Micromegas by Voltaire

I picked up The Best Known Works of Voltaire around a month ago from a pay-what-you-will donation shelf. I read Micromegas and am about halfway through Candide. I don’t quite understand the ending of Micromegas…but nevertheless, there still were some interesting things said.

Micromegas, 120, 000 ft high, is an inhabitant of the star Sirius. After being banished for basically being a philosopher he travels the universe and visits many other planets and stars. He makes friends with an inhabitant of Saturn, and together they continue to explore and discuss philosophy.

The opening conversation between Micromegas and the inhabitant of Saturn is as follows: The Saturnian speaks how even though his people have seventy-two senses, they still feel restrained by their lack of comprehension and that “their imagination transcends their wants.”

“I sincerely believe what you say!” cried Micromegas, “for though we Sirians have near a thousand different senses, there still remains a certain vague desire, an unaccountable inquietude incessantly admonishing us of our own unimportance…”

Micromegas then asks how long Saturnians generally live (15,000 years), and receives the reply: “Lack a day! A mere trifle!”

“It is the very same with us,” resumed the other, “The shortness of life is our daily complaint, so that this must be a universal law in nature.”

“Alas!” cried the Saturnian, “few, very few on this globe outlive five hundred revolutions of the sun (these, according to our way of reckoning, amount to about fifteen thousand years). So, you see, we in a manner begin to die the very moment we are born: our existence no more than a point, our duration an instant, and our globe an atom. Scarce do we begin to learn a little, when death intervenes before we can profit by experience. For my own part, I am deterred from laying schemes when I consider myself as a single drop in the midst of an immense ocean.”

After this conversation, the two philosophers decide to travel together and eventually come to earth. At first they believe the Earth to be uninhabited, especially the Saturnian, because they cannot see any life present. However, upon closer observation, they notice a whale in the ocean and then a ship. Eventually, they establish communication with the humans on the vessel (“O ye invisible insects, whom the hand of the Creator hath deigned to produce in the abyss of infinite littleness! I give praise to his goodness, in that he hath been pleased to disclose unto me those secrets that seemed to be impenetrable.”).

Micromegas and the Saturnian engage in philosophical discourse with the inhabitants of Earth asking them what they believe the soul is – to which the humans reply quoting their various authorities such as Locke, Mallebranche and Aristotle.

What ends the discourse is the claim of the last sailor, who asserts that the two visitors’ “fashions, their suns and their stars, were created solely for the use of man.” This puts Micromegas and the Saturnian in such fits of laughter that they accidentally dropped the ship and had to search for a good while to find it again. Micromegas says that before he leaves earth, he will write them a “choice book of philosophy which would demonstrate the very essence of things. When the secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris receives the book and opens it, he finds that the pages are blank.

“Ay, ay,” said he, “this is just what I suspected.”

And thus it ends. Like I said, I’m not going to pretend I understand the ending, but it was an interesting short story anyways.

The Four Loves by C.S Lewis

So, I have been reading lots the past month, I’ve just been too lazy/busy to write about it. But here we go, hopefully I’ll have some good fall features for ya.

Anyways, I read The Four Loves a few years ago, but decided to re-read it because, well, I’ve always been interested in the many different facets of “love” and figured brushing up with some of C.S Lewis’ thoughts might do some good. It did, as it always does.

Lewis starts by differentiating between Need-loves and Gift-loves. That is, a Need-love would be the love a child would have for his mother because he is in dire straits without her. Gift-love is the love of the mother for her child, as she gives her time and commitment to taking care of him. Regarding God, man’s love for god must be nearly entirely need-love, “for our whole being by its very nature is one vast need.”

He then discusses two interesting concepts of nearness to God: nearness by likeness and nearness by approach. Being made in the image of God, we are already nearer to him than, let’s say, animals are. But this is merely an image. Nearness by approach is “taking the long way around,” the hard road that seems to least resemble heavenly glory. I thought it was fascinating when he said, “Man approaches God more nearly when he is in a sense least like God.” “I must decrease, and He must increase” as Paul said. The less of ourselves we have in sight, the more God can fill our vision.

So the four loves are these: affection, friendship, charity and eros. He points out that while God is love, love is not God. “A faithful and genuinely self-sacrificing passion will speak to us with what seems the voice of God. Merely animal or frivolous lust will not…We may give our human loves unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God – Then they become gods, then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves.”

