 Hence, towards an essay on conversation by Jonathan Swift. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, read by Anna Siwon. Hence, towards an essay on conversation by Jonathan Swift. I have observed few obvious subjects that have been so seldom, or at least so slightly handled as this, and indeed I know few so difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there seem so much to be said. Most things, pursued by men for the happiness of public or private life, are wit or folly have so refined that they seldom subsist but an idea. A true friend, a good marriage, a perfect form of government, with some others, requires so many ingredients, so good in their several kinds, and so much niceness in mixing them, that for some thousands of years men have dispaired of reducing their schemes to perfection. But in conversation it is, or might be, otherwise. For here we are only to avoid a multitude of errors, which, although a matter of some difficulty, may be in every man's power, for one of which it remaineth as mere an idea as the other. Therefore it seemed to me that the truest way to understand conversation is to know the faults and errors to which it is subject, and from thence every man to form maxims to himself whereby it may be regulated, because it requires few talents to which most men are not born, or at least may not acquire without any great genius or study. For nature had left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company, and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both, who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable. I was prompted to write my thoughts upon this subject by mere indignation to reflect that so useful and innocent a pleasure, so fitted for every period and condition of life, and so much in all man's power, should be so much neglected and abused. And in this discourse it would be necessary to note those errors that are obvious, as well as others which are seldomer observed, since there are few so obvious or acknowledged into which most men, some time or other, are not apt to run. For instance, nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of talking too much. Yet I rarely remember to have seen five people together, where some one among them had not been predominant in that kind, to the great constraint and disgust of all the rest. But among such as deal in multitudes of words, none are comparable to the sober, deliberate talker, who perceived with much thought and caution, make at this preface, branched out into several digressions, finder the hint that put with him in mind of another story, which he promised to tell you when this is done, comment back regularly to his subject, cannot readily call to mind some person's name, holding his hand, complaining of his memory, the whole company all this while in suspense. At length says, it is no matter and so goes on. And to crown the business, it perhaps proved at last a story the company have heard 50 times before, or at best some insipid adventure of the relator. Another general fold in conversation is that of those who affect to talk of themselves. Some, without any ceremony, will run over the history of their lives, will relate the annals of their diseases with the several symptoms and circumstances of them, will enumerate the hardships and injustice they have suffered in court, in parliament, in love or in law. Others are more dexterous and with great art will lie on the watch to hook in their own praise. They will call a witness to remember they always foretold what would happen in such a case, but none would believe them. They advise such a man from the beginning and told them the consequences just as they happened, but he would have his own way. Others make a vanity of telling their faults. They are the strangest man in the world. They cannot dissemble. They own just a folly. They've lost abundance of advantages by it, but if he would give them the world, they cannot help it. There is something in their nature that upholds insincerity and constraint, with many other insufferable topics of the same altitude. Of such mighty importance, every man is to himself and ready to think he is so to others, without once making this easy and obvious reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men than theirs have with him. And how little that is. He is sensible enough. Where company hath met, I often hath observed two persons discover by some accident that they were bred together at the same school or university, after which the rest are condemned to silence, and to listen while these two are refreshing each other's memory with the arched tricks and passages of themselves and their comrades. I know a great officer of the army who will sit for some time with a supercilious and impatient silence full of anger and contempt for those who are talking. At length of a sudden-demand audience, decide a matter in a short dog-medical way, then withdraw within himself again, and vouch safe to talk no more until his spirits circulate again to the same point. There are some faults in conversation, which none are so subject to as men of wit, nor ever so much as when they're with each other. If they have opened their mouths, without endeavouring to say witty thing, they think it is so many words lost. It is a torment to the hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them upon the wreck for invention, and in perpetual constraint, with so little success. They must do something extraordinary in order to acquit themselves and answer their character, else the standards by may be disappointed and be apt to think them only like the rest of models. I've known two men of wit industriously brought together in order to entertain the company, where they've made a very ridiculous figure and provided all the mirth at their own expense. I know a man of wit who's never easy, but where he can be allowed to dictate and preside. He neither expected to be informed or entertained, but to display his own talents. His business is to be good company and not good conversation, and therefore he chooses to frequent those who are content to listen, and profess themselves his admirers. And indeed, the worst conversation I ever remembered to have heard in my life was that at Will's Coffee House, where the wits, as they were called, used formally to assemble. That is to say, five or six men who'd writ plays, or at least prologues, or had share in a miscellany, came thither and entertained one another with their trifling compoters in so important an air as if they'd been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended on them. And they were usually attended with a humble audience of young students from the ins of court or universities, who at due distance listened to these oracles and returned home with great contempt for their law and philosophy, their heads filled with trash, and under the name of politeness, criticism and bellettre. By these means, the poets for many years past were all overrun with pedantry. For, as I take it, the word is not properly used, because pedantry is the too frequent or unseasonable obtruding our own knowledge in common discourse, and placing too greater value upon it, by which definition, men of the court or the army may be as guilty of pedantry as a philosopher or a divine. And it is the same vice in women, when they are over copious upon the subject of their petticoats, or their fans, or their china. For which reason, although it be a piece of prudence, as well as good manners, to put men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a liberty a wise man could hardly take. Because, beside the imputation for pedantry, it is what he would never improve by. The great town is usually provided with some player, mimic, or buffoon, who have general reception at the good tables, familiar and domestic with persons of the first quality, and usually sent for at every meeting to deferred to company, against which I have no objection. You go there as to a farce, or a puppet show. Your business is owned till love and season, either out of inclination or civility, while this merry companion is acting his part. It is a business he hath undertaken, and we art suppose he is paid for his day's work. I only quarrel when in select and private meetings, where men of wit and learning are invited