Out with the new and in with the old . . . huh?

Swift

To this end I have some time since with a world of pains and art dissected the carcase [sic] of human nature and read many useful lectures upon the several parts both containing and contained till at last it smelt so strong I could preserve it no longer. . .  I do affirm that having carefully cut up human nature I have found a very strange new and important discovery that the public good of mankind is performed by two ways instruction and diversion And I have farther proved in my said several readings which perhaps the world may one day see if I can prevail on any friend to steal a copy or on certain gentlemen of my admirers to be very importunate that as mankind is now disposed he receives much greater advantage by being diverted than instructed

(Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, Section V)

In a July post, I discussed some of the delicious acidity of Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (see Swift Action). I didn’t, however, spend any time on his lampoons of the self-proclaimed literati who deign to tell the rest of us poor souls how to live. Swift valued paths forged by history’s greatest thinkers and aspired for mankind to build on the great truths revealed by these masters. His “man of science” persona, by contrast, goes so far as to posit that memory, itself, has no use:

Memory being an employment of the mind upon things past, is a faculty for which the learned in our illustrious age have no manner of occasion, who deal entirely with invention, and strike all things out of themselves (Tale of a Tub, section VI)

Dostoyevsky

Another writer of some note, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, also had some fun with ideas floating about the 1860s through one of his characters in his opus Crime and Punishment. Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov is a character we initially despise for his treatment of one of the female roles, but then we cheer him as he foils a plot to besmirch a different woman's reputation. This dichotomy aside, Dostoyevsky uses Lebeziatnikov to scald progressive ideas about treating mental illness in a bit of satire that I believe Swift would applaud:

“Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris they have been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such treatment. His idea was that there’s nothing really wrong with the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He gradually showed the madman his error and, would you believe it, they say he was successful? But as he made use of douches too, how far success was due to that treatment remains uncertain. . . . So it seems at least.” 1

As a poignant coda to this passage, Dostoyevsky adds, “Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen.” Even this central character of the novel – whose descent into madness is foundational to the story – recognizes the absurdity of the argument.

A parallel to today’s societal debate can be found. There are those who are blindly suspicious of new ideas and different thinking; there are those with a headstrong rejection of civil tradition simply to celebrate the act of rejection. I think that most of us are guilty of both – to greater and lesser extents – as we slog knee-deep through our paradigms.

I’m going to do the best I can to give fair hearings, suppress my own acerbic tongue, and celebrate the old while seasoning life with the new. Did I just make a New Year resolution?



1 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor (2011-04-12). 200 GREATEST NOVELS, STORIES & POEMS EVER WRITTEN: THE COMPLETE HARVARD CLASSICS LIBRARY SHELF OF FICTION (The Complete Works Collection; Kindle Locations 147997-148002)

Swift image reported to be in the public domain and available here
Dostoyevsky image reported to be in the public domain and available here