I shot an arrow in the air.

October 1, 2015

I shot an arrow in the air. 

Morning well started but still in bed, rain sheeting against the windows, I read again Montaigne’s “The Soul Expends Its Passions Upon False Objects Where the True Are Wanting”:  If we don’t have anything else to lash out at, or don’t know what to lash out at, we’ll beat our fists against the air.  Montaigne quotes Lucan:

                             Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densa

                                    Occurant sylvae, spation diffuses inani.

[So the wind, unless its might comes up against thick wood,

will lose its force, diffused in empty space.]

Montaigne goes on

Montaigne prepares for Joaquin.

So it seems that the soul, being transported and discomposed, turns its violence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it, and therefore always requires an object at which to aim and on which to act.  Plutarch says of those who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part that is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge and create one false and frivolous.  And we see that the soul, in its passions, inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical subject, even contrary to its own belief, than not to have something to work upon.

If we have no one or no thing to blame, we find something to attack – physically.  We tear our hair out, literally.  “’Tis a common practice.”  But to what avail?  “The philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handsful pulled his hair off his head for sorrow, ‘Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?’”

          Or, God is a convenient scapegoat.  Montaigne cites two examples:

I remember there was a story current, when I was a boy, that one of our neighboring kings  [probably Alfonso XI of Castile] having received a blow from the hand of God, swore he would be revenged, and in order to do it, made proclamation that for ten years to come no one should pray to Him, or so much as mention Him throughout his dominions . . . .

Augustus Caesar, having been tossed with a tempest at sea, fell to defying Neptune, and in the pomp of the Circensian games, to be revenged, deposed his statue from the place it had amongst the deities.

Apparently, one can’t simply ignore it, and it will go away on its own.