Essayists From England

"The tomb cries aloud to us—its dead silence presses on the drum of the ear like thunder, saying, Look at this, and erase your illusions; now know the extreme value of human life; reflect on this and strew human life with flowers; save every hour for the sunshine; let your labour be so ordered that in future times the loved ones may dwell longer with those who love them; open your minds; exalt your souls; widen the sympathies of your hearts; face the things that are now as you will face the reality of death; make joy real now to those you love, and help forward the joy of those yet to be born. Let these facts force the mind and the soul to the increase of thought, and the consequent remission of misery; so that those whose time it is to die may have enjoyed all that is possible in life. Lift up your mind and see now in this bitterness of parting, in this absence of certainty, the fact that there is no directing intelligence; remember that this death is not of old age, which no one living in the world has ever seen; remember that old age is possible, and perhaps even more than old age; and beyond these earthly things—what? None know. But let us, turning away from the illusion of a directing intelligence, look earnestly for something better than a god, seek for something higher than prayer, and lift our souls to be with the more than immortal now."

"How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end, and are ordered by a humane intelligence! It is the most utter falsehood and a crime against the human race. Even in my brief time I have been contemporary with events of the most horrible character; as when the mothers in the Balkans cast their own children from the train to perish in the snow; as when the Princess Alice foundered, and six hundred human beings were smothered in foul water; as when the hecatomb of two thousand maidens were burned in the church at Santiago; as when the miserable creatures tore at the walls of the Vienna theatre. Consider only the fates which overtake the little children."

"The old Cambridge, which some of us knew in our youth, with its solemn ecclesiasticism, its quaint archaisms, its fantastic anomallies, its fascinating picturesqueness, its dear old barbaric unintelligible odds and ends that met us at every turn in street and chapel and hall—that old Cambridge is as dead as the Egypt of the Pharaohs."

"Even in our country villages we are losing our Individuals. The world is getting quite too much for us—withering us, in fact."

"The ordinary life of the monastery began at six o'clock in the morning, and when the small bell, called the skilla, rang, all rose, washed themselves at the latrines, put on their daily habit, and then presented themselves at the matin Mass."

"It seems to me that before a man has any right to pose as a reformer he must do two things: first, he must learn the truth of things as they are, and look facts in the face; and secondly, he must learn how things were, and how they have come to be as they are."

"The old men remember the roadsides, the wastes, and commons, and village greens, and patches of no man's land, which have gone from them for ever. The donkey munched the thistles or rolled in the dust, the cow, half starved perhaps in winter, yet gained a certain sort of sustenance and picked up its livelihood under the hedge or on the green. The geese hissed at strangers intruding upon this or that patch of verdure, and brought in a few shillings, if their owner were lucky with them, at Michaelmas time."

"If the salt was dear and scarce, sugar was unknown except to the very rich. The poor man had little to sweeten his lot. The bees gave him honey; and long after the time I am dealing with, people left not only their hives to their children by will, but actually bequeathed a summer flight of bees to their friends; while the hive was claimed by one, the next swarm would become the property of another."

"I've watched thee, Scarab! Yea, an hour in vain ⁠I've watched thee, slowly toiling up the hill, ⁠Pushing thy lump of mud before thee still With patience infinite and stubborn strain. Strive as thou mayest, spare neither time nor pain. To screen thy burden from all chance of ill; Push, push, with all a beetle's force of will, Thy ball, alas! rolls ever down again. Toil without end! And why? That after thee Dim hosts of groping Scarabs too shall climb This self-same height? Accursed progeny Of Sisyphus, what antenatal crime Has doomed us too to roll incessantly ⁠Life's Stone, recoiling from the Alps of time?"

"There was intoxication in the air; The wind, keen blowing from across the seas, O'er leagues of new-ploughed land and heathery leas, Smelt of wild gorse whose gold flamed everywhere. And undertone of song pulsed far and near, The soaring larks filled heaven with ecstasies, And, like a living clock among the trees, The shouting cuckoo struck the time of year. For now the Sun had found the earth once more, And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss; Who thrilled with light of love in every pore, Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his. Then all things felt life fluttering at their core— The world shook mystical in lambent bliss."