to pass an evening, this gesture should be admitted to run over his circle of tricks, and make the whole company unfit for any other conversation, besides the indignity of confounding men's talents at so shameful a rate. Railery is the finest part of conversation, but as it is our usual custom to counterfeit and adulterate whatever is too dear for us, so we have done with this, and turned it all into what is generally called repartee, or being smart. Just as when an expensive fashion cometh up, those who are not able to reach it, contend themselves with some poultry imitation. It now passeth for Railery to run a man down in discourse, to put him out of countenance, and make him ridiculous, sometimes to expose the defects of his person or understanding, on all which occasions he is obliged not to be angry, to avoid the imputation of not being able to take a jest. It is admirable to observe one who is dexterous at this art, singling out a weak adversary, getting the laugh on his side, and then carrying all before him. The French, from once we borrow the word, have a quite different idea of the thing, and so had we in the polite age of our fathers. Railery was to say something that at first appeared a reproach or reflection, but by some turn of wit unexpected and surprising, and that always in a compliment, and to the advantage of the person it was addressed to. And surely one of the best rules in conversation is never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish wit rather left unsaid. Nor can there anything be well more contrary to the ends for which people meet together, than to part unsatisfied with each other or themselves. There are two faults in conversation which appear very different, yet arise from the same root, and are equally blamable. I mean an impatience to interrupt others, and the uneasiness of being interrupted ourselves. The two chief ends of conversation are to entertain and improve those we are among, or to receive those benefits ourselves, which whoever will consider cannot easily run into either of those two errors, because when any man speaketh in company it is to be supposed he doth it for his hearer's sake, and not his own, so that common discretion will teach us not to force their intention if they are not willing to lend it, nor on the other side to interrupt him who is in possession, because that is in the grossest manner to give the preference their own good sense. There are some people whose good manners will not suffer them to interrupt you, but what is almost as bad will discover abundance of impatience and lie upon the watch until you've done, because they've started something in their own thoughts which they long to be delivered of. Meantime they are so far from regarding what passes that their imaginations are wholly turned upon what they have in reserve for fear it should slip out of their memory, and thus they confine their invention which might otherwise range over a hundred things full as good, and that might be much more naturally introduced. There is a sort of rude familiarity which some people by practicing among their intimates have introduced into that general conversation, and would have it pass for innocent freedom or humour, which is a dangerous experiment in our northern climate where all the little decorum and politeness we have are purely forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity. This among the Romans was the Raylary of Slaves of which we have many incisive plotters. It seemed to have been introduced among us by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a court entertainment of which I've heard many particulars. And considering all things were turned upside down it was reasonable and judicious, although it was a piece of policy found out to a ritual point of honour in the other extreme when the smallest word misplaced among gentlemen ended in a duel. There are some men excellent at telling a story and provided with a plentiful stock of them which they can draw out upon occasion in all companies, and considering how low conversation runs now among us it is not altogether a contemptible talent. However it is subject to two unavoidable defects, frequent repetition and being soon exhausted, so that whoever valued this gift in himself had need of a good memory and ought frequently to shift his company that he may not discover the weakness of his fund. For those who are thus endowed have seldom any other revenue but live upon the main stock. Great speakers in public are seldom agreeable in private conversation whether their faculty be natural or acquired by practice and often venturing. Natural allecution, although it may seem a paradox, usually springeth from a barrenness of invention and of words by which men who have only one stock of notions upon every subject and one set of phrases to express them in, they swim upon the superfishes and offer themselves on every occasion. Therefore men of much learning and who know the compass of a language are generally the worst talkers on a sudden until much practice have been neared and emboldened them because they are confounded with plenty of matter, variety of notions and of words which they cannot readily choose but are perplexed and untangled by two greater choice, which is no disadvantage in private conversation where on the other side the talent of haranguing is of all others most insupportable. Nothing had spoiled men more for conversation than the character of being wits to support which they never fail of encouraging a number of followers and admirers who list themselves in their service wherein they find their accounts on both sides by pleasing their mutual vanity. This had given the form of such an air of superiority and made the letter so pragmatical that neither of them are well to be endured. I say nothing here of the itch of dispute and contradiction telling of lies or of those who are troubled with a disease called the wondering of the thoughts that they are never present in mind at what pass it in discourse for whoever labors under any of these possessions is as unfit for conversation as a madman in bedlam. I think I've gone over most of the errors in conversation that have fallen under my notice or memory except some that are merely personal and others too gross to need exploding such as lewd or profane talk but are pretend only to treat the errors of conversation in general not the several subjects of discourse which would be infinite. Thus we see how human nature is mostly based by the abuse of that faculty which has held the great distinction between men and brutes and how little advantage we make of that which might be the greatest the most lasting and the most innocent as well as useful pleasure of life in default of which we are forced to take up with those poor amusements of dress and visiting or the more pernicious ones of play drink and vicious amours whereby the nobility and gentry of both sexes are entirely corrupted both in body and mind and have lost all notions of love honor friendship generosity which under the name of phoperies have been for some time laughed out of those this the generosity of conversation with the pernicious consequences thereof upon our humors and dispositions have been owing among other causes to the custom arisen for some time past of excluding women from any share in our society further than in parties at play or dancing or in pursuit of an amour I take the highest period of politeness in england and it is of the same date in France to have been the peaceable part of king Charles the first strain and from what we read of those times as well as from the accounts I've formally met with from some who lived in that court the methods then used for raising and cultivating conversation were all together different from ours several ladies whom we find celebrated by the poets of that age had assemblies at their houses where persons of the best understanding and of both sexes meant to pass the evenings in discoursing upon whatever agreeable subjects were occasionally started and although we're apt to ridicule the sublime platonic notions they had or personated in love and friendship I conceive their refinements were grounded upon reason and that a little grain of the romance is no ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sorted, vicious