent elements. The subject, because it is the self, is not pure subject, but subject-object. ”

“ Now it is clear that this theory never will be "proved" if the proofs that already lie before us are not sufficient. How often has it been repeated that the scientific certainty of the hypothesis of descent is not grounded in this or that isolated experiment, but in the collective sum of biological phenomena; in the causal nexus of evolution. Then what are the new proofs of the theory of descent which Virchow demands of us? ”

“ Now Hegel found that his idea of an immanent movement through the field of concepts by way of 'dialectic' negation played most beautifully into the hands of this rationalistic demand for something absolute and inconcussum in the way of truth. It is easy to see how. If you affirm anything, for example that A is, and simply leave the matter thus, you leave it at the mercy of any one who may supervene and say 'not A, but B is.' If he does say so, your statement doesn't refute him, it simply contradicts him, just as his contradicts you. ”

“ Not quite twenty years have passed by, and yet, in the course of that time, in Virchow's views of the universe, in his conception of human nature, and of the soul-life, a change has been effected than which we can conceive of no greater. We learn to our surprise that psychical and corporeal processes are wholly different phenomena; that no scientific necessity whatever exists for extending the province of psychical processes beyond the circle of those bodies in which, and by which, we see them actually exhibited. ”

“ There is nothing that is more undoubtedly true than what the Lord Verulam hath told us in these words: Causa vero & radix ferè omnium malorum in scientiis ea una est: quod dum mentis humanæ vires falso miramur & extollimus, vera ejus auxilia non quæramus. And again: Subtilitas naturæ subtilitatem sensûs & intellectûs multis partibus superat, the which may be proved from many undeniable instances, which need not here be mentioned, only we shall add what the aforesaid learned Lord speaks to the same purpose which is this: “The fault of sense is twofold: For it either forsaketh or deceiveth us. ”

“ Here more than in any other piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry we feel near the mediæval drama. Almost every canto is like a scene; and little adaptation would be required to put it upon the stage. The narrative at the beginning is like a prologue, and then after the close of the piece we have an epilogue, in which the author speaks about himself, and weaves his name with Runes into the verses in the manner already described.
The briefest fragment in the Vercelli book is about False Friendship; and it contains a long-drawn simile in which the bee is rather hardly treated. ”

“ Neither of the eminent men of science, whose opinions are at present under consideration, can be said to be a one-sided representative either of the synthetic or of the analytic school. Haeckel, no less than Virchow, is distinguished by the number, variety, and laborious accuracy of his contributions to positive knowledge; while Virchow, no less than Haeckel, has dealt in wide generalisations, and, until the obscurantists thought they could turn his recent utterances to account, no one was better abused by them as a typical free-thinker and materialist. ”

“ In the end Vergil's poetry, like that of Lucretius, owed more to Epicureanism than modern critics—too often obsessed by a misapplied odium philosophicum—have been inclined to admit. It is all too easy to compare this philosophy with other systems, past and present, and to prove its science inadequate, its implications unethical, and its attitude towards art banal. ”

“ And that philosophy—the science of knowing—by which all the common results of human knowledge are to be bound up into one grand and harmonious whole—that philosophy, I say, must not be generally taught, is, according to Virchow, quite self-evident. ”

“ Every new theory, if it is to succeed, needs a strong dose of exaggeration. And the idea of realising reality in poetry seduced young Verhaeren into carefully avoiding, in the description of his native province, all that is sentimental and romantic, and deluded him with the hope of expressing in his verse only what is coarse, primitive, and savage. ”

“ But however this may be, it remains an undeniable fact that Verhaeren has at his command a rare and powerful poetic eloquence—a wealth of imagery, a depth of thought and a subtlety of expression which perhaps are not to be imprisoned behind the bars of a too rigid convention. English readers have already been accustomed by their own poets to the "vers libre," and it is not so much, therefore, for my adherence to this form, as for my failure adequately to render Verhaeren's peculiar and striking beauty of language, that I beg their indulgence for the following translations. ”

“ An opponent of our view might find a dangerous paradox or even a contradiction in the preceding explanations, because on the one hand we insisted so strongly on what has been called the “empirical-meaning requirement”, and on the other hand we assert most emphatically that meaning and verifiability do not depend on any empirical conditions whatever, but are determined by purely logical possibilities. The opponent will object: if meaning is a matter of experience, how can it be a matter of definition and logic? ”

“ And, again, if contradictory propositions could both be true, the special line of argument which Hegel follows would have lost all its force. We are enabled to pass on from the thesis and antithesis to the synthesis just because a contradiction cannot be true, and the synthesis is the only way out of it. ”

“ It so happened that the circumstances of the time supplied to him in perfection the conditions essential for the exercise of this colossal wit, grand and grave solemnities, where it was his accepted part to find language for truths or, to speak more modestly and humanly, for a part of truth, which there and then was admissible only under reserve. To overcome difficulties of expression, to put a thought better and more effectively than your hearers could expect in the given conditions, is the essence of wit. ”

“ And now therefore, if this very Alcestis, who could not possibly rise, has actually risen before the eyes of the Chorus and ours, if the irreversible order of things has in its most impressive manifestation been signally reversed, if in short it has been proved, as all, if they saw such a thing happen, would understand and confess, that the bond of 'Necessity' does not bind, but itself is breakable by superior and, as we say, miraculous power,—what has become of that creed? Was it put forward only that the contrasted sequel might the more conspicuously exhibit its falsity? ”