the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery from sorrows of young werther

AUGUST 18.
Must it ever be thus,—that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. When in bygone days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains across the river, and upon the green, flowery valley before me, and saw all nature budding and bursting around; the hills clothed from foot to peak with tall, thick forest trees; the valleys in all their varied windings, shaded with the loveliest woods; and the soft river gliding along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the beautiful clouds which the soft evening breeze wafted across the sky,—when I heard the groves about me melodious with the music of birds, and saw the million swarms of insects dancing in the last golden beams of the sun, whose setting rays awoke the humming beetles from their grassy beds, whilst the subdued tumult around directed my attention to the ground, and I there observed the arid rock compelled to yield nutriment to the dry moss, whilst the heath flourished upon the barren sands below me, all this displayed to me the inner warmth which animates all nature, and filled and glowed within my heart. I felt myself exalted by this overflowing fulness to the perception of the Godhead, and the glorious forms of an infinite universe became visible to my soul! Stupendous mountains encompassed me, abysses yawned at my feet, and cataracts fell headlong down before me; impetuous rivers rolled through the plain, and rocks and mountains resounded from afar. In the depths of the earth I saw innumerable powers in motion, and multiplying to infinity; whilst upon its surface, and beneath the heavens, there teemed ten thousand varieties of living creatures. Everything around is alive with an infinite number of forms; while mankind fly for security to their petty houses, from the shelter of which they rule in their imaginations over the wide-extended universe. Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little. From the inaccessible mountains, across the desert which no mortal foot has trod, far as the confines of the unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator; and every atom to which he has given existence finds favour in his sight. Ah, how often at that time has the flight of a bird, soaring above my head, inspired me with the desire of being transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasures of life from the foaming goblet of the Infinite, and to partake, if but for a moment even, with the confined powers of my soul, the beatitude of that Creator who accomplishes all things in himself, and through himself!
My dear friend, the bare recollection of those hours still consoles me. Even this effort to recall those ineffable sensations, and give them utterance, exalts my soul above itself, and makes me doubly feel the intensity of my present anguish.
It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes, and, instead of prospects of eternal life, the abyss of an ever open grave yawned before me. Can we say of anything that it exists when all passes away, when time, with the speed of a storm, carries all things onward,—and our transitory existence, hurried along by the torrent, is either swallowed up by the waves or dashed against the rocks? There is not a moment but preys upon you,—and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.

Politics is history in the making from Zweites Buch

WAR AND PEACE Politics is history in the making. History itself is the presentation of the course of a Folk's struggle for existence. I deliberately use the phrase struggle for existence here because, in truth, that struggle for daily bread, equally in peace and war, is an eternal battle against thousands upon thousands of resistances, just as life itself is an eternal struggle against death. For men know as little why they live as does any other creature of the world. Only life is filled with the longing to preserve itself. The most primitive creature knows only the instinct of the self preservation of its own, in creatures standing higher in the scale it is transferred to wife and child, and in those standing still higher to the entire species. While, apparently, man often surrenders his own instinct of self preservation for the sake of the species, in truth he nevertheless serves it to the highest degree. For not seldom the preservation of the life of a whole Folk, and with this of the individual, lies only in this renunciation by the individual. Hence the sudden courage of a mother in the defence of her young and the heroism of a man in the defence of his Folk. The two powerful life instincts, hunger and love, correspond to the greatness of the instinct for self preservation. While the appeasement of eternal hunger guarantees self preservation, the satisfaction of love assures the continuance of the race. In truth these two drives are the rulers of life. And even though the fleshless aesthete may lodge a thousand protests against such an assertion, the fact of his own existence is already a refutation of his protest. Nothing that is made of flesh and blood can escape the laws which determined its coming into being. As soon as the human mind believes itself to be superior to them, it destroys that real substance which is the bearer of the mind. What, however, applies to individual man also applies to nations. A nation is only a multitude of more or less similar individual beings. Its strength lies in the value of the individual beings forming it as such, and in the character and the extent of the sameness of these values. The same laws which determine the life of the individual, and to which he is subject, are therefore also valid for the Folk. Self preservation and continuance are the great urges underlying all action, as long as such a body can still claim to be healthy. Therefore, even the consequences of these general laws of life will be similar among Folks, as they are among individuals If, for every creature on this Earth, the instinct of self preservation, in its twin goals of self maintenance and continuance, exhibits the most elementary power, nevertheless the possibility of satisfaction is limited, so the logical consequence of this is a struggle in all its forms for the possibility of maintaining this life, that is, the satisfaction of the instinct for self preservation. Countless are the species of all the Earth's organisms, unlimited at any moment in individuals is their instinct for self preservation as well as the longing for continuance, yet the space in which the whole life process takes place is limited. The struggle for existence and continuance in life waged by billions upon billions of organisms takes place on the surface of an exactly measured sphere. The compulsion to engage in the struggle for existence lies in the limitation of the living space; but in the life struggle for this living space lies also the basis for evolution