"I twitch every time anyone mentions ‘Germanic’ culture."

"[T]he writing of history is inescapably political, my aim is partly to provide a basis for a more politically and ethically responsible intervention by historians in modern political debate about migration."

"The first part of the essay calls into question the idea that the Germanic-speaking barbarians shared any sort of unifying ethos or culture that would allow us to conceive of them as a single entity. This section largely summarizes a particular direction in recent work, but the conclusion is still far from generally accepted or integrated in current study and so requires restating... The comprehensive rejection of the idea of a unifying Germanic ethos and identity among pre-migratory Germani removes the classic basis for nineteenth-century views of the German people as rooted in distant history... One inheritance of nineteenth-century (and earlier) notions of pan-Germanic culture is the unlikely notion that all Germani had access to a common range of cultural traits, upon which they could draw at will... Attempts to change this intellectually careless state of affairs are making only slow process."

"Recently, something of an academic counter-revolution... has taken place. Oxford-trained historians have led the way, publishing books repeating the same argument: the barbarian migrations involved real ‘peoples on the move’, which brought down the Roman Empire. This has stimulated traditionalist archaeologists into a backlash against more nuanced interpretations of the material record. Whatever their authors’ politics (though these can be guessed at from their writings and publishing choices) there can be no doubt that these works have—in the most generous interpretation—been written sufficiently carelessly as to provide succour to far-right extremists. What is more, the barbarian migrations have become a popular metaphor among racists and other opponents of modern migration... The Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s preferred historical model was the Crusades but it is nevertheless significant that he described the killings as ‘a small barbarian act to prevent a larger barbarian act’,17 the latter being the supposed take-over of Europe by Muslim immigrants."

"The recent use of scientific (or pseudo-scientific) methodologies to examine migration has added an extra, alarming dimension. DNA, whether ‘ancient’ (from excavated material) or ‘modern’ samples (from living populations), is being used to track migration. The danger, barely addressed (at best dismissed as a purely ‘ideological’ objection), is of reducing ethnicity to biology and thus to something close to the nineteenth- century idea of race, at the basis of the ‘nation state’."

"[I'm] (probably) the most significant historian of early medieval Europe under the age of 60 anywhere in the world... [T]hat's not (just) me being cocky, but a pretty sober assessment of the range and quality of my work."

"The Nazis adopted these ideas with gusto but they did not invent them. Nor have post-Nazi archaeologists entirely abandoned some of their foundational notions. The idea of a really existing Germanic culture, unifying enormously diverse and disparate peoples living between the North Sea and the Ukraine and between the Danube and Scandinavia, has, in spite of its clearly contingent roots in early modern and modern political history, refused to go away. It has, however, now been turned around yet again, by misrepresenting ancient history as a binary opposition between civilized Romans and Germanic barbarians, to support modern xenophobic and anti-immigration policies."

"In the reinterpretation of ‘Germanic’ archaeology I have benefited from discussions with, and the encouragement of fellow-subversives... vive la re´volution!"

"One of the problems that has most beset the study of early medieval Europe is, as noted, that of Germanism. This book aims to tackle this issue... To lump all Germanic-speaking tribes together is simply to repeat the assumptions of Roman ethnographers or the politically contingent Germanist interpretations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There is, furthermore, the danger of assuming a linkage between Germanic-speaking barbarians of antiquity and the Germans of modern Europe. This was an approach adopted equally by nineteenth-century historians working in the context of German unification, by the Nazis and at the same time, polemically, by their enemies... [T]here are many occasions where modern historians and, especially, archaeologists, treat the different Germanic-speaking groups as sharing some sort of unifying ethos... It is implicit in such interpretations that all ‘Germanic’ peoples somehow share a common mentality. In their minds is a common stock of cultural traits which all ‘Germanic’ people can draw upon as and when they see fit. This may be claimed to be a reductio ad absurdam of traditional assumptions. It is, but only because these assumptions are fundamentally absurd."