and low if there were no other use in the conversation of ladies it is sufficient that it would lay a restraint upon those odious topics of immodesty and indecencies into which the rudeness of our northern genius is so apt to fall and therefore it is observable in those sprightly gentlemen about the town who are so very dexterous at entertaining a visit mask in the park or the playhouse that in the company of ladies of virtue and honor they are silent and disconcerted and out of their element there are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves and entertain their company with relating effects of no consequence nor at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day and this I have observed more frequently among the scots than any other nation who are very careful not to admit the minute circumstances of time or place which kind of discourse if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases as well as accent and gesture peculiar to that country would be hardly tolerable it is not a fault in company to talk much but to continue it long is certainly one for if the majority of those who are got together be naturally silent or cautious the conversation will flag unless it be often renewed by one among them who can start new subjects provided he does not dwell upon them but leave a room for answers and replies end of hints towards an essay on conversation by Jonathan Swift the hypocrisy of puritanism by Emma Goldman this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the hypocrisy of puritanism by Emma Goldman from Anarchy and other essays speaking of puritanism in relation to American art Mr. Goodson Berglam said puritanism has made us self-centered and hypocritical for so long that sincerity and reverence for what is natural in our impulses have been fairly bred out of us with the result that there can be neither truth nor individuality in our art Mr. Berglam might have added that puritanism has made life itself impossible more than art more than asceticism life represents beauty in a thousand variations it is indeed a gigantic panorama of eternal change puritanism on the other hand rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse imposed upon man by the wrath of god in order to redeem himself man must do constant penance must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse and turn his back on joy and beauty puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the 16th and 17th centuries destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture it was the spirit of puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children because he would not bow to the dicta of religion it was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land because that great genius rebelled against the monotony dullness and pettiness of his country it was puritanism too that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage Mary Wollstonecraft and later George Elliot and recently puritanism has demanded another toll the life of Oscar Wilde in fact puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle class respectability it is therefore sheer British jingoism which points to America as the country of puritanic provincialism it is quite true that our life is stunted by puritanism and that the latter is killing what is natural and healthy in our impulses but it is equally true that it is to England that we are indebted for transplanting this spirit on American soil it was bequeathed to us by the pilgrim fathers fleeing from persecution and oppression the pilgrims of mayflower fame established in the new world a reign of puritanic tyranny and crime the history of new england and especially of massachusetts is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom joy into despair naturalness into disease honesty and truth into hideous lies and hypocrisies the ducking stool and whipping post as well as numerous other devices of torture were the favorite English methods for American purification Boston the city of culture has gone down in the annals of puritanism as the bloody town it rivaled Salem even in her cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions on the now famous common a half naked woman with a baby in her arms was publicly whipped for the crime of free speech and on the same spot Mary Dyer another Quaker woman was hanged in sixteen fifty nine in fact Boston has been the scene of more than one wanton crime committed by puritanism Salem in the summer of sixteen ninety two killed eighteen people for witchcraft nor was massachusetts alone in driving out the devil by fire and brimstone as canning justly said the pilgrim fathers infested the new world to redress the balance of the old the horrors of that period have found their most supreme expression in the American classic the scarlet letter puritanism no longer employs the thumbscrew and lash but it still has a most pernicious hold on the minds and feelings of the American people not else can explain the power of a Comstock like the Torcomados of antebellum days Anthony Comstock is the autocrat of American morals he dictates the standards of good and evil of purity and vice like a thief in the night he sneaks into the private lives of the people into their most intimate relations the system of espionage established by this man Comstock puts to shame the infamous third division of the Russian secret police why does the public tolerate such an outrage on its liberties simply because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood and from whose thralldom even liberals have not succeeded in fully emancipating themselves the visionless and leaden elements of the old young men's and women's Christian temperance unions purity leagues American Sabbath unions and the prohibition party with Anthony Comstock as their patron saint are the grave diggers of American art and culture Europe can at least boast of a bold art and literature which delve deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time exercising a severe critique of all our shams as with a surgeon's knife every puritanic carcass is dissected and the way thus cleared for man's liberation from the dead weights of the past but with Puritanism as the constant check upon American life neither truth nor sincerity is possible nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct curtail natural expression and stifle our best impulses Puritanism in this the 20th century is as much the enemy of freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock it repudiates as something vile and sinful our deepest feelings but being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices the entire history of asceticism proves this to be only too true the church as well as Puritanism has fought the flesh as something evil it had to be subdued and hidden at all cost the result of this vicious attitude is only now beginning to be recognized by modern thinkers and educators they realize that quote nakedness has a hygienic value as well as a spiritual significance far beyond its influences in allaying the natural inquisitiveness of the young are acting as a preventative of morbid emotion it is an inspiration to adults who have long outgrown any youthful curiosities the vision of the essential and eternal human form the nearest thing to us in all the world with its vigor and its beauty and its grace is one of the prime tonics of life unquote from the psychology of sex by Havlock Ellis but the spirit of Purism has so perverted the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of nudity forcing us to hide the natural form under the plea of chastity yet chastity itself is but an artificial imposition upon nature expressive of a full shame of the human form the modern idea of chastity especially in reference to women its greatest victim is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural impulses quote chastity varies with the amount of clothing unquote and hence Christians and purists forever hastened to cover the quote heathen unquote with tatters and thus convert him to goodness and chastity Puritanism with its perversion of the significance and functions of the human body especially in regard to woman has condemned her to celibacy or to the indiscriminate breeding of a diseased race or to prostitution the enormity of this crime against