Zweites Buch

Review of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler by George Orwell

It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett's unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator's preface and notes is to tone down the book's ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism.

Then suddenly it turned out that Hitler was not respectable after all. As one result of this, Hurst and Blackett's edition was reissued in a new jacket explaining that all profits would be devoted to the Red Cross. Nevertheless, simply on the internal evidence of Mein Kampf, it is difficult to believe that any real change has taken place in Hitler's aims and opinions. When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn't develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics. Probably, in Hitler's own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention of smashing England afterwards. Now, as it has turned out, England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the more easily bribed of the two. But Russia's turn will come when England is out of the picture—that, no doubt, is how Hitler sees it. Whether it will turn out that way is of course a different question.

Suppose that Hitler's programme could be put into effect. What he envisages, a hundred years hence, is a continuous state of 250 million Germans with plenty of "living room" (i.e. stretching to Afghanistan or thereabouts), a horrible brainless empire in which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder. How was it that he was able to put this monstrous vision across? It is easy to say that at one stage of his career he was financed by the heavy industrialists, who saw in him the man who would smash the Socialists and Communists. They would not have backed him, however, if he had not talked a great movement into existence already. Again, the situation in Germany, with its seven million unemployed, was obviously favourable for demagogues. But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches...The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett's edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.

jalapeno cinnamon rolls

nabokov

pale fire

pork from gordon ramsey

beasts of England from animal farm

All the animals were now present except Moses, the tame raven, who slept
on a perch behind the back door. When Major saw that they had all made
themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he cleared his throat
and began:

"Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I had last
night. But I will come to the dream later. I have something else to say
first. I do not think, comrades, that I shall be with you for many months
longer, and before I die, I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom
as I have acquired. I have had a long life, I have had much time for
thought as I lay alone in my stall, and I think I may say that I
understand the nature of life on this earth as well as any animal now
living. It is about this that I wish to speak to you.

"Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it:
our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given
just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us
who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength;
and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are
slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning
of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is
free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.

"But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land
of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell
upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of England is
fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance
to an enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This
single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of
sheep--and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now
almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable
condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen
from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our
problems. It is summed up in a single word--Man. Man is the only real
enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and
overwork is abolished for ever.

"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not
give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he
cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the
animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that
will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our
labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of
us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I see before me, how
many thousands of gallons of milk have you given during this last year?
And what has happened to that milk which should have been breeding up
sturdy calves? Every drop of it has gone down the throats of our enemies.
And you hens, how many eggs have you laid in this last year, and how many
of those eggs ever hatched into chickens? The rest have all gone to market
to bring in money for Jones and his men. And you, Clover, where are those
four foals you bore, who should have been the support and pleasure of your
old age? Each was sold at a year old--you will never see one of them
again. In return for your four confinements and all your labour in the
fields, what have you ever had except your bare rations and a stall?