"The problems of Germanism have long been recognised. Alas, entirely analogous developments are currently taking place, also in the course of modern political movements, with the ‘Celts’. It is presently more fashionable and acceptable to talk of the ‘Celtic’ peoples as sharing a unified culture so that evidence from one area (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall or Brittany) can be transferred unproblematically to the elucidation of another, sometimes regardless of chronological context. This is no more acceptable than Germanism."

"There can be no question of a general overriding ‘Germanic’ or ‘Celtic’ identity amongst the different barbarian groups. Shared language might have facilitated communication and alliance but there is no evidence for or reason to suppose a higher level of ethnic identity on this basis."

"Historians are not immune from similarly bizarre reasoning, of course. The counter-revisionist offensive against more subtle ways of thinking about the fifth century has been led by British historians from Oxford. Peter Heather has repeatedly deployed the notion that, because wagons, women and children are occasionally mentioned in sources concerning the barbarians, the barbarians must have been ‘peoples’ on the move... Such are the weakness and double-standards of the arguments in favour of the traditional narrative. You can list many more."

"I bring everything I know to whatever I write, and I believe the same of other writers. A person’s complete life experience forms the basis of authorial voice, in my opinion. To hold back any part makes a narrative feel contrived."

"In the ebb and flow of battle there are usually only brief flashes of bravery before the brave become the dead."

"When it comes to bodies, there is violence done every day. I did not think of body horror as a sub-genre when writing it, but I think the body is a source of great anxiety to each of us. So you shave (legs, armpits, or chin), taking a blade to yourself; perhaps you exercise, causing yourself pain; perhaps you fast or diet, denying yourself; perhaps your job means you have to stay awake. If you think about it, life itself consists of low-levels of body horror all the time. To write fiction, we just exaggerate some of what happens naturally…"

"It is because of identity politics – we are, sadly, becoming more tribal. The expectation seems to be that a writer from each tribe must tell the story of that tribe. I’m Turkish but also many other things. For me, imagination is a desire to transcend boundaries. When we write, we can be multiple."

"I learned to pay attention to the readers and not to the madness…Because to be a writer in Turkey is a bit like being kissed on one cheek and slapped on the other."

"It felt uncomfortably foreign, I would say. Obviously, it was the first time I had been in a country where everybody looked like me. But obviously, culturally, it was completely alien. And I found people in the street in St. Kitts actually were calling me "English".."

"A writer often wants to change a reader’s perception about the world, which is a political act. But we have to work through character, so helping the reader to feel close to fictional characters is the gate through which we have to usher the reader. I am one of those writers who hopes to use character as a way of introducing the reader to a new way of thinking about the world."

"Questions of identity have always played a large part in my thinking and writing; and, of course, race is a key component of identity. Certainly for me, and certainly in Britain."

"Many women are asking: why do some women choose to cover their heads? We have to understand this and other questions. This is one of the biggest challenges for feminism today. What is worrying is that when women are divided into categories it is the status quo – the patriarchy – that benefits.…"

"I never really see a book in the context of what went before because when I finish a book I try to press the delete button so that it’s wiped off the hard drive…"

"I have met lots of women who have grown up in Turkey who cannot bring themselves to swear in Turkish. But in English they use the F-word all the time. Writing is like that for me."

"Protagonists don’t have to be likable. They just have to be compelling. The key characteristic of a protagonist, whether they are conventionally good or evil, is that the reader must be interested in knowing what they will do next, or how they will respond to what happens to them. I’ve mentioned elsewhere how much I detest all that ‘hero’s journey’ crap…"

"If you want pure science, crack open a textbook or buy a journal. Fiction is about people. To foreground people as opposed to science does not weaken the genre, it opens it up. Insisting on one incarnation of a phenomenon is antiscientific. Science observes phenomena and incorporates new manifestations into the corpus. “Real” science fiction reminds me of certain academics who are ossified in their little knowledge fiefdoms. The human factor is messy. The human factor cannot be quantified with P-values and Confidence Intervals. This horrifies some readers and writers, but I love it. There is nothing wrong with foregrounding science, but there is room in genre for every flavour. More variety leads to more fans. That can’t be a bad thing."

