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The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet. ↗
The sin of Book I is at first sight more obscure, but it is particularly significant. We have seen that there appear to be two very important episodes showing the Red-Crosse a prey to Despair. When we find, further, that of the three Paynim Brethren, Sansfoy, Sansloi and Sansjoy, it is the last who is the Red-Crosse's most formidable enemy, we are driven to assume that there is some special significance in this stressing of a tendency to melancholy. Such a tendency is not now regarded as a serious sin, but in mediaeval times melancholy leading to inertia and in extreme cases to suicide was under the name of accidie one of the recognized Deadly Sins. By Elizabeth's day the much less pregnant term Sloth had been substituted in the usual catalogue, and Spenser nowhere uses the word accidie. But the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were much preoccupied with the subject. They regarded the sufferers from it as at once in a highly dangerous spiritual state and as intensely interesting. It was the favourite pose of fashionable young men. Hamlet is the supreme treatment of it in literature, but most of the dramatists of the day are interested in it. I suggest that the first Book of the original Faerie Queene treated of the sin of accidie. ↗
#men
The late American golfing coach and writer, Harvey Penick, held that any who played golf was his friend – in the politer sense of Arcades ambo, I gather. … I myself hold with Honest Izaak that there is – and that I am a member of – a communion of, if not saints, at least anglers and very honest men, some now with God and others of us yet upon the quiet waters. … The man is a mere brute, and no true angler, whose sport is measured only in fish caught and boasted of. For what purpose do we impose on ourselves limits and conventions if not to make sport of a mere mechanical harvest of protein? The true angler can welcome even a low river and a dry year, and learn of it, and be the better for it, in mind and in spirit. So, No: the hatch is not all that it might be, for if it is warm enough and early with it, it is also in a time of drought; and, No: I don’t get to the river as often as I should wish. But these things do not make this a poor year: they are an unlooked-for opportunity to delve yet deeper into the secrets of the river, and grow wise. … Rejoice, then, in all seasons, ye fishers. The world the river is; both you and I, And all mankind, are either fish or fry. We must view it with judicious looks, and get wisdom whilst we may. And to all honest anglers, then, I wish, as our master Izaak wished us long ago, ‘a rainy evening to read this following Discourse; and that if he be an honest Angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing. ↗
She was prepared for him to shut her down, when Behr shrugged a shoulder and said, “Yeah, sounds good. I think it’s a good idea for you to get out of the house. But,” he said, stepping back into the kitchen and leveling her with a hard look, “only if I tag along.” “What? Why?” Cheyenne questioned, not understanding the need for chaperones. “Because it’s safer that way,” he reasoned. “I have a couple things to take care of first, so it will probably be a day or two. I expect you to wait for me, though, Cheyenne,” he said, his brilliant blue eyes holding her in place. “It’s safer that way.” She was preparing to argue when she realized that she wasn’t altogether sure she wanted to venture out on her own yet anyway. It might be a shock to her system after locking herself away for so long. For laughs, she decided to give him a hard time anyway. “But…” she started. He cut her off with an upraised hand. “No buts,” he said sternly. “It’s not safe and you know it, and besides, that’s what you have two strapping young men like us for.” He clapped a grinning Dehstroy on the back. Cheyenne threw her head back and laughed. “You, young? Ha!” “What?” Behr said, acting offended. “I’m young.” “Prove it,” Cheyenne challenged. “Show me your birth certificate.” When he pursed his lips, she laughed some more. “What’s wrong? Didn’t they make birth certificates yet when you were born? No?” She looked between the men, taking in their sheepish expressions. “Well, then. I’ll leave you two to work on clearing that schedule.” Waving, Cheyenne left the kitchen and headed upstairs to her room to lie down. ↗
Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among the makers of myth, pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed it his. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at dead of night by a valorous man, that its motive was sheer avarice! Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full, and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of men to see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to the tower saying that all was well. It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came by fearful ends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come to the Gibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise. ("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins") ↗
Bonhoeffer examined and dismissed a number of approaches to dealing with evil. "Reasonable people," he said, think that "with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joints." Then there are the ethical "fanatics" who "believe that they can face the power of evil with the purity of their will and their principles." Men of"conscience" become overwhelmed because the "countless respectable and seductive disguises and masks in which evil approaches them make their conscience anxious and unsure until they finally content themselves with an assuaged conscience instead of a good conscience." They must "deceive their own conscience in order not to despair." Finally there are some who retreat to a "private virtuousness. Such people neither steal, nor murder,nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. but... they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest. ↗
#dealing-with-evil #ethics #injustice #moral-responsibility #self-justification
