Birthday wishes
Feb. 28th, 2005 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumYou may have noticed that I am not one who wishes people Happy Birthday in my LJ.
Today, however, I want to recall the birthday of the man, without whom, not only I, but none of us would be here.
Yes, someone would have done it without him, but Michel de Montaigne (b. 1533 d. 1593) who died when Shakespeare was just making his splash, when Francis Bacon was just coming into his own, he invented the essay.
He wrote to himself, as though another were to read it. Different from a journal/diary (one of which Victoria kept almost all her adult her life, only failing to make an entry on the day she died) these were rather his thoughts on matters which touched his heart and his mind.
"I find that our greatest vices derive their
first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our
principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily
pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please
itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in
the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit,
when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant,
or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of
wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some
malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots
of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and
afterward shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated
by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile
inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of
the subject; it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then
more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak
and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor
depend upon the difference between crowns and pins; but I rather
hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in
crowns since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only
play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money? Children
should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own
contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be
represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their
actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the
very thought, should be hateful to them, with what mask soever they
may be disguised....
'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with
the place where he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of
Scotland no more pant after Touraine, than the Scythians after
Thessaly. Darius asking certain Greeks what they would take to
assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their
fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them
a better, nor more noble sepulture, than to bury them in their own
bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the world should hire
them to do it; but having also tried to persuade the Indians to
leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the bodies of
their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the notion.
Every one does the same, for use veils from us the true aspect of
things."
Happy Birthday, to us.
Today, however, I want to recall the birthday of the man, without whom, not only I, but none of us would be here.
Yes, someone would have done it without him, but Michel de Montaigne (b. 1533 d. 1593) who died when Shakespeare was just making his splash, when Francis Bacon was just coming into his own, he invented the essay.
He wrote to himself, as though another were to read it. Different from a journal/diary (one of which Victoria kept almost all her adult her life, only failing to make an entry on the day she died) these were rather his thoughts on matters which touched his heart and his mind.
"I find that our greatest vices derive their
first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our
principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily
pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please
itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in
the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit,
when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant,
or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of
wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some
malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots
of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and
afterward shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated
by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile
inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of
the subject; it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then
more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak
and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor
depend upon the difference between crowns and pins; but I rather
hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in
crowns since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only
play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money? Children
should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own
contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be
represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their
actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the
very thought, should be hateful to them, with what mask soever they
may be disguised....
'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with
the place where he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of
Scotland no more pant after Touraine, than the Scythians after
Thessaly. Darius asking certain Greeks what they would take to
assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their
fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them
a better, nor more noble sepulture, than to bury them in their own
bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the world should hire
them to do it; but having also tried to persuade the Indians to
leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the bodies of
their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the notion.
Every one does the same, for use veils from us the true aspect of
things."
Happy Birthday, to us.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Nothing seems to change
Date: 2005-02-28 08:44 pm (UTC)And yet here we are with lawsuits against TV shows, video games and musicians because we as a people stil refuse to take that responsibility. :(
Happy Birthday
Date: 2005-02-28 11:15 pm (UTC)It's all mind over matter and the intelligence comes when w/We learn who we are and what we claim to be our heart-felt beliefs in mankind's need to survive vs pure civility and kindness. Harm comes when one is unaware of the reason or causes of pain.
Pain is delivered and received with welcome or shock. If pain is welcome I will keep my blinders on and say, "There for the Grace of G_d go I." If pain is delivered for the pleasure of delivery and the recipient is not welcoming it, then I was never created because this birthday was recognized.
With that said, be well Sir.