Quotes 9-1-2015
by Miles Raymer
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
––Dune, by Frank Herbert, loc. 2631
“We find that in the course of nature, that tho’ the effects be many, the principles, from which they arise, are commonly but few and simple, and that it is the sign of an unskilful naturalist to have recourse to a different quality, in order to explain every different operation. How much more must this be true with regard to the human mind, which being so confin’d a subject may justly be thought incapable of containing such a monstrous heap of principles, as wou’d be necessary to excite the passions of pride and humility, were each distinct cause adapted to the passion by a distinct set of principles?
Here, therefore, moral philosophy is in the same condition as natural, with regard to astronomy before the time of Copernicus. The antients, tho’ sensible of that maxim, that nature does nothing in vain, contriv’d such intricate systems of the heavens, as seem’d inconsistent with true philosophy, and gave place at last to something more simple and natural. To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypotheses with a variety of this kind; are certain proofs, that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.”
––A Treatise of Human Nature, by David Hume, pg. 201
It seems the case that we do a lot of “covering over” of nature and its effects, to quote the existentialists, in order to avoid our true, natural way of being so that we might live happier, moral lives. I suppose without this trait our species might not have survived for long. Reality is, after all, hard to take. Of course, our propensity for covering over nature’s true essence and the fact that ocean levels are rising might not help us in the end, but to paraphrase the great philosopher Riddick, “It has to end sometime.”