humanity is apparent when we consider the results absolute sexual continents is imposed upon the unmarried woman under pain of being considered immoral or fallen with the result of producing neurostenia impotence depression and a great variety of nervous complaints involving diminished power of work limited enjoyment of life sleeplessness and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings the arbitrary and pernicious dictum of total continents probably also explains the mental inequality of the sexes thus Freud believes that the intellectual inferiority of so many women is due to the inhibition of thought imposed upon them for the purpose of sexual repression having thus suppressed the natural sex desires of the unmarried woman Puritanism on the other hand blesses her married sister for incontinent fruitfulness in wedlock indeed not merely blesses her but forces the woman over sexed by previous repression to bear children irrespective of weakened physical condition or economic inability to rear a large family prevention even by scientifically determined safe methods is absolutely prohibited nay the very mention of the subject is considered criminal thanks to this Puritanic tyranny the majority of women soon find themselves at the ebb of their physical resources ill and worn they are utterly unable to give their children even elementary care that added to economic pressure forces many women to risk utmost danger rather than to continue to bring forth life the custom of procuring abortions has reached such vast proportions in america as to be almost beyond belief according to recent investigations along this line 17 abortions are committed in every 100 pregnancies this fearful percentage represents only cases which come to the knowledge of physicians considering the secrecy in which this practice is necessarily shrouded and the consequent professional inefficiency and neglect Puritanism continuously exacts thousands of victims to its own stupidity and hypocrisy prostitution although hounded imprisoned and chained is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism it is its most cherished child all hypocritical sanctimoniousness not withstanding the prostitute is the fury of our century sweeping across the civilized countries like a hurricane and leaving a trail of disease and disaster the only remedy Puritanism offers for this ill-begotten child is greater repression and more merciless persecution the latest outrage is represented by the page law which imposes upon New York the terrible failure and crime of Europe namely registration and segregation of the unfortunate victims of Puritanism an equally stupid manner purism seeks to check the terrible scourge of its own creation venereal diseases most disheartening it is that this spirit of obtuse narrow-mindedness has poisoned even our so-called liberals and has blinded them into joining the crusade against the very things born of the hypocrisy of Puritanism prostitution and its results in willful blindness Puritanism refuses to see that the true method of prevention is the one which makes it clear to all that quote venereal diseases are not a mysterious or terrible thing the penalty of the sin of the flesh a sort of shameful evil branded by purist malediction but an ordinary disease which may be treated and cured unquote by its methods of obscurity disguise and concealment Puritanism has furnished favorable conditions for the growth and spread of these diseases its bigotry is again most strikingly demonstrated by the senseless attitude in regard to the great discovery of Professor Ehrlich hypocrisy veiling the important cure for syphilis with vague illusions to a remedy for a certain poison the almost limitless capacity of Puritanism for evil is due to its entrenchment behind the state and the law pretending to safeguard the people against immorality it has impregnated the machinery of government and added to its usurpation of moral guardianship the legal censorship of our views feelings and even of our conduct art literature the drama the privacy of the males in fact our most intimate tastes are at the mercy of this inexorable tyrant Anthony Comstock or some other equally ignorant policeman has been given the power to desecrate genius to soil and mutilate the sublimus creation of nature the human form books dealing with the most vital issues of our lives and seeking to shed light upon dangerously obscured problems are legally treated as criminal offenses and their helpless authors thrown into prison or driven to destruction and death not even in the domain of the czar is personal liberty daily outraged to the extent it is in America the stronghold of the Puritanic Unix here the only day of recreation left to the masses Sunday has been made hideous and utterly impossible all writers on primitive customs and ancient civilization agree that the Sabbath was a day of festivities free from care and duties a day of general rejoicing and merry making in every European country this tradition continues to bring some relief from the humdrum and stupidity of our Christian error everywhere concert halls theaters museums and gardens are filled with men women and children particularly workers with their families full of life and joy forgetful of the ordinary rules and conventions of their everyday existence it is on that day that the masses demonstrate what life might really mean in a sane society with work stripped of its profit-making soul destroying purpose Puritanism has robbed the people even of that one day naturally only the workers are affected our millionaires have their luxurious homes and elaborate clubs the poor however are condemned to the monotony and dullness of the American Sunday the sociability and fun of European outer life is here exchange for the gloom of the church the stuffy germ saturated country Polar or the brutalizing atmosphere of the back room saloon in prohibition states the people lack even the latter unless they can invest their meager earnings in quantities of adulterated liquor as to prohibition everyone knows what a farce it really is like all other achievements of Puritanism it too has but driven the devil deeper into the human system nowhere else does one meet so many drunkards as in our prohibition towns but so long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy Puritanism is triumphant ostensibly prohibition is opposed to liquor for reasons of health and economy but the very spirit of prohibition being itself abnormal it succeeds but in creating an abnormal life every stimulus which quickens the imagination and raises the spirits is as necessary to our life as air it invigorates the body and deepens our vision of human fellowship without stimuli in one form or another creative work is impossible nor indeed the spirit of kindness and generosity the fact that some great geniuses have seen their reflection in the goblet too frequently does not justify Puritanism in attempting to fetter the whole gamut of human emotions a Byron and a Poe have stirred humanity deeper than all the Puritans can ever hope to do the former have given to life meaning and color the latter are turning red blood into water beauty into ugliness variety into uniformity and decay Puritanism in whatever expression is a poisonous germ on the surface everything may look strong and vigorous yet the poison works its way persistently until the entire fabric is doomed with hippolite tain every truly free spirit has come to realize that Puritanism is the death of culture philosophy humor and good fellowship its characteristics are dullness monotony and gloom and of the hypocrisy of Puritanism by Emma Goldman this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Brian Ness on English composition and other matters by Samuel Butler this essay is believed to be the first composition by Samuel Butler that appeared in print it was published in the first number of the Eagle a magazine written and edited by members of St. John's College Cambridge in the Lent term 1858 when Butler was in his fourth and last year of residence from the Eagle volume one number one Lent term 1858 page 41 I sit down scarcely knowing how to grasp my own meaning and give it a tangible shape in words and yet it is concerning this very expression of our thoughts in words that I wish to speak