The idolatry of erotic love was the great error of 19th century literature, where falling in love equaled sanctification.

He then talked about pleasure: Need-pleasure (drinking a glass of water is pleasurable when you are thirsty) and pleasures of appreciation (walking through a garden). “The need love, like the need-pleasure, will last no longer than the need.” Our need of God can never end, but our awareness of it can.

Those who temporarily turn to God in need or tribulation are not insincere – they are aware of their need- who wouldn’t?

“Nature gives us images – terror, gloom, jocundity, cruelty, lust, innocence, purity…In them each man can clothe his belief, but we must learn our theology and philosophy elsewhere….A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature, and experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy.”

On affection:

“As gin is not only a drink in itself, but also a base for many other drinks, so Affection, besides being a love itself, can enter into the other loves and color them all through and become the very medium in which from day to day they operate.”

On friendship:

“Friendship has least commerce with our nerves.” It is biologically unnecessary. Eros provides conception, and affection, upbringing. Companionship, a biological need for a social species, is the matrix of friendship, but not friendship itself. “Friendship was exalted in ancient and medieval times because it was most independent or even defiant of mere nature…The deepest and most permanent thought of those ages was ascetic and world-renouncing.”

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius – Fin

So, I finished Meditations last night – I had to. I had to just get it done. I mean, I loved it to bits and it’s totally on my top favs now…but sometimes he said the same thing over again in different words. Which was good sometimes because it stated a point more clearly than before, but other times it seemed redundant.

But the main thing I came away with (among other things, of course) was indifference and having no opinion. That seems to be his solution for a lot of human ills. Of course that’s a bit of a miss-statement…let’s see, it was more like “indifference to that which deserved no opinion.” Right and wrong should be observed and justice should be carried out, but at the same time “it is in thy power” to not get offended at trifling things. “It is not the thing that offends thee, but thy opinion of it.”

“Thou hast not the leisure [or ability] to read. But thou hast leisure [or ability] to check arrogance; thou hast leisure to be superior to pleasure and pain. Thou hast the leisure to be superior to love of fame and to not be vexed at stupid and ungrateful people, nay, even to care for them.”

Sometimes he was a bit confusing…he kept on saying, “It is in thy power” to do this, to do that, which to a degree is true – but not always. He says, “Who is he that shall hinder thee from being good and simple?” and “It is in thy power to let no badness be in thy soul.”

Then Book 10 (of 12) opens with Marcus asking himself “Wilt thou then my soul, never be good and simple and one and naked, more manifest than the body which surrounds thee?” Obviously something was hindering him at some points.

I don’t know about Marcus, but my own self hinders me from being good and simple, lol. Perhaps it is in my power…only my power is weak and fails me.

And Marcus’ answer is to “Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up if thou wilt ever dig.”

Oh dear. Been there, done that…the fountain is muddy. Maybe that’s just me.

Marcus Aurelius was a very wise man, but I’d have to disagree with what I understand to be his view of human nature. I mean, I do believe that one can make integrity a part of their soul and personality – but only to a point. We’re so fallible that even after living upright for 60 years our morals, rationality and integrity can still be undone. It is beyond our power sometimes, and we have to rely on something more.

But like I said, he was still quite wise and has super awesome things to say. I’ll leave you with a few of my favorites:

“There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.”

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all other men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

“A cucumber is bitter – throw it away. There are briars in the road – turn away from them. This is enough. Do not add, “And why were such things made in the world?”

“Receive wealth and prosperity without arrogance and be willing to let it go.”

“How soon will time cover all things, and how many it has covered already.”

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Soo…I’m loving this. The world needs more stoic philosophy and less…non-stoic philosophy. Right. Anyways, a few of these quotes put into words exactly the way I feel about some things, like this:

“Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.”

…and this:

“As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.”

Also, I’ve come to realize all my blog posts are pretty much excerpts and quotes. Umm…you know, that’s okay though…I talk far too much in real life so it’s nice to let other people say things for once =P

Oh, and these are not just quotes…they’re POWER QUOTES. RAAAARRR!!!

“…the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.”

“…For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another is then contrary to nature.”

“Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return.”