The Aeneid - Closing

He sank his blade in fury in Turnus' chest.

Then all the body slackened in death's chill,

And with a groan for that indignity

His spirit fled into the gloom below.

The Aeneid - pg. 398

"Sister of Jupiter

Indeed you are, and Saturn's other child,

To feel such anger, stormy in your breast.

But come, no need; put down this fit of rage.

I grant your wish. I yield, I am won over

Willingly. Ausonian folk will keep

Their fathers' language and their way of life,

And, that being so, their name. The Teucrians

Will mingly and be submerged, incorporated.

Rituals and observances of theirs

I'll add, but make them Latin, one in speech.

The race to come, mixed with Ausonian blood,

Will outdo men and gods in its devotion,

You shall see -- and no nation on earth

Will honor and worship you so faithfully."

The Aeneid - pg. 380

"Here's good land, Trojan,

The western land you thought to take in war.

Lie there and measure it. See what is gained

By daring to face up to me in arms.

See how far you go in founding cities."

The Aeneid - pg. 360

Now at length

From where he lurked, seeing the time had come,

Arruns went into action, let his javelin

Come alive, and prayed aloud to heaven:

"Supreme god, holy Socrate's guardian,

Above all others we are blest in thee,

For whom the pine-chips' glowing pile is fed.

Assured by our devotion, in thy cult

We step through beds of embers without harm.

Mighty Apollo, grant that we wipe out

With arms this ignominy. I want no spoils,

No trophy of a beaten girl. My actions

Elsewhere will bring me honor. May this dire

Scourge of battle perish, when hit by me.

Then to the cities of my ancestors

With no rpetence of glory I'll return."

The Aeneid - pg. 352

'Daughter of Latona,

Diana, kindly virgin of the groves,

I, her father, swear this child shall be

Thy servant -- the first weapon she embraces

Thine, as by thy mercy through the air

She escapes the enemy. I beg thee, goddess,

Take her as thine own, this girl committed

Now to the veering wind.'

Then he drew back

His arm and let the spun shaft fly. The waters

Dinned below, and over the rushing stream

Small and forlorn Camilla soared across

The Aeneid - pg. 355

Savage girl, whom did your lance unhorse,

What victims, first and last,

How many thrown down on the battlefield,

Torn bodies dying? Eunaeus, Clytius' son,

Came first: he faced her with unarmored breast,

And with her shaft of pine she ran him through.

He tumbled, coughing streams of blood, took bites

The Aeneid - pg. 335

"What unmerited misfortune, Latins,

Could have embroiled you in so sad a war

That now you turn your backs on us, your friends?

Do you ask for peace from me for those whose lives

Were taken by the cast of Mars? Believe me,

I should have wished to grant it to the living.

Never should I have come here had not Fate

Alloted me this land for settlement,

Nor do I war upon your people. No,

Your king dropped our alliance, lent himself

Instead to Turnus' fighting. In all fairness,

Turnus should have faced death on this field.

If he would end the war by force, and drive

The Trojans out, he should have fought me, fought

My weapons; then the one for whom great Mars --

Or his own sword -- prevailed would have lived on.

[Go now, light fires beneath your wretched dead."

The Aeneid - pg. 316

At this point Jupiter slyly said to Juno:

"Sister and his wife, too, most delightful wife,

As you were thinking -- not amiss, that thought --

It must be Venus who sustains the Trojans,

Not their good right arms in war, their keen

Combativeness and fortitude in danger."

In low tones Juno answered:

"Darling husband,

Why provoked me, heartsick as I am,

And fearing as I do your grim decrees?

If my love mattered to you as it did

And should, you would not, O Omnipotent,

Deny me this: the power to spirit Turnus

Out of the battle and to keep him safe

For his father, Daunus. Well then, let him perish,

Give Trojans quittance with his gentle blood!

And yet he took his name from our own stock,

The Aeneid - pg. 311

Looming above him,

Turnus called:

"Arcadians, note well

And take back to Evander what I say:

In that state which his father merited

I send back Pallas. And I grant in full

What honor tombs confer, what consolation

Comes of burial. No small price he'll pay

For welcoming Aeneas."

The Aeneid - pg. 310

Hercules heard him. Deep in his heart he quelled

A mighty groan, and let the vain tears flow.

At this the Olympian father addressed his son

In kindness:

"Every man's last day is fixed.

Lifetimes are brief, and not to be regained,

For all mankind. But by their deeds to make

Their fame last: that is labor for the brave.

Below the walls of Troy so many sons

Of gods went down, among them, yes, my child,

Sarpedon. Turnus, too, is called by fate.

He stands at the given limit of his years."

The Aeneid - pg. 303

Not for that did Turnus

Fail in audacity, in his confident hope

To occupy the shore first and drive back

The invaders from the beach.

"Here is the chance

You've prayed for: now to hack them up with swords!

The battle is in your hands, men. Let each soldier

Think of his wife, his home; let each recall

Heroic actions, great feats of our fathers.

Down to the surf we go, while they're in trouble,

Disembarking, losing their footing. Fortune

Favors men who dare!"