as I muse things fall more into their proper places and little fit for the task as my confession pronounces me to be I will try to make clear that which is in my mind I think then that the style of our authors of a couple of hundred years ago was more terse and masculine than that of those of the present day possessing both more of the graphic element and more vigor straightforwardness and conciseness most readers will have anticipated me in admitting that a man should be clear of his meaning before he endeavors to give to it any kind of utterance and that having made up his mind what to say the less thought he takes how to say it more than briefly pointedly and plainly the better for instance Bacon tells us men fear death as children fear to go in the dark he does not say what I can imagine a last century writer to have said a feeling somewhat analogous to the dread with which children are affected upon entering a dark room is that which most men entertain at the contemplation of death Jeremy Taylor says tell them it is as much in temperance to weep too much as to laugh too much he does not say all men will acknowledge that laughing admits of in temperance but some men may at first sight hesitate to allow that a similar imputation may be at times attached to weeping I inclined to believe that as iron support the rickety child whilst they impede the healthy one so rules for the most part are but useful to the weaker among us our greatest masters in the language whether prose or verse in painting music architecture or the like have been those who preceded the rule and whose excellence gave rise there too men who preceded I should rather say not the rule but the discovery of the rule men whose intuitive perception led them to the right practice we cannot imagine Homer to have studied rules and the infant genius of those giants of their art handle Mozart and Beethoven who composed at the ages of seven five and ten must certainly have been unfettered by them to the less brilliantly endowed however they have a use as being compendious safeguards against error let me then lay down as the best of all rules for writing forgetfulness of self and carefulness of the matter in hand no simile is out of place that illustrates the subject in fact a simile as showing the symmetry of this world's arrangement is always if a fair one interesting every simile is a miss that leads the mind from the contemplation of its object to the contemplation of its author this will apply equally to the heaping up of unnecessary illustrations it is as great a fault to supply the reader with too many as with too few having given him at most to it is better to let him read slowly and think out the rest for himself than to surf at him with an abundance of explanation hood says well and thus upon the public mind intruded as if I thought like otahayat and cooks no food was fit to eat till I had chewed it a book that is worth reading will be worth reading thoughtfully and there are but few good books save certain novels that it is well to read in an armchair most will bear standing to at the present time we seem to lack the impassiveness and impartiality which was so marked among the writings of our forefathers we are seldom content with the simple narration of fact but must rush off into an almost declamatory description of them my meaning will be plain to all who have studied Thucydides the dignity of his simplicity is I think marred by those who put in the accessories which seem thought necessary in all present histories how few writers of the present day would not instead of a Greek phrase rather write night fell upon this horrid scene of bloodshed this is somewhat a matter of taste but I think I shall find some to agree with me in preferring for plain narration of course I exclude oratory the unadorned gravity of Thucydides there are indeed some writers of the present day who seem returning to the statement of facts rather than their adornment but these are not the most generally admired this simplicity however to be truly effective must be unstudied it will not do to write with affected terceness a charge which I think may be fairly preferred against Tacitus such a style if ever effective must be so from excess of artifice and not from that artlessness of simplicity which I should wish to see prevalent among us neither again is it well to write and go over the ground again with the pruning knife though this fault is better than the other to take care of the matter and let the words take care of themselves as the best safeguard to this I shall be answered yes but is not a diamond cut and polished a more beautiful object than when rough I grant it and more valuable in as much as it has run chance of spoliation in the cutting but I maintain that the thinking man the man whose thoughts are great and worth the consideration of others will deal in proprieties and will from the mind of his thought produce ready cut diamonds or rather will cut them there spontaneously or ever they see the light of day there are a few points still which it were well we should consider we are all too apt when we sit down to study a subject to have already formed our opinion and to weave all matter to the warp of our preconceived judgment to fall in with the received idea and with biased minds unconsciously to follow in the wake of public opinion while professing to lead it to the best of my belief half the dogmatism of those we daily meet is in consequence of the unwitting practice of this self-deception simply let us not talk about what we do not understand save as learners and we shall not by writing mislead others there is no shame in being obliged to others for opinions the shame is not being honest enough to acknowledge it I would have no one omit to put down a useful thought because it was not his own provided it tended to the better expression of his matter and he did not conceal its source let him however set out the borrowed capital to interest one word more and I have done with regard to our subject the best rule is not to write concerning that about which we cannot at our present age know anything saved by a process which is commonly called cram on all such matters there are abler writers than ourselves the men in fact from whom we cram never let us hunt after a subject unless we have something which we feel urged on to say it is better to say nothing who are so ridiculous as those who talk for the sake of talking save only those who write for the sake of writing but there are subjects which all young men think about who can take a walk in our streets and not think the most trivial incident has ramifications to whose guidance if we surrender our thoughts we are off times led upon a gold mine unawares and no man whether old or young is worse for reading the ingenious and unaffected statement of a young man's thoughts there are some things in which experience blunts the mental vision as well as others in which it sharpens it the former are best described by younger men our province is not to lead public opinion is not in fact to ape our seniors and transport ourselves from our proper sphere it is rather to show ourselves as we are to throw our thoughts before the public as they rise without requiring it to imagine that we are right and others wrong but hoping for the forbearance which i must beg the reader to concede to myself and trusting to the genuineness and vigor of our design to attract it may be more than a passing attention i'm aware that i have digressed from the original purpose of my essay but i hope for pardon if believing the digression to be of more value than the original matter i have not checked my pen but let it run on even as my heart directed it solarius end of on english composition and other matters by samuel butler recorded by brian ness the some nambulists from revolution and other essays by jack linden read by brian ness this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org his only fools speak evil of the clay the very stars are made of clay like mine the mightiest and absurdist sleep walker on the planet chained in circle of his own imaginings man is only too keen to forget his origin and to shame that flesh of his that bleeds like all flesh and that is good to eat civilization which is part of the circle of his imaginings has spread