Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

What powerful reminders!  And we are certainly seeing someone with a need to reign rather than a call to serve.

Dr. Lares, I won't bore everyone else with a literary discussion, but I once wrote an article about the Aristoltelian notion of "magnanimity" in C.S. Lewis's fiction, with particular reference to the Christ of Paradise Regained as the last "true" magnanimous figure in English literature.  But this ties into our present situation as I think about virtue and the sort of right leadership that magnanimity, in its old sense, includes.  And people wonder why they need to study literature!

Thank you, I didn't mean to go off down my own little path there.  I doubt you would get much argument from the people on this board [cf Andrea's comments about the grant writers in COST] -- we've all taught otherwise intelligent students who are incapable of expressing their intelligence because of poor language and writing skills. and we see every day in the media what happens when people are unable to put events into larger contexts,

I will have to say, however, that I was never really sure why I had to take trigonometry.

That was my post above.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Tinctoris
"Thy Sins and Haires no man equall call, For, as thy sins increase, thy haires doe fall. John Donne"

Well, I had to work on that a bit; but it was worth it.

Thanks.

In the spirit of "and others"--i.e., from English literature, here is also a timely quotation from G. K. Chesterton's "The War of the Gods and the Demons," a portion The Everlasting Man in which he tells his version of why Rome was able to beat Carthage during the Punic Wars. 

We've all heard a bit about the Punic or Carthaginian Wars with Rome--Hannibal over the Alps and all that--but until I actually lived in North Africa I didn't realize that the Carthaginians were originally Phoenicians and Baal worshippers.  (Hannibal means "grace of Baal.")  They also worshipped Moloch by burning alive their first-born children to ensure financial prosperity.  I've seen the physical place where it was done.  Blech.

It's all romantic now, of course, but at one point in the wars, it looked as though Rome had been soundly defeated.  As Chesterton describes it, The household gods bowed low in darkness under their lowly roofs; and above them went the demons upon a wind from beyond all walls, blowing the trumpet of the Tramontane. The door of the Alps was broken down; and in no vulgar but a very solemn sense, it was Hell let loose. The war of the gods and demons seemed already to have ended; and the gods were dead. The eagles were lost, the legions were broken; and in Rome nothing remained but honor and the cold courage of despair.

But Rome, as we know, endured, and Chesterton puts the reasons for its victory in one long paragraph from which we can, I think, take hope:

