Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
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“But if our mind were immortal, it would not when dying complain so much of its dissolution as it would rejoice in passing abroad and quitting its vesture like a snake,”
I never saw any one who complained of his dissolution in death; but he perhaps had seen some Epicurean philosophizing even in death, and with his latest breath discoursing about his dissolution.
How can it be known whether he feels that he is in a state of dissolution, or that he is being set free from the body, when his tongue grows dumb at his departure? For as long as he perceives and has the power of speech, he is not yet dissolved; when he has suffered dissolution, he is now unable either to perceive or to speak, so that either he is not yet able to complain of his dissolution, or he is no longer able. But, it is said, he understands before he undergoes dissolution, that he must undergo it. Why should I mention that we see many of the dying, not complaining that they are undergoing dissolution, but testifying that they are passing out, and setting forth on their journey and walking? And they signify this by gesture, or if they still are able, they express it also by their voice. From which it is evident that it is not a dissolution which takes place, but a separation; and this shows that the soul continues to exist...
~ Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325), Divine Institutes (Book VII, ch. 12)
I would like to share a little story and theory of mine which granted may sound highly unusual, but then make of it what you like.
For over three years I have had this disease in the form of an extremely nasty, doggedly persistent, and hairy bug in my chest that has caused me to frequently cough and spit up mucus. I thought it was covid (which I have had before twice but recovered from), but a local doctor gave me a test and said and the result was negative for covid; so I don't know if the test was wrong or the disease is something else. (I have not incidentally had any vaccines and frankly will not have any.)
It so happened I was taking a diet/energy pill Oxyburn and I noticed the disease did not like it, and would go into somewhat remission after I took it