a veneer over the surface of the soft shelled animal known as man it is a very thin veneer but so wonderfully is man constituted that he squirms on his bit of achievement and believes he has garbed in armor plate yet man today is the same man that drank from his enemy's skull in the dark german forests that sacked cities and stole his women from neighboring clans like any howling aborigine the flesh and blood body of man has not changed in the last several thousand years nor has his mind changed there is no faculty of the mind of man today that did not exist in the minds of the men of long ago man has today no concept that is too wide and deep and abstract for the mind of Plato or Aristotle to grasp give to Plato or Aristotle the same fund of knowledge that man today has access to and Plato and Aristotle would reason as profoundly as the man of today and would achieve very similar conclusions it is the same old animal man smeared over it is true with the veneer thin and magical that makes him dream drunken dreams of self exaltation and to sneer at the flesh and the blood of him beneath the smear the raw animal crouching within him is like the earthquake monster pinned in the crust of the earth as he persuades himself against the ladder till it arouses and shakes down a city so does he persuade himself against the former until it shakes him out of his dreaming and he stands undisguised a brute like any other brute starve him let him miss six meals and see gape through the veneer the hungry mob the animal beneath get between him and the female of his kind upon whom his mating instinct is bent and see his eyes blaze like an angry cat's here in his throat the scream of wild stallions and watch his fists clench like an orangutans maybe he will even beat his chest touch his silly vanity which he exalts into high sounding pride call him a liar and behold the red animal in him that makes a hand clutching that is quick like the tensing of a tiger's claw or an eagle's talon incarnate with desire to rip and tear it is not necessary to call him a liar to touch his vanity tell a plains indian that he has failed to steal horses from the neighboring tribe or tell a man living in bourgeois society that he has failed to pay his bills at the neighboring grocers and the results are the same each plains indian and bourgeois is smeared with a slightly different veneer that is all it requires a slightly different stick to scrape it off the raw animals beneath are identical but intrude not violently upon man leave him alone in his somnambulism and he kicks out from under his feet the ladder of life up which he has climbed constitutes himself the center of the universe dreams sordidly about his own particular god and monitors metaphysically about his own blessed immortality true he lives in a real world breathes real air eats real food and sleeps under real blankets in order to keep real cold away and there's the rub he has to affect adjustments with the real world and at the same time maintain the sublimity of his dream the result of this admixture of the real and the unreal is confusion thrice compounded the man that walks the real world in his sleep becomes such a tangled massive contradictions paradoxes and lies that he has to lie to himself in order to stay asleep in passing it may be noted that some men are remarkably constituted in this matter of self-deception they excel at deceiving themselves they believe and they help others to believe it becomes their function in society and some of them are paid large salaries for helping their fellow men to believe for instance that they are not as other animals for helping the king to believe and his parasites and dredges as well that he is God's own manager over so many square miles of earth crust for helping the merchant and banking classes to believe that society rests on their shoulders and that civilization would go to smash if they got out from under and ceased from their exploitations and petty culprits price-fighting is terrible this is the dictum of the man who walks in his sleep he prays about it and writes to the papers about it and worries the legislators about it there is nothing of the brute about him he is a sublimated soul that treads the heights and breathes refined ether in self-comparison with the price-fighter the man who walks in his sleep ignores the flesh and all its wonderful play of muscle, joint, and nerve he feels that there is something godlike and the mysterious deeps of his being denies his relationship with the brute and proceeds to go forth into the world and express by deeds that something godlike within him he sits at a desk and chases dollars through the weeks and months and years of his life to him the life godlike resolves into a problem something like this since the great mass of men toil at producing wealth how best can he get between the great mass of men and the wealth they produce and get a slice for himself with tremendous exercise of craft deceit and guile he devotes his life godlike to this purpose as he succeeds his somnambulism grows profound he bribes legislatures buys judges controls primaries and then goes and hires other men to tell him that it is all glorious and right and the funniest thing about it is that this arch deceiver believes all that they tell him he reads only the newspapers and magazines that tell him what he wants to be told listens only to the biologists who tell him that he is the finest product of the struggle for existence and herds only with his own kind where like the monkey folk they teeter up and down and tell one another how great they are in the course of his life godlike he ignores the flesh until he gets to the table he raises his hands in horror the thought of the brutish prize fighter and then sits down and gorges himself on roast beef rare and red running blood from under every sawing thrust of the implement called a knife he has a piece of cloth which he calls a napkin with which he wipes from his lips and from the hair on his lips the greasy juices of the meat he has fastidiously nauseated at the thought of two prize fighters bruising each other with their fists and at the same time because it will cost him some money he will refuse to protect the machines in his factory though he is aware that the lack of such protection every year mangles batters and destroys out of all humanist thousands of working men women and children he will chatter about things refined and spiritual and godlike like himself and he and the men who heard with him will calmly adulterate the commodities they put upon the market and which annually kill tens of thousands of babies and young children he will recoil at the suggestion of the horrid spectacle of two men confronting each other with gloved hands in the roped arena and at the same time he will clamor for larger armies and larger navies for more destructive war machines which with a single discharge will disrupt and rip to pieces more human beings than have died in the whole history of prize fighting he will bribe a city council for a franchise or a state legislature for a commercial privilege but he has never been known in all his sleepwalking history to bribe any legislative body in order to achieve any moral end such as for instance abolition of prize fighting child labor laws pure food bills or old age pensions ah but we do not stand for the commercial life object the refined scholarly and professional men they are also sleepwalkers they do not stand for the commercial life but neither did they stand against it with all their strength they submit to it to the brutality and carnage of it they develop classical economists who announce that the only possible way for men and women to get food and shelter is by the existing method they produce university professors men who claim the role of teachers and who at the same time claim that the austere ideal of learning is passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence they serve the men who lead the commercial life give to their sons some nambulistic educations preach that sleepwalking is the only way to walk and that the persons who walk otherwise are adivisms or anarchists they paint pictures for the commercial men write books for them sing songs for them act plays for them and dose them with various drugs when their bodies