The Aeneid - pg. 283

Only this

Ascanius called out. The Trojans cheered,

Echoing him in joy, lifting up their hearts.

At that moment in the quarter of high air

Apollo with flowing hair, from a throne of cloud,

Looked down upon Ausonian troops and town.

He spoke to the victor, Iulus:

"Blessed be

Your new-found manhood, child. By striving so

Men reach the stars, dear son of gods

And sire of gods to come. All fated wars

Will quiet down, and justly, in the end

Under descendants of Assaracus,

For Troy no longer bounds you."

The Aeneid - pg. 275

But while he clamored,

Volcens' blade, thrust hard, passed through the ribs

And breached the snow-white chest. Euryalus

In death went reeling down,

And blood streamed on his handsome length, his neck

Collapsing let his head fall on his shoulder --

As a bright flower cut by a passing plow

Will droop and wither slowly, or a poppy

Bow its head upon its tired stalk

When overborne by a passing rain.

The Aeneid - pg. 240

Then King Evander, founder unaware

Of Rome's great citadel, said:

"These woodland places

Once were homes of local fauns and nymphs

Together with a race of men that came

From tree trunks, from hard oak: they had no way

Of settled life, no arts of life, no skill

At yoking oxen, gathering provisions,

Practising husbandry, but got their food

From oaken boughs and wild game hunted down.

In that first time, out of Olympian heaven,

Saturn came here in flight from Jove in arms,

An exile from a kingdom lost; he brought

These unschooled men together from the hills

Where they were scattered, gave them laws, and chose

The name of Latium, from his latency

Or safe conealment in this countryside.

In his reign were the golden centuries

Men tell of still, so peacefully he ruled,

Till gradually a meaner, tarnished age

Came on with fever of war and lust of gain.

Then came Ausonians and Sicanians,

And Saturn's land now often changed her name,

And there were kings, one savage and gigantic,

Thybris, from whom we afterborn Italians

Named the river Tiber. The old name,

Albula, was lost. As for myself,

In exile from my country, I set out

For the sea's end, but Fortun that prevails

In everything, Fate not to be thrown off,

Arrested me in this land -- solemn warnings

Came from my mother, from the nymph Carmentis,

Backed by the god Apollo, to urge me here."

The Aeneid - pg. 207

"Here is a service all your own

That you can do for me, Daughter of Night,

Here is way to help me, to make sure

My status and renown will not give way

Or be impaired, and that Aeneas' people

Cannot by marriage win Latinus over,

Laying siege to Italy. You can arm

The Aeneid - pg. 171

"Cocytus is the deep pool that you see,

The swamp of Styx beyond, the infernal power

By which the gods take oath and fear to break it.

All in the nearby crowd you notice here

Are pauper souls, the souls of the unburied.

Charon's the boatman. Those the water bears

Are souls of buried men. He may not take them

Shore to dread shore on the hoarse currents there

Until their bones rest in the grave, or till

They flutter and roam this side a hundred years;

They mar have passage then, and may return

To cross the deeps they long for."

The Aeneid - pg. 142

Glorying in his courage and his prize,

Spoke out:

"Son of the goddess, Teucrians all,

Now see what power was in me in my prime,

And see the death from which you rescued Dares."

He set himself to face the bull that stood there,

Prize of the battle, then drew back his right

And from his full height lashed his hard glove out

Between the horns. The impact smashed the skull

And fragmented the brains. Down went the ox

Aquiver to sprawl dying on the ground.

The man stood over it and in deep tones

Proclaimed:

"Here is a better life in place of Dares,

Eryx; here I lay down my gauntlets and my art."

The Aeneid - pg. 125

Cutting through waves blown dark by a chill wind

Aeneas held his ships firmly on course

For a midsea crossing. But he kept his eyes

Upon the city far astern, now bright

With poor Elissa's pyre. What caused that blaze

Remained unknown to watchers out at sea,

But what they knew of a great love profaned

In anguish, and a desperate woman's nerve,

Led every Trojan heart into foreboding.

The Aeneid - pg. 116

Ha! Come, break the spell! Woman's a thing

Forever fitful and forever changing."

The Aeneid - pg. 103

"Son, bestir yourself,

Call up the Zephyrs, take to your wings and glide.

Approach the Dardan captain where he tarries

Rapt in Tyrian Carthage, losing sight

Of future towns the fates ordain. Correct him,

Carry my speech to him on the running winds:

No son like this did his enchanting mother

Promise to us, nor such did she deliver

Twice from peril at the hands of Greeks.

He was to be the ruler of Italy,

Potential empire, armorer of war;

To father men from Teucer's noble blood

And bring the whole world under law's dominion.

If glories to be won by deeds like these

Cannot arouse him, if he will not strive

For his own honor, does he begrudge his son,

Ascanius, the high strongholds of Rome?

What has he in mind? What hope, to make him stay

Amid a hostile race, and lose from view

Ausonian progeny, Lavinian lands?

The man should sail: that is the whole point

Let this be what you tell him, as from me."

