classics digests, reflections and reviews
The Song of Troilus If there’s no love, 0 God! What am I feeling? If there is love, who then, and what, is he? If love be good whence comes this sorrow stealing? If evil, what a wonder it is to me When every torment and adversity That comes of him is savoury, to my thinking! The more I thirst, the more I would be drinking. And if so be […]
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The Pains of Hell St. Jerome says, “Every time I remember the day of doom, I quake; for when I eat or drink, or whatever I do, it seems to me the trumpet sounds in my ear, Rise up, you that have been dead, and come to the judgment.” … There we shall all be, as St. Paul says, before the seat of our Lord Jesus Christ; where he shall […]
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Portrait of a Priest A holy-minded man of good renown There was, and poor, the Parson to a town, Yet he was rich in holy thought and work. He also was a learned man, a clerk, Who truly knew Christ’s gospel and would preach it Devoutly to parishioners, and teach it. Benign and wonderfully diligent, And patient when adversity was sent (For so he proved in much adversity) He hated […]
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The Architecture of Reason When reading Critique of Pure Reason, I get the sense that Kant has a penchant for visualization and architecture, so it seems appropriate to represent his system of Reason, as I understand it, with a diagram (shown above). Although I’m using his own terms (translated from German into English), I cannot be certain that I understand them the same way Kant does, partly because he has […]
Read moreDivine and Kingly Glory Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, “The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of […]
Read moreNothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God and the contemplation of God. — Francis Bacon In Defence of the Pursuit of Knowledge It was not the pure knowledge of Nature and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give names unto other creatures in Paradise as they were brought before him according unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the fall; but […]
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The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible. New Atlantis is a Utopia ruled by scientist-kings, viz. the elite with supreme knowledge of causes of Nature. Bacon’s vision is awe-inspiring, in both senses of the word. On the one hand, it is mind-boggling to ponder the vast […]
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