have grown gross or dyspeptic from overeating and lack of exercise then there are the good kind some nambulists who don't prize fight who don't play the commercial game who don't teach and preach some nambulism who don't do anything except live on the dividends that are coined out of the wand white fluid that runs in the veins of little children out of mother's tears the blood of strong men and the groans and sighs of the old the receiver is as bad as the thief I and the thief is finer than the receiver he at least has the courage to run the risk but the good kind people who don't do anything won't believe this and the assertion will make them angry for a moment they possess several magic phrases which are like the incantations of a voodoo doctor driving devils away the phrases that the good kind people repeat to themselves and to one another sound like abstinence temperance thrift virtue sometimes they say them backward when they sound like prodigality drunkenness wastefulness and immorality they do not really know the meaning of these phrases but they think they do and that is all that is necessary for some nambulists the calm repetition of such phrases invariably drives away the waking devils and lulls to slumber our statesmen sell themselves and their country for gold our municipal servants and state legislators commit countless treasons the world of graft the world of betrayal the world of some nambulism who's exalted and sensitive citizens are outraged by the knockouts of the prize ring and who annually not merely knock out but kill thousands of babies and children by means of child labor and adulterated food far better to have the front of one's face pushed in by the fist of an honest prize fighter than to have the lining of one's stomach corroded by the embalmed beef of a dishonest manufacturer in a prize fight men are classed in lightweight fights with a lightweight he never fights with a heavy weight and foul blows are not allowed yet in the world of the some nambulists where sore the sublimated spirits there are no classes and foul blows are continually struck and never disallowed only they are not called foul blows the world of claw and fang and fist and club has passed away so say the some nambulists a rebate is not an elongated claw a wall street raid is not a fang slash dummy boards of directors and fake accountings are not foul blows of the fist under the belt a present of a coal stock by a mine operator to a railroad official is not a claw rip to the bowels of a rival mine operator the hundred million dollars with which a combination beats down to his knees a man with a million dollars is not a club the man who walks in his sleep says it is not a club so say all of his kind with which he herds they gather together and solemnly gloatingly make and repeat certain noises that sound like discretion acumen initiative enterprise these noises are especially gratifying when they are made backward they mean the same thing but they sound different and in either case forward or backward the spirit of the dream is not disturbed when a man strikes a foul blow in the prize ring the fight is immediately stopped he has declared the loser and he is hissed by the audience as he leaves the ring but when a man who walks in his sleep strikes a foul blow he has immediately declared the victor and awarded the prize and amid acclamations he forthwith turns his prize into a seat in the united states senate into a grotesque palace on fifth avenue and into endowed churches universities and libraries to say nothing of subsidized newspapers to proclaim his greatness the red animal in the somnambulist will out he decries the carnal combat of the prize ring and compels the red animal to spiritual combat the poisoned lie the nasty gasping tongue the brutality of the unkind epigram the business and social nastiness and treachery of today these are the thrusts and scratches of the red animal when the somnambulist is in charge they are not the uppercuts and short arm jabs and jolts and slugging blows of the spirit they are the foul blows of the spirit that have never been disbarred as the foul blows of the prize ring have been disbarred would it not be preferable for a man to strike one full on the mouth with his fist than for him to tell a lie about one or malign those who are nearest and dearest but these are the crimes of the spirit and alas they are so much more frequent than blows on the mouth and whoever exalts the spirit over the flesh by his own creed a verse that a crime of the spirit is vastly more terrible than a crime of the flesh thus stand the somnambulists convicted by their own creed only they are not real men alive and awake and they proceed to mutter magic phrases that dispel all doubt as to their undiminished and internal gloriousness it is well enough to let the ape and tiger die but it is hardly fair to kill off the natural and courageous apes and tigers and allow the spawn of cowardly apes and tigers to live the prize fighting apes and tigers will die all in good time in the course of natural evolution but they will not die so long as the cowardly somnambulistic apes and tigers club and scratch and slash this is not a brief for the prize fighter it is a blow of the fist between the eyes of the somnambulists teetering up and down muttering magic phrases and thanking God that they are not as other animals Glen Ellen California June 1900 End of The Somnambulists from Revolution and Other Essays by Jack London Appendix Taxation From Essays on the Trial by Jerry by Lysander Spooner This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Essay on the Trial by Jerry Appendix Taxation by Lysander Spooner It was a principle of the common law as it is of the law of nature and of common sense that no man can be taxed without his personal consent The common law knew nothing of that system which now prevails in England of assuming a man's own consent to be taxed because some pretended representative whom he never authorized to act for him has taken it upon himself to consent that he may be taxed That is one of the many frauds on the common law and the English Constitution which have been introduced since Magna Carta having finally established itself in England it has been stupidly and severely copied and submitted to in the United States If the Trial by Jerry were re-established the common law principle of taxation would be re-established with it for it is not to be supposed that juries would enforce a tax upon an individual which he had never agreed to pay Taxation without consent is as plainly robbery when enforced against one man as when enforced against millions and it is not to be imagined that juries could be blind to so self-evident a principle taking a man's money without his consent is also as much robbery when it is done by millions of men acting in concert and calling themselves a government as when it is done by a single individual acting on his own responsibility and calling himself a highway man neither the numbers engaged in the act nor the different characters they assume as a cover for the act alter the nature of the act itself If the government can take a man's money without his consent there is no limit to the additional tyranny it may practice upon him for with his money it can hire soldiers to stand over him keep him in subjection plunder him at discretion and kill him if he resists and governments always will do this as they everywhere and always have done it except where the common law principle has been established it is therefore a first principle a very sign quannon of political freedom that a man can be taxed only by his personal consent and the establishment of this principle with trial by jury ensures freedom of course because one no man would pay his money unless he had first contracted for such a government as he was willing to support and two unless the government then kept itself within the terms of its contract juries would not enforce the payment of the tax besides the agreement to be taxed would probably be entered into but for a year at a time if in that year the government proved itself either ineffectual or tyrannical to any serious degree the contract would not be renewed the dissatisfied parties if sufficiently numerous for a new organization would form themselves into a separate