Why do men entertain this queer idea that what is sordid must always overthrow what is magnanimous; that there is some dim connection between brains and brutality, or that it does not matter if a man is dull so long as he is also mean? Why do they vaguely think of all chivalry as sentiment and all sentiment as weakness? They do it because they are, like all men, primarily inspired by religion. For them, as for all men the first fact is their notion of the nature of things; their idea about what world they are living in. And it is their faith that the only ultimate thing is fear and therefore that the very heart of the world is evil. They believe that death is stronger than life, and therefore dead things must be stronger than living things; whether those dead things are gold and iron and machinery or rocks and rivers and forces of nature. It may sound fanciful to say that men we meet at tea tables or talk to at garden-parties are secretly worshippers of Baal or Moloch. But this sort of commercial mind has its own cosmic vision and it is the vision of Carthage. It has in it the brutal blunder that was the ruin of Carthage. The Punic power fell, because there is in this materialism a mad indifference to real thought. By disbelieving in the soul, it comes to disbelieving in the mind. Being too practical to be moral it denies what every practical soldier calls the moral of an army. It fancies that money will fight when men will no longer fight. So it was with the Punic merchant princes. Their religion was a religion of despair, even when their practical fortunes were hopeful. How could they understand that the Romans could hope even when their fortunes were hope less? Their religion was a religion of force and fear; how could they understand that men can still despise fear even when they submit to force? Their philosophy of the world had weariness in its very heart; above all they were weary of warfare; how should they understand those who still wage war even when they are weary of it? In a word, how should they understand the mind of Man, who had so long bowed down before mindless things, money and brute force and gods who had the hearts of beasts? They awoke suddenly to the news that the embers they had disdained too much even to tread out were again breaking everywhere into flames; that Hasdrubal was defeated, that Hannibal was outnumbered, that Scipio had carried the war into Spain; that he had carried it into Africa. Before the very gates of the golden city Hannibal fought his last fight for it and lost; and Carthage fell as nothing has fallen since Satan. The name of the New City remains only as a name. There is no stone of it left upon the sand.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Jameela Lares
"In the spirit of "and others"--i.e., from English literature, here is also a timely quotation from G. K. Chesterton's "The War of the Gods and the Demons," a portion The Everlasting Man in which he tells his version of why Rome was able to beat Carthage during the Punic Wars.  We've all heard a bit about the Punic or Carthaginian Wars with Rome--Hannibal over the Alps and all that--but until I actually lived in North Africa I didn't realize that the Carthaginians were originally Phoenicians and Baal worshippers.  (Hannibal means "grace of Baal.")  They also worshipped Moloch by burning alive their first-born children to ensure financial prosperity.  I've seen the physical place where it was done.  Blech. It's all romantic now, of course, but at one point in the wars, it looked as though Rome had been soundly defeated.  As Chesterton describes it, The household gods bowed low in darkness under their lowly roofs; and above them went the demons upon a wind from beyond all walls, blowing the trumpet of the Tramontane. The door of the Alps was broken down; and in no vulgar but a very solemn sense, it was Hell let loose. The war of the gods and demons seemed already to have ended; and the gods were dead. The eagles were lost, the legions were broken; and in Rome nothing remained but honor and the cold courage of despair. But Rome, as we know, endured, and Chesterton puts the reasons for its victory in one long paragraph from which we can, I think, take hope: Why do men entertain this queer idea that what is sordid must always overthrow what is magnanimous; that there is some dim connection between brains and brutality, or that it does not matter if a man is dull so long as he is also mean? Why do they vaguely think of all chivalry as sentiment and all sentiment as weakness? They do it because they are, like all men, primarily inspired by religion. For them, as for all men the first fact is their notion of the nature of things; their idea about what world they are living in. And it is their faith that the only ultimate thing is fear and therefore that the very heart of the world is evil. They believe that death is stronger than life, and therefore dead things must be stronger than living things; whether those dead things are gold and iron and machinery or rocks and rivers and forces of nature. It may sound fanciful to say that men we meet at tea tables or talk to at garden-parties are secretly worshippers of Baal or Moloch. But this sort of commercial mind has its own cosmic vision and it is the vision of Carthage. It has in it the brutal blunder that was the ruin of Carthage. The Punic power fell, because there is in this materialism a mad indifference to real thought. By disbelieving in the soul, it comes to disbelieving in the mind. Being too practical to be moral it denies what every practical soldier calls the moral of an army. It fancies that money will fight when men will no longer fight. So it was with the Punic merchant princes. Their religion was a religion of despair, even when their practical fortunes were hopeful. How could they understand that the Romans could hope even when their fortunes were hope less? Their religion was a religion of force and fear; how could they understand that men can still despise fear even when they submit to force? Their philosophy of the world had weariness in its very heart; above all they were weary of warfare; how should they understand those who still wage war even when they are weary of it? In a word, how should they understand the mind of Man, who had so long bowed down before mindless things, money and brute force and gods who had the hearts of beasts? They awoke suddenly to the news that the embers they had disdained too much even to tread out were again breaking everywhere into flames; that Hasdrubal was defeated, that Hannibal was outnumbered, that Scipio had carried the war into Spain; that he had carried it into Africa. Before the very gates of the golden city Hannibal fought his last fight for it and lost; and Carthage fell as nothing has fallen since Satan. The name of the New City remains only as a name. There is no stone of it left upon the sand."

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