The Aeneid - pg. 101

Now to the self-same cave

Came Dido and the captin of the Trojans

Primal Earth herself and Nuptial Juno

Opened the ritual, torches of lightning blazed,

High Heaven became witness to the marriage,

And nymphs cried out wild hymns from a mountain top.

The Aeneid - pg. 95

The queen, for her part, all that evening ached

With longing that her heart's blood fed, a wound

Or inward fire eating her away.

The manhood of the man, his pride of birth,

Came home to her time and again; his looks,

His words remained with her to haunt her mind,

And desire from him gave her no rest.

The Aeneid - pg. 83

I said farewell, and tears came as I spoke:

'Be happy, friends; your fortune is achieved,

While one fate beckons us and then another.

Here is your quiet rest: no sea to plow,

No quest for dim lands of Ausonia

Receding ever. Here before our eyes

Are replicas of Xanthus and of Troy

Your own hands built -- with better auspices,

I pray, and less a challenge to the Greeks.

If one day I shall enter Tiber stream

And Tiber fields and see the walls my people

Have in store for them, then of these kindred

Cities, neighboring nations, in Epirus

And in Hesperia, both looking back

To Dardanus as founder, both to one

Sad history, we shall make a single Troy

In spirit: may this task await our heirs.'

The Aeneid - pg. 71

Apollo of Delos urged you toward, nor did he

Bid you stay on Crete, Thgere is a country,

Hesperia, as the Greeks have named it -- ancient,

Full of man-power in war and fruitful earth;

Oenotrians lived there once; then by report

New generations called it Italy

After their leader. Our true home is there,

Dardanus came from there, and Iasius,

Forefathers of all our people. Up with you,

Be glad, and tell your father full of years

What has been said here, with no room for doubt.

Look for Corythus and Ausonian country;

Lands under Dicte Jupiter denies you.'

Andrei Rubylev

Iliad - Opening

ILIAD 1

RAGE:

Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,

Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks

Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls

Of heroes into Hades' dark,

And left their bodies to rot as feasts

For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done.

Begin with the clash between Agamemnon --

The Greek warlord -- and godlike Achilles.

cover photo: Into the Jaws of Death, June 6, 1944. Reproduced by courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Copyright 1997 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciencs -- Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984

The Aeneid - pg. 66

'Must you rend me,
Derelict that I am, Aeneas? Spare me,
Now I am inthe grave; spare your clean hands
Defilement. I am no foreigner; old Troy
Gave birth to me; this blood drips fromno tree.
Ah, put the savage land behind you! Leave
This shore of greed! I am Polydorus.
An iron hedge of spears coevered my body,
Pinned down here, and the pointed shafts took root.'

The Aeneid - pg. 54

You must not hold the hated woman of Laconia,
That hated face, the cause of this, nor Paris.
The harsh will of the gods it is, the gods,
That overthrows the splednor of thisp lace
And brings Troy from her height in the dust.

The Aeneid - pg. 52

With this,
To the altar step itelf he dragged gim trembling,
Sliping in the pooled blood of his son,
And took him by the hair with hisleft hand.
The sword flashed in his right; up to the hilt
He thrust it in his body.
That was the end
Of Priams age, the doom that took him off,
With Tyoy in flames before his eyes, his towers
Headlong fallen -- he that in other days
Had ruled in pride so many lands and peoples,
The power of Asia.

The Aeneid - pg. 46

The desperate odds doubled their fighting spirit:
From that time on, like predatory wolves
In fog and darkness, when a savage hunger
Drives them blindly on, and cubs in lairs
Lie waiting with dry famished jaws -- just so
Through arrow flights and enemies we ran
Toward our sure death, straight for the city's
heart,
Cavernous black night over and around us.
Who can describe the havoc of that night
Or tell the deaths, or tally wounds with tears?
The ancient city falls, after dominion
Many long years. In windrows on the streets,
In homes, on solemn porches of the gods,
Dead bodies lie. And not alone the Trojans
Pay the price with their heart's blood; at times
Manhood returns to fire even the conquered
And Danaan conquerors fall. Grief everywhere,
Everywhere terror, and all shapes of death.

The Aeneid - pg. 23

We had a king, Aeneas -- none more just,
More zealous, greater in warfare and in arms.
If fate preserves him, if he does not yet
Lie spent amid the insensible shades but still
Takes nourishment of air, we need fear nothing;
Neaither need you repent of being first
In courtesy, to outdo us. IScily too
Has towns and plowlands and a famous king
Of Trojan blood, Acestes. May we be
Permitted here to beach our damaged ships,
Hew timbers in your forest, cut new oars,
And either sail again for Latium, happily,
If we recover shipmates and our king,
Or else, if that security is lost,
If Libyan waters hoold you, Lord Aeneas,
Best of Trojans, hope of Iulus gone,
We may at least cross over to Sicily
From which we came, to homesteads ready there,
And take Acestes for our king."

The Skating Rink - Closing

Besides, in winter it's a sad place. The stones I remembered as blue were grey. The paths I remembered as bathed in light were strewn with shadows. So I braked, made a U-turn and drove back to Z. I avoided looking in the rearview mirror until I was a safe distance away. What's gone is gone, that's what I say, you have to keep looking ahead ...

