I'm Getting Bogged Down in this Book

Hundreds of Iron Age bodies have been found in peat bogs throughout Northern Europe over the last 250 years or so. Many are so well preserved (as Tollund Man on the cover) that the police are usually called when they are found; the peat cutters take them for murder victims or "lost" people from the village.

The really creepy part is that Professor Glob (yes, that's his name -- see the cover) tells us that all the available evidence suggests that most of these people were sacrificed in pre-Christian fertility cult "spring weddings" of one variety or another. Left unclear is whether or not the victims were willing participants in these ceremonies or not.

Ouch.

Goes well with:

The Professor's Views on the Prevalence of Prejudice

June 1969: Everyone with a television is glued to it to watch Neil Armstrong take man's first step on the moon.

Early 1970s: TV networks get thousands of complaints after interrupting a NBA basketball game broadcast to show . . . another moon landing.

Professor T saw it all coming:

"Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable."

--Chapter 8

Teufelsdrockh on Tattoos

"The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. 'Miserable indeed,' says he, 'was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration. Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.'"

--Chapter 5 (emphasis added)

I wonder what Professor T would have to say about these?

Start and Restartus

Yes, it's time for another pre-20th century book. This selection is a worthy opponent, indeed. Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" (literally, the "tailor reclothed") is many things, but easy to read for a 21st century faux intellectual is not one of them.

Carlyle's first work, originally serialized circa 1831 Fraser's Magazine (imagine something similar in any periodical on the planet today!), pokes not-so-gentle fun at idealistic German philosophy, but saves its main ferocity for the early nineteenth century incarnation of scientific rationalism. The book is a running series of excerpts and extended commentary by the author of the novel "philosophy of clothes" of the obscure German Professor Teufelsdrockh (literally "devil dung" -- I think I remember his class from junior year!). I will forego an extended review in this medium in favor of periodic posts of notable excerpts, perhaps with a little commentary of my own. (Carlyle I'm not, but then, if you're reading my blog, you probably aren't a regular reader of Carlyle!)

So, here we go:

[N]o man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

--The editor on Professor T's laugh, from Chapter 4.

Because Man Does Not Live By Books Alone

Those Junior Leaguers set a mean table . . . .