"At Oxford a leading mind between 1860 and 1880 was T. H. Green, a man remarkable both in mental power and influence. He first gave a shake to Mill's supremacy as logician and metaphysician. But, notwithstanding Mill's conviction that false philosophy is the support of bad institutions, his critic's intuitionist philosophy did not prevent Green from being an ardent reformer, with Cobden and Bright for idols. In 1858 he ventured on a motion at the Union in approval of Bright. "It was frantically opposed," he said, "and after two days' discussion I found myself in a minority of two. I am almost ashamed to belong to a university which is in such a state of darkness.""

"Green's brilliance was not confined to what many people saw as a secular faith. He also had the clearest idea of how this faith was to be spread. Balliol became a powerhouse for teaching Britain's elite a set of beliefs that would shape their own lives while becoming the prism through which public policy was refracted. The last prime minister to have known that he was an Idealist was Clement Attlee and Attlee's adherence to the hymn sheet was probably typical of most."

"One of these innovators—perhaps the most stimulating to his contemporaries, though not the most successful in giving permanent form to his thoughts—was Thomas Hill Green. A sound instinct led him to a systematic, minute study of Hume; in his efforts to gain a sure footing he examined the works of the master of destructive criticism. Green did not construct a system, for one can scarcely term such his "Simplified Kantism"; at the end of his life he was groping in search of larger truths. But if an active, hopeful spirit in philosophy is abroad, he as much as anyone helped to bring it about. Far outside the realm of pure philosophy his influence extended; and many of those who have an idea of a life of "Christian citizenship"—those who hold fast to the doctrine that "only citizenship makes the moral man"—know not that they derive from him their creed."

"He was a thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be called a Radical, full of faith in the people, an advocate of pretty nearly every measure that tended to democratise English institutions, a friend of peace and of non-intervention."

"Green gave a superficial impression of reserve and even austerity, but no teacher in Oxford gathered around him, as time went on, such a band of wholehearted and enthusiastic disciples. His lectures were not easy to follow: his manner was apt to be jerky; and his style abounded in what Burke calls “nodosities.” It was a familiar gibe of those who looked on from outside the fold, that by the end of the hour he had become so contorted that he had to be untied by friendly hands. It must be admitted that, while he made a deep and indelible impression, not only upon the best intellects of the place, but upon the whole course of philosophic thought in the University then and thereafter, the less well-grounded of his neophytes began to talk a jargon or “patter” which lent itself to the ridicule of the unregenerate. Jowett looked on with a certain mild and mellow scepticism at these new departures, having himself (as I have said elsewhere) in his earlier days “déjà passé par là.” Between 1870 and 1880 Green was undoubtedly the greatest personal force in the real life of Oxford."

"T. H. Green taught philosophy from his base at Balliol College in Oxford and his work resulted in lifting much of the honey from the Christian hive and securing it in a public ideology to which Christians and non-Christians could subscribe. He recognised that a literal belief in the New Testament miracles had become the tripwire into disbelief for all too many people. Green successfully divorced Christian morality from dogma and English Idealism was born. For a century our country's hymn sheet was based on Green's work. Most people were probably unaware of their debt to this obscure Oxford don but that did not stop them gustily singing the same songs as everyone else."

"The inspiration for Toynbee, as for a whole generation of social reformers, came from the Oxford philosopher Thomas Hill Green (1836–82). Green's reappraisal of the central tenets of Liberalism makes him the most important figure of this period... [I]n his attempt to revise traditional Liberal theories to meet new situations, Green broke with traditional English empiricism and adopted an idealist metaphysics. His adoption of idealism allowed Green to redefine the Liberal ideas of freedom and society in order to permit state action."