The Skating Rink - pg. 180

We're two of a kind, that donkey and me, said Caridad in a dreamy voice. Foreigners in our own land. I would have liked to tell her she was wrong, to point out that in the eyes of law, I was the only foreigner, but I kept my mouth shut. I put my arm gently around her waist and waited. Caridad might have been foreign to God, to the police and even to herself, but she wasn't foreign to me. I could have said the same for the donkey. The cops stopped halfway down the platform. They went into the station bar, first the police, then the guardia civil, and by an auditory miracle I clearly heard them order two coffees with milk and one carajillo. The donkey brayed again. We kept watching him for a good while. Caridad put her arm around my shoulders and we stayed like that until the train came ...

The Skating Rink - pg. 167

When we got back to reception, El Carajillo was fast asleep, and we sat outside for a while, quietly enjoying the fresh air, watching a restless, orangey light play on the road: it made the place feel a bit like a submarine. A little while later Caridad said she was going to bed. She got up and I saw her walk through that light back into the campground. Given its size, the knife should have made a visible bulge under her shirt, but I couldn't see anything, and for a moment I thought that the girl with the knife was just a figment of my imagination ...

The Skating Rink - pg. 162

REMO MORAN:

You can't have a pact with God and the devil at the same time

You can't have a pact with God and the devil at the same time, the Rookie said to me, his eyes brimming with tears. He's forty-eight years old, and life has treated him "worse than a rat." Now that the beaches are almost empty, being there with him is like being in a desert. He's not collection bottles and cans anymore. He's begging. At some mysterious hour he leaves his desert and wanders from bar to bar in the historic center, asking for a contribution or a little drink, before heading back to the beach where, so he says, he is planning to stay forever.

The Skating Rink - pg. 161

For prisoners as for invalids in hospital, there's no better gift than a book. Time is the only thing I have in abundance, although my lawyer assures me I'll soon be free.

The Skating Rink - pg. 152

Remo Moran:

The newspaper and magazines made her famous

The newspapers and magazines made her famous throughout the country, and they say the story even went international; her photo appeared in sensationalist weeklies across Europe. They called her The Mystery Woman of the Palacio Benvingut, The Ice Maiden, The Angel-Eyed Skater, The Spanish Object of Desire, The Beauty who Rocked the Costa Brava.

The Skating Rink - pg. 121

As we climbed the hill and gradually left the mansion behind, she compared the freshness of the morning to the sturdy good health you need to survive without love -- or even with love -- in hard times like these.

The Skating Rink - pg. 120

When I opened my eyes, my legs were numb and the sky was purple, with orange streaks that looked like lines traced by skywriting planes. I was right in front of the mansion's main door, so I decided to look for a more discreet observation post.

The Skating Rink - pg. 113

My imagination spun out of control: I saw Nuria and the mayor's husband naked, caressing each other; I saw everybody making love, as if there had been a nuclear attack, and no one could leave the disco, and there was nothing left to restrain their passions and basic instincts; they had all become rutting animals, except for Pilar and myself, the only ones remaining cool and calm in the midst of the orgy.

The Skating Rink - pg. 101

I tried to reassure her by explaining that he was a poet; she replied that her boyfriend, the Peruvian, was a poet too, but he didn't like that. Like a zombie. I didn't feel like arguing with her. Especially when, examining her fingernails, she remarked that poetry was a waste of time. She was right; on the planet of happy eunuchs and zombies, poetry is a waste of time.

The Skating Rink - pg. 61

GASPAR HEREDIA:

The music was the "Fire Dance"

The music was the "Fire Dance," by Manuel de Falla, and I could see the skater's torso moving in time with it as she lifted her arms, doing a clumsy yet somehow affecting imitation of a devotee offering a gift to a tiny invisible deity.

The Skating Rink - pg. 51

I snuck in between some boats that were being repaired and lit a cigarette; I had no idea what time it was, but I felt relaxed. From my hideout I could watch her at my leisure, without risk: she seemed terribly sad, like a tree that had suddenly sprouted from the seawall, a mystery of nature. And yet, when some precise spring-loaded mechanism set her in motion again that impression disappeared, leaving only a trace like a blurred photo and one thing for sure: solitude.

The Skating Rink - pg. 43

There seemed to be no end to the pleasure coursing through every cell of my body. Pleasure blended with fear, I admit, as if I had just been born. I had never felt better in my life, that's the truth. If ghosts exist, Benvingut's ghost was by my side ...

The Skating Rink - pg. 28

All I can recall, but these two things I do recall with the utmost clarity, are the old woman's laughter and the young woman's flat eyes. Flat: as if she was looking inwards? Maybe. As if she was giving her eyes a rest? Maybe. Maybe. And meanwhile the old woman kept talking and smiling, speaking enigmatically, as if in code, as if everything there, the trees, the irregular surface of the terrace, the vacant tables, the shifting reflections on the bar's glass canopy, were being progressively erased, unbeknownst to everyone but them.

The Skating Rink - pg. 18

The Spanish Skating Federation had decided it had to rejuvenate itself or die, not an uncommon policy in Spain and generally quite futile. We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it's so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.