association for mutual protection if not sufficiently numerous for that purpose those who were conscientious would forgo all governmental protection rather than contribute to the support of a government which they deemed unjust all legitimate government is a mutual insurance company voluntarily agreed upon by the parties to it for the protection of their rights against wrongdoers in its voluntary character it is precisely similar to an association for mutual protection against fire or shipwreck before a man will join an association for these latter purposes and pay the premium for being insured he will if he be a man of sense look at the articles of the association see what the company promises to do what it is likely to do and what are the rates of insurance if he be satisfied on all these points he will become a member pay his premium for a year and then hold the company to its contract if the conduct of the company prove unsatisfactory he will let his policy expire at the end of the year for which he has paid will decline to pay any further premiums and either seek insurance elsewhere or take his own risk without any insurance and as men act in the insurance of their ships and dwellings they would act in the insurance of their properties liberties and lives in the political association or government the political insurance company or government have no more right in nature or reason to assume a man's consent to be protected by them and to be taxed for that protection when he has given no actual consent then a fire or marine insurance company have to assume a man's consent to be protected by them and to pay the premium when his actual consent has never been given to take a man's property without his consent is robbery and to assume his consent where no actual consent is given makes the taking nonetheless robbery if it did the highwayman has the same right to assume a man's consent to part with his purse that any other man or body of men can have and his assumption would afford as much moral justification for his robbery as does a like assumption on the part of the government for taking a man's property without his consent the government's pretense for protecting him as an equivalent for the taxation affords no justification it is for himself to decide whether he desires such protection as the government offers him if he do not desire it or do not bargain for it the government has no more right than any other insurance company to impose it upon him or make him pay for it trial by the country and no taxation without consent were the two pillars of English liberty when England had any liberty and the first principles of the common law they mutually sustain each other and neither can stand without the other without both no people have any guarantee for their freedom with both no people can be otherwise than free footnote one footnote one trial by the country and no taxation without consent mutually sustain each other and can be sustained only by each other for these reasons one juries would refuse to enforce a tax against a man who had never agreed to pay it they would also protect men in forcibly resisting the collection of taxes to which they had never consented otherwise the jurors would authorize the government to tax themselves without their consent a thing which no jury would be likely to do in these two ways then trial by the country would sustain the principle of no taxation without consent two on the other hand the principle of no taxation without consent would sustain the trial by the country because men in general would not consent to be taxed for the support of a government under which trial by the country was not secured thus these two principles mutually sustain each other but if either of these principles were broken down the other would fall with it and for these reasons if trial by the country were broken down the principle of no taxation without consent would fall with it because the government would then be able to tax the people without their consent in as much as the legal tribunals would be mere tools of the government and would enforce such taxation and punish men for resisting such taxation as the government ordered on the other hand if the principle of no taxation without consent were broken down trial by the country would fall with it because the government if it could tax people without their consent would of course take enough of their money to enable it to employ all the force necessary for sustaining its own tribunals in the place of juries and carry their decrees into execution by what force fraud and conspiracy on the part of kings nobles and quote a few wealthy freeholders end quote these pillars have been prostrated in england it is desired to show more fully in the next volume if it should be necessary end of appendix taxation by lysander spooner recording by robert scott mojo move 411.com mojo move 411.com August the 21st 2007 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by brian ness why are all men gamblers by arthur brisbane the annual report of the gambling house at Monte Carlo shows a profit of about five million dollars a large collection of human beings travel from all parts of the world to Monte Carlo for the sake of giving five million dollars to the gambling concern there wherever you look on earth today or in the past you find human beings gambling and you will find the gambling instinct stronger than any other stronger than the love of drink infinitely stronger than the love of normal honest gain Christopher Columbus's sailors gambled on the way over and the Indians on this side were gambling while waiting to be discovered in an office overlooking trinity graveyard in new york city an old man passed 80 with a fortune of at least 50 million dollars gambles every day with all the excitement of youth the fluctuations in his game bring to his shallow cheeks the color that no other human emotion could bring there on his way home this old man passes crowds of children in the streets and looks down concerned and sorrowful to find that they too are gambling they are matching pennies or shaking dice clergymen are startled and amazed to find that women are gambling heavily they have gambled heavily ever since civilization has progressed far enough to give them large sums to gamble with Marie Antoinette staked thousands of Louis at a time at Versailles she was so wrapped up in gambling she could not see that her neck was in danger when the lava came down from Vesuvius it buried Pompeians who were gambling the men who dig up the old monuments in Africa find gambling instruments crumbling away side by side with appliances for taking human life nowhere in the lower forms of animal life so far as we know is there the slightest indication of the gambling instinct the monkey the elephant love whiskey and easily become drunkards the passion for alcohol seems innate in animal life even the wise aunt can be readily induced to disgrace himself if alcohol is put near him for all the human weaknesses in mainsprings ambition affection vanity drunkenness ferocity greediness cunning we can find beginnings among the lower animals but man appears to have evolved from within himself the gambling instinct for his own a special damnation where did the instinct come from why was it planted in us like every other instinct with which intelligent nature endows us it must have its good purposes and it must not be judged merely in the corrupted form in which we study it at Monte Carlo or in Wall Street perhaps the spirit of gambling is really only an atrophied perverted form of the spirit of adventure columbus staked his life and gambled when he started across the water the leaders of the american revolution expressly staked their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor in signing the declaration of independence they were noble gamblers working for the welfare of their fellows perhaps gambling is only a perverted form of intelligent ambition we are all natural gamblers because we have within us the quality which makes us willing to risk our own comfort, security, and present happiness for a result that seems better worthwhile the universality of the gambling instinct in human beings is certainly worthy of our study end of Why Are All Men Gamblers by Arthur Brisbane recorded by Brian Ness