"And even the miserable lives we lead are not allowed to reach their
natural span. For myself I do not grumble, for I am one of the lucky ones.
I am twelve years old and have had over four hundred children. Such is the
natural life of a pig. But no animal escapes the cruel knife in the end.
You young porkers who are sitting in front of me, every one of you will
scream your lives out at the block within a year. To that horror we all
must come--cows, pigs, hens, sheep, everyone. Even the horses and the dogs
have no better fate. You, Boxer, the very day that those great muscles of
yours lose their power, Jones will sell you to the knacker, who will cut
your throat and boil you down for the foxhounds. As for the dogs, when
they grow old and toothless, Jones ties a brick round their necks and
drowns them in the nearest pond.

"Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life
of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and
the produce of our labour would be our own. Almost overnight we could
become rich and free. What then must we do? Why, work night and day, body
and soul, for the overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you,
comrades: Rebellion! I do not know when that Rebellion will come, it might
be in a week or in a hundred years, but I know, as surely as I see this
straw beneath my feet, that sooner or later justice will be done. Fix your
eyes on that, comrades, throughout the short remainder of your lives! And
above all, pass on this message of mine to those who come after you, so
that future generations shall carry on the struggle until it is victorious.

"And remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument
must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Man and the
animals have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the
prosperity of the others. It is all lies. Man serves the interests of no
creature except himself. And among us animals let there be perfect unity,
perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are enemies. All animals are
comrades."

At this moment there was a tremendous uproar. While Major was speaking
four large rats had crept out of their holes and were sitting on their
hindquarters, listening to him. The dogs had suddenly caught sight of
them, and it was only by a swift dash for their holes that the rats saved
their lives. Major raised his trotter for silence.

"Comrades," he said, "here is a point that must be settled. The wild
creatures, such as rats and rabbits--are they our friends or our enemies?
Let us put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are
rats comrades?"

The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority
that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs
and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.
Major continued:

"I have little more to say. I merely repeat, remember always your duty of
enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an
enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And
remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble
him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal
must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink
alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the
habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over
his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No
animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.

"And now, comrades, I will tell you about my dream of last night. I cannot
describe that dream to you. It was a dream of the earth as it will be when
Man has vanished. But it reminded me of something that I had long
forgotten. Many years ago, when I was a little pig, my mother and the
other sows used to sing an old song of which they knew only the tune and
the first three words. I had known that tune in my infancy, but it had
long since passed out of my mind. Last night, however, it came back to me
in my dream. And what is more, the words of the song also came back-words,
I am certain, which were sung by the animals of long ago and have been
lost to memory for generations. I will sing you that song now, comrades.
I am old and my voice is hoarse, but when I have taught you the tune, you
can sing it better for yourselves. It is called 'Beasts of England'."

Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. As he had said, his voice
was hoarse, but he sang well enough, and it was a stirring tune, something
between 'Clementine' and 'La Cucaracha'. The words ran:

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken to my joyful tidings
Of the golden future time.

Soon or late the day is coming,
Tyrant Man shall be o'erthrown,
And the fruitful fields of England
Shall be trod by beasts alone.

Rings shall vanish from our noses,
And the harness from our back,
Bit and spur shall rust forever,
Cruel whips no more shall crack.

Riches more than mind can picture,
Wheat and barley, oats and hay,
Clover, beans, and mangel-wurzels
Shall be ours upon that day.

Bright will shine the fields of England,
Purer shall its waters be,
Sweeter yet shall blow its breezes
On the day that sets us free.

For that day we all must labour,
Though we die before it break;
Cows and horses, geese and turkeys,
All must toil for freedom's sake.

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken well and spread my tidings
Of the golden future time.

Is everybody created equal?

Is everybody created equal? Yes, there are no master races, and there is nobody any better than anybody else. No, the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. what should we wish for? should we wish for parity? should we wish for socialism and upheaval? should we look to dialectical materialism? should we look to religion? who can help here? certainly adults and children are not equal. children seem to have more life, more joy, more inspiration than we do. Are males and females equal? what would that even mean? are they the same as each other? certainly not. are boys and girls the same? by no means! even a baby boy can be told apart from a girl, by character and looks. but what does equality mean? what can equality mean? trump, who is filthy rich got in power, and not merely by being President. what are we looking at here? what has happened to our country? so is everybody equal? who knows?

adam and eve