Leda And The Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower^[20]

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

The Skating Rink - pg. 8

I would ask: Have you seen him writing? Scribbling in the margins of a book?Or staring at the moon like a wolf? I didn't persist, though, mainly because I didn't have time ... Or rather, I was busy with things that had nothing to do with the distant shrunken figure of Gaspr Heredia, who seemed to be turning his back on the world, giving nothing away, hiding who he was and what he was made of, and the courage it had taken to keep on walking (or running, more like it!) toward the darkness, toward the heights ...

The Ethics - Opening

INTRODUCTION

I SPINOZA's LIFE AND

PHILOSPHY

Most philosophers lead lives of quiet contemplation, and for the most part Spinoza's life was no exception. He read, he thought, he wrote, and the only moments of high drama in his life occured when what he thought and wrote brought him into conflict with the society in which he lived. In the early years his radical ideas about religion led to his expulsion from the Dutch Jewish community in which he had been brought up, and (according to his early biographers) led one of its members to make an attempt on his life.

For Richard

Copyright 1994 Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University, 41 William Street,

Princetion, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton UniversityPress,

Chichester, West Sussex

All Rights Reserved

This book has been composed in Adobe Janson

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The Skating Rink - Opening

REMO MORAN:

The first time I saw him, it was in the Calle Bucareli

The first time I saw him, it was in the Calle Bucareli, in Mexico City, that is, back in the vague shifty territory of our adolescence, the province of hardened poets, on a night of heavy fog, which slowed the traffic and prompted conversations about that odd phenomenon, so rare in Mexico City at night, at least as far as I can remember.

Copyright 1993 by The Heirs of Roberto Bolano

Translation copyright 2009 by Chris Andrews

Originiall published in Spain as La Pista de Hielo in 1993; published by arrangement with the Heirs of Roberto Bolano and Carmen Balcells Agencia Literaria, Barcelona.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Ltd.

New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper.

First published clothbound in 2009

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation,

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

The Aeneid - pg. 17

"Goddess, if I should tell

Our story from the start, if you had leisure

To hear our annals of adversity,

Before I finished, the fair evening star

Would come to close Olympus and the day.

From old Troy -- if the name of Troy has fallen

Perhaps upon your ears -- we sailed the seas,

And yesterday were driven by a storm,

Of its own whim, upon this Libyan coast.

I am Aeneas, duty-bound, and known

Above high air of heaven by my fame,

Carrying with me in my ships our gods

Of hearth and home, saved from the enemy.

I look for Italy to be my fatherland,

And my descent is from all-highest Jove.

With twenty ship I mounted the Phyrgian sea,

As my immortal mother showed the way.

I followed the given fates. Now barely seven

Ships are left, bettered by wind and sea,

And I myself, unknown and unprovisioned,

Cross the Libyan wilderness, an exile

Driven from Europe and from Asia --"

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 127

Hence it is evident, that those things which under the notion of a cause co-operating or concurring to the production of effects, are altogether inexplicable, and run us into great absurdities, may be very naturally explained, and have a proper and obvious use assigned them, when they are considered only as marks or signs for our information. And it is the searching after, and endeavouring to understand those signs instituted by the Author of Nature, that ought to be employment of the natural philosopher, and not the pretending to explaing things by corporeal causes ; which doctrine seems to have too much estranged the minds of men from that active principle, that supreme and wise spirit, in whom we live, move, and have our being.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 209

Berkeley's favourite quotation, from ACTS 17:28. Strangely, it is also the last senstence in Malebranche's Recherche 3. 2. 6 -- the section expounding Malebranche;s view that 'we see all things in God'.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 114

The ideas imprinted on the sense by the Author of Nature are called real things : and those exsited in the imagination being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more properly termed ideas, or images of things, which they copy and represent. But then out sensations, be they never so vivid and distinct, are nevertheless ideas, that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceieved by it, as truly as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas of sense are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more strong, orderly, and coherent than the creatures of the mind ; but this is no argument that they exist without the mind. They are also less dependent on the spirit, or thinking substance which perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of another and more powerful spirit : yet still they are ideas, and certainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 113

But whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceieved by sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad day-light I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view ; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other will or spirit that produces them.

The ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and distinct that those of the imagination ; they have likewise a streadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series, the admirable connexion whereof sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author. Now the set rules or established methods, wherein the mind we depend on excites in us the ideas of sense, are called the Laws of Nature : and these we learn by experience, which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things.
This gives us a sort of a foresight, which enables us to regulate our actions for the benefit of life. And without this we should be eternally at a loss : we coild not know how to act any thing that might procure us the least pleasure, or remove the least pain of sense. That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us ; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of Nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life, than an infant just born.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 109

But though it were possible that solid, figured, moveable substances may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we must know it by sense, or by reason. As for our sense, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those thing that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will : but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceieved. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend, there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas? I say it is granted on all hands ( and what happened in dreams, phrensies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though no bodies existed without resembling them.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 105

Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a world all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known ; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit : it being perfectly unintelligible and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit. To be convinced of which, the reader need only reflect and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its being perceived.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 104

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiesence soever this principle may be entertained in the world ; yet whoever shall find in this heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense, and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations ; and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 103

But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, rmemebering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, where they are perceieved; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 101

In vain do we extend our view into the heavens, and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men, and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity ; we need only draw the curtains of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our mind.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 101

For so long as men thought abstract ideas were annexed to their words, it doth not seem strange that they should use words for ideas: it being found an impracticable thing to lay aside the word, and retain the abstract idea in the mind, which in it self was perfectly inconceivable.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 66

The clearest trace of the scholastic tradition in Berkeley's work is his view that in perception we share ideas with God. This is a later version of St Augustine's doctrine of divine illumination, according to which God is the interior light of the human soul. A vision of things as they really are is present in us by virtue of the light that is in us, namely God; it cannot be extracted from sense-experience alone. This view is also clearly related to Malebranche's conception of seeing all things in God. Similarly, in my view Berkeley wants to retain a sense that there is natural necessity in the world. He cannot do it in Locke's mechanistic way, as we say, and he is worried (as Dun Scotus was) by the thought that nothing can be necessary if God could have ordained things otherwise -- or, to put it the other way round, that if there were natural necessities, they would consitute a constraint on the power of God.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 60

Malebranche. There were various problems for Descartes, but among those that attracted most attention was the problem of interaction -- the question how mind and matter can influence each other if they are so different. We know (or think we know) that our bodies more because we will that they should, and that pain will occur if we cut ourselves with a knife. How is this possible? Malebranche saw this difficulty as related to a more general problem how physical things could be said to be causes. He argued that they could now. It was not just that they are inert -- the point that Berkeley makes much of. It was also that there was no coceivable necessary connection between one physical event and another; and for Malebranche there can be no causation without a necessary connection. There is, of course, a necessary connection between the will of God and changes in the world. So the only possible cause is God. As such a cause, God can act so as to move our bodies when we will to move, and to affect our minds when the world collides with us. He also acts to cause a physical event when suitable physical conditions occur. Within this picture the interaction problem fails to arise, since there is no difficulty at all in supposing God capable of affecting either minds or matter on suitable occasions.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 59

The overall story, as I see it, of how Berkeley stands in relation to the work of these four men is roughly as follows. Malebranche represents an intellectual tradition that stretches back to the scholastics and eventually to St Augustine. Descartes and Locke represents a distinctive philosophical position, informed by the new science. Newton was the new science personified. Berkeley was deeply impressed by Newton's work, and wanted to give it pride of place in his philosophical picture. But he wanted to overtun much of the philosophy of Locke and Descartes, and return as (always still informed by the new science) more nearly to the ways of Malebranche and his tradition.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 55

The first story is interesting. Berkeley supposes that minds are active principles or beings which operate on ideas. How does such a being come to have a conception of itself? The official answer, the best account of which is given in a passage added to the Dialogues, is that the mind, an active being, as such reflects itself to itself. 'The being of myself, that is, my own soul, mind or thinking principle, I evidently know by reflexion' (p. 233). We would do well, of course, to enquire carefully what sort of reflection this might be, and indeed how a mind might be thought capable of reflecting itself to itself (are we supposed to think of a mirror here?). And we should also be interested in the idea that what is reflected is an agent, and that it is in acting that one creates a reflection for oneself. But however all this might be, it is important first to notice the difference between Berkeley's approach here and that of Descartes. For Descartes, I know my own existence because it is impossible for me to doubt it; the proof is an intellectual proof of an intellectual being. For Berkeley, the proof lies not in thought but in agency.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 52

The physical world is a genuinely linguistic system, whose elements are variously combined and concetenated in much the sort of way that letters and words are, so that they should be capable of carrying detailed messages. Just as a limited number of letters can be used to create an infinite variety of messages, so a limited number of physical elements can be combined for the same purpose. The whole is thus an informational system, in which God, of his goodness, speaks to us about what we can expect in the future. And scientists can be conceived as the grammarians of this system,. who understand how the individual elements combine to generate this or that meaning in the particular case, and are thus able to know better what is being said (see the first-edition version Principles $108).

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 48

For Berkeley, there can be no veil of perception. Real things cannot be hidden behind appearances, since appearances (ideas of sense) are real things. What is more, there are no unaswerable questions about what qualities real things can have, all sensible qualities having been taken away from them. For the sensible qualities are all there is to real things. There is no difficulty about conceiving how reality is in itself, or which of its apparent qualities are its real qualities. All these problems derived from materialism.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 39

The difference, then, between Berkeley's proof and the others is that for the latter, the complex nature of the world is evidence for the existence of a creating intelligence, whereas for Berkeley it is evident for the nature of that intelligence, whose existence has already been established. For them, if the world had been very different, there would have been no argument to God at all; Berkeley's proof, by contrast, starts from the mere fact that there is a world.

Two Corpses

I buried in your subservient entrails,

in the head, the hands and eyes,

a minaret;

I buried two corpses,

the Earth and the sky.

O, tribe,

O, womb of wasps,

and mill of the wind.

The Book And The Brotherhood - Closing

'Gull darling, look at the time, it's our wedding day! Here's to us -- and to snail!'

'To us -- and snails, God bless them!'

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 554

'Yes. We felt we hadn't looked after them properly, either of them -- but that's superstition. Guilt is one way of attaching a meaning to a death. We want to find a meaning, it lessens the pain.'

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 520

'Absolutely,' said Duncan. 'He was terribly intense and solemn at Oxford. He and Levquist got on famously, Levquist had no sense of humor either. I think he got completely soaked in Greek mythology and never recovered. He lived all the time inside some Greek myth and saw himself as a hero.'

'Perhaps the Greeks had no sense of humor.'

'Precious little. Aristophanes isn;t really funny, there's nothing in Greek literature which is funny in the way Shakespeare is. Somehow the light that shone on them was too clear and their sense of destiny was too strong.'

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 517

The power which I derive from my Christ is debased by its passage through me. It reaches me as love, it leaves me as magic. That is why I make serious mistakes. In fact, in spite of his self-laceration, a ritual in which he indulged at intervals, the priest felt, in a yet deeper deep self, a sense of security and peace. Behind doubt there was truth, and behind the doubt that doubted that truth there was truth ... He was a sinner, but he knew that his Redeemer lived.

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 488

He sang both high and low. He promised strength through repentance, and joy through renewal of life. He exhorted her to remake herself into an instrument fir for the service of others. He used the oldest argument in the book (sometimes called the Ontological Proof) which, in Father McAlister's version, said that if with a pure passion you love God, then God exists, because He has to. After all, what your best self, your most truthful soul desires must be real, and not to worry too much about what it's called.

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 437

Duncan was well aware that Crimond had in him some sort of steely element, some pure mad self-indifferent recklessness, which Duncan, however strong his emotions, however fierce his hatred, simply lacked. Whatever the game was, Crimond was likely to win it; and Duncan even found himself relying, contemptibly, for the outcome, upon Crimond's rationality, or upon some hypothetical sense of decency which would preclude too brutal a treatment of the hated husband.

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 421

'There comes a time when a man has to be alone, really alone.'

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 296

'You've always been too frightened of talking nonsense, that's why you could never really do philosophy. I am not a utopian, I don't imagine that the state will wither away or the division of labour will cease or alienation will disappear. Nor do I think that we shall have full employment or a classless society or a world without hunger in any future that we can conceive of now. It's the wasteland next. Of course I think this society, our so-called free society, is rotten to the core - it's oppressive and corrupt and unjust, it's materialistic and ruthless and immoral, and soft, rotted with pornography and kitsch. You think this too. But you imagine that in some way all nice things will be preserved and all the nasty things will become less nasty. It can't be like that, we have to go through the fire, in an oppressive society only violence is honest. Men are half alive now, in the future they'll be puppets. Even if we don't blow ourselves up the future wil be, by your nice standards, terrible. There will be a crisis of authority, of sovereignty, technology will rule because it will have to rule. History has passed you by, everything happens fast now, we have to run to stay in the same place, let alone get a step ahead to see where we are. We've got to rethink everything --'

The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 294

'Perhaps you don't mind the idea of a world without books?'

'It's inevitable, so it must be understood, it must be embraced, even loved.'

'So after all you turn out to be a historical materialist! What about your book?'

'It will perish with the rest. Plato, Shakespeare, Hegel, they'll all burn, and I shall burn too. But before that my book will have had a certain influence, that's its point, that's what I've been striving for all these years, that little bit of influence. That's what's worth doing, and it's the only thing that's worth doing now, to look at the future and make some sense of it and touch it. Look, Gerard, I don't think I'm God, I don't think I'm Hegel, I don't even think I'm Feuerbach -'"

The Aeneid - Opening

BOOK I

A FATEFUL HEAVEN

I sing of warfare and a man at war.

From the sea-coast of Troy in early days

He came to Italy by destiny,

To our Lavinian western shore,

A fugitive, this captain, buffeted

Cruelly on land as on the sea

By blows from powers of the air -- behind them

Baleful Juno in her sleepless rage.

And cruel losses were hios lot in war,

Till he could found a city and bring home

His gods to Latium, land of the Latin race,

The Alban lords, and the high walls of Rome.

Paradise Lost - pg. 63

But yet all is not done; Man disobeying,
Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins
Against the high Supremacy of Heav'n,
Affecting Godhead, and so losing all,
To expiate his treason hath naught left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posterity must die,
Die hee or Justice must; unless for him
Some other able, and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.
Say Heav'nly Powers, where shall we find such love,
Which of ye will be mortal to redeem
Man's mortal crime, and just th'unjust to save,
Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?"


Account mee man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleas'd, on me let Death wreak all his rage;
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquisht; thou hast giv'n me to possess
Life in myself forever, by thee I live,
Though now to Death I yield, and am his due
All that of me can die, yet that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted Soul
Forever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise Victorious, and subdue
My Vanquisher, spoil'd of his vaunted spoil;
Death his death's wound shall then receive, and
stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarm'd.

