Getting Easier Every Day

“Each day it becomes easier to know what we ought to despise: what modern man admires and journalism praises.”

- Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Laughter and Bad Literature

When things got a little boring at meetings of the Inklings they occasionally played a game to liven things up. They took turns reading aloud from the novels of Amanda McKittrick Ros to see how long each could read without bursting into a fit of laughter. I've been reading her novel Irene Iddesleigh out loud to the family for the last couple of days and I don't remember laughing so hard. And I can confirm that this novel is the worst I've ever read, but yet there is something compelling about Mrs. Ros's attempt at art.

I was introduced to the author through one of my favorite prose stylists, David Bentley Hart, in his article Brilliantly Bad Books. Read the article and then try a little of Irene Iddesleigh, especially if you have some literature lovers to share it with. Laughter is good medicine.

Consider This New Book on Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition

I've been looking forward to reading this for a while... Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition. After reading part of the forward by David Hicks at Amazon, I'm really excited.

Also, check out the free study guide you can get right now.

The Awakening of Miss Prim

Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera turns out to be a kindred spirit to those who homeschool, love literature, believe that small is beautiful, and long for the simple life. Her first novel, The Awakening of Miss Prim, is a virtual apologetic for John Senior's Thousand Good Books approach to education, disguised as a Jane Austen romance, populated with characters who have imbibed the spirit of G.K. Chesterton. If this sounds too good to be true, give it a try - she actually pulls it off. 

A Peace to End All Peace

My understanding of the history of what we now refer to as the Middle East was almost non-existent before reading this engaging history of the region from shortly before the Great War up to the current time. The Ottoman Empire, Winston Churchill, The Great Game, The Russian Revolution, John Buchan, Lawrence of Arbia, Making the World Safe for Democracy, and the beginnings of Zionism all come to focus in this mysterious region of the globe. I highly recommended A Peace to End All Peace as a great work of history and relevant to the news of the hour.

What we learn from art, literature, history, and music

Knowledge includes three distinct kinds: knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge what. I know that uranium is radioactive; I know how to ride a bicycle; and I sometimes know what to do, what to say or what to feel. The first kind of knowledge is information (of which science is the systematic part); the second is skill; the third virtue. In reverse order these correspond to the three inputs into a rational life: the ends, the means and the facts. Knowing what to do, Aristotle suggested, is a matter of right judgement (orthos logos); but it also involves feeling rightly. The virtuous person ‘knows how to feel’, and this means feeling what the situation requires: the right emotion, towards the right object, on the right occasion and in the right degree. Moral education has just such knowledge as its goal: it is an education of the emotions. The virtue of the Greek hero is of a piece with his emotional certainty, and this certainty is the gift of culture, and of the higher vision which culture makes available. By setting the individual within the context of the group, by providing him with ritual expressions and the path to collective release, by uniting him in thought with the unborn and the dead, and by imbuing his thoughts with ideas of sanctity and sacrilege, the culture enables the hero to give safe and sincere expression to the feelings that social life requires. The common culture tells him how and what to feel, and in doing so raises his life to the ethical plane, where the thought of judgement inhabits whatever he does.” —from Roger Scruton’s Modern Culture (p. 15)

Greek Warrior Ethic in a Nutshell

From Alexander Pope's awesome translation of the Iliad:

Ye Greeks, be men! the charge of battle bear;
Your brave associates, and your selves revere!
Let glorious acts your glorious acts inspire,
And catch from breast to breast the noble fire!
On valour's side the odds of combate lie,
The brave live glorious, or lamented die;
The wretch who trembles in the field of fame,
Meets death, and worse than death, eternal shame.