"[I]t is quite certain that only through the equal presence to successive feeling of a subject other than they, which holds them together, and thus held together regards them as its object, are there related things or relations at all. It is not that first there are relations then they are conceived. Every relation is constituted by an act of conception. This is not to be understood as meaning that there is 'nothing but the soul and its feelings,' or that realities are feelings, even feelings as determined by thought. It is through feeling as determined by thought that for us there comes to be reality, but the reality is not to be identified with the process by which we, as thinking animals, arrive at it. Even simple facts of feeling (e.g. the fact that a certain sweet smell accompanies the sight of a rose) are not feelings as felt: more clearly, the conditions of such facts are not feelings, even as determined by thought. A 'feeling determined by thought' would probably mean a feeling which but for thought I should not have, e.g. emotion at the spectacle of a tragedy. Objective facts are not of this sort, not feelings determined by thought, though but for the determination of feeling by thought they would not exist for our consciousness."

"The young were taught in sixth form and university all the fallacies in John Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty and were encouraged to believe that T. H. Green's definition of positive freedom was superior. Gladstonian liberals declared that socialist plans to nationalize industry and control production infringed personal freedom. But Green argued that so far from diminishing freedom such measures could increase it. A few people's freedom would be curtailed but vastly more people would now be made free to do things that hitherto they had been unable to do. The sum of freedom would increase. "Freedom for an Oxford don," it was said, "is a very different freedom for an Egyptian peasant.""

"Central to Green's thought, and most important to later new Liberal theorists, was Green's redefinition of freedom. The expansion of the idea of freedom to include economic as well as political rights concerned the later Mill. But it was in the works of Green that a new theoretical definition of freedom was first developed. Green was aware of the economic and social conditions which were leading men to question the traditional Liberal concept of freedom, but his own definition must be understood not only in terms of his reaction to the suffering of the poor and the working class, but more important, in terms of his moral concerns. Green's original interests were basically moral and religious, and his idealist metaphysics was meant to replace Christianity with a kind of undogmatic religion where men found God through service in this world."

"Green, profoundly dissatisfied with these meagre and arid dietaries, turned away from them, and gradually found that for which he was in quest—the basis of a spiritual philosophy—in the speculations of Kant and his successors, and in particular of Hegel. He was commonly called a Hegelian, but while he was steeped and even saturated in the dialectic of that illustrious teacher, he never lost his intellectual self-mastery, and his presentation of the Hegelian doctrine was always coloured, both in substance and in expression, by his own robust and independent personality. He had, indeed, another side to his life and activities. He was a man of affairs, a member for some time of the Oxford City Council, an ardent Liberal politician, and an energetic worker in causes, such for instance as that of temperance, in which he thought he could discern the germs of social progress. He was a layman, and could have passed none of the common tests of orthodoxy, but he had a profoundly religious mind. His lectures on St. Paul's Epistles were the best I ever heard."

"A few centuries from now, if involuntary suffering still exists in the world, the explanation for its persistence won't be that we've run out of computational resources to phase out its biological signature, but rather that rational agents – for reasons unknown – will have chosen to preserve it."

"The biology of suffering in intelligent agents is a deep underlying source of existential risk – and one that can potentially be overcome."

"What right have humans to impose our values on members of another race or species? The charge is seductive but misplaced. There is no anthropomorphism here, no imposition of human values on alien minds. Human and nonhuman animals are alike in an ethically critical respect. The pleasure-pain axis is universal to sentient life. No sentient being wants to be harmed – to be asphyxiated, dismembered, or eaten alive. The wishes of a terrified toddler or a fleeing zebra to flourish unmolested are not open to doubt even in the absence of the verbal capacity to say so."

"[B]oth natural selection and the historical record offer powerful reasons for doubting the trustworthiness of our naive moral intuitions. So the possibility that human civilisation might be founded upon some monstrous evil should be taken seriously - even if the possibility seems transparently absurd at the time."