Paradise Lost - pg. 61

I form'd them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high Decree
Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain'd
Their freedom, they themselves ordain'd their fall.
The first sort by their own suggestion fell,
Self-tempted, self-depraved: Man falls deceiv'd
By the other first: Man therefore shall find grace,
The other none: in Mercy and Justice both,
Through Heav'n and Earth, so shall my glory excel,
But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine."

Paradise Lost - pg. 47

To whom the Goblin full of wrath repli'd,
"Are thou that Traitor Angel, and Faith, till then
Unbrok'n, and in proud rebellious Arms
Drew after him the third part of Heav'n Sons
Conjur'd against the highest, for which both Thou
And they outcast from God, are here condemn'd
To waste Eternal days in woe and pain?

Paradise Lost - pg. 36

Satan except, none higher sat, with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd
A Pillar of State; deep on his Front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;
And Princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest Monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as Night
Or Summer's Noon-tide air, while thus he spake.

Paradise Lost - pg. 16

Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His Temple right against the Temple of God
On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove
The pleasant Valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell.

Paradise Lost - pg. 12

The mind in its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav'n or Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less than hee

Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th'Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n.

But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,

Th'associstes and co-partners of our loss

Lie thus astonisht on th'oblivious Pool,

And call them not to share with us their part

In this unhappy Mansion, or once more

With rallied Arms to try what may be yet

Regain'd in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell?"

Book Sequence - September

1. Divine Comedy
2. Aeneid
3. Genesis
4. Ethics - Spinoza
5. Aquinas
6. Aristotle - Categories

Principles Of Human Knowledge - Notes

Berkeley presents here the following argument (see Winkler 1989, 138):

(1) We perceive ordinary objects (houses, mountains, etc.).

(2) We perceive only ideas.

Therefore,

(3) Ordinary objects are ideas.

The argument is valid, and premise (1) looks hard to deny. What about premise (2)? Berkeley believes that this premise is accepted by all the modern philosophers. In the Principles, Berkeley is operating within the idea-theoretic tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In particular, Berkeley believes that some version of this premise is accepted by his main targets, the influential philosophers Descartes and Locke.

However, Berkeley recognizes that these philosophers have an obvious response available to this argument. This response blocks Berkeley's inference to (3) by distinguishing two sorts of perception, mediate and immediate. Thus, premises (1) and (2) are replaced by the claims that (1′) we mediately perceive ordinary objects, while (2′) we immediately perceive only ideas. From these claims, of course, no idealist conclusion follows. The response reflects a representationalist theory of perception, according to which we indirectly (mediately) perceive material things, by directly (immediately) perceiving ideas, which are mind-dependent items. The ideas represent external material objects, and thereby allow us to perceive them.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 31

Berkeley felt that the materialist conception of the world kept God at far too great a distance from us. It leads us to think of God as hidden behind te world he has created rather than as revealed in it; he is at best the product of an inference. For Berkeley, thiswas not the way in which the Holy Scriptures (the Bible, that is) thought of things at all. He wanted a God who is close to us at every moment of the day, in everything we do. And his system provides exactly that. God is present to us in every waknig moment, since every experience we have is an idea caused in us by him. So the God whose existence he sets out to prove is 'a being whose spirituality, omnipresence, providence, omniscience, infinite power and goodness, are as conspicuous as the existence of sensible things'. His favourite quotation from the Bible speaks of a God 'in whom we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:28).'

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 17

Ordinary people hold that the ground they are standing is solid, and Berkeley agrees with them. But philosophers tell them that the ground is a collection of corpuscles with primary qualities, capable of existing independently of all minds whatever, and this is what Berkeley is in the business of denying.

Paradise Lost - Opening

Of Man's First disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, and all oue woe

Lost In Translation

A card table in the library stands ready
To receive the puzzle which keeps never coming.
Daylight shines in or lamplight down
Upon the tense oasis of green felt.
Full of unfulfillment, life goes on,
Mirage arisen from time's trickling sands
Or fallen piecemeal into place:
German lesson, picnic, see-saw, walk
With the collie who "did everything but talk"—
Sour windfalls of the orchard back of us.
A summer without parents is the puzzle,
Or should be. But the boy, day after day,
Writes in his Line-a-Day No puzzle.

The Symposium - Opening

APOLLODORUS. I think I may say that I have already rehearsed the scene which you ask me to describe. The day before yesterday, as I was going up to town from my home at Phalerum, an acquaintance of mine caught sight of my back and shouted after me in a mock-official tone:

"Hi, you, Apollodorus of Phalerum, wait for me, can't you?'

...

Now the summer has passed.
It might never have been.
It is warm in the sun,
But it isn’t enough.

All that might’ve occurred
Like a five-fingered leaf
Fluttered into my hands,
But it isn’t enough.

Neither evil nor good
Has yet vanished in vain,
It all burned and was light,
But it isn’t enough.

Life has been as a shield,
And has offered protection.
I have been most fortunate,
But it isn’t enough.

The leaves were not burned.
The boughs were not broken,
The day clear as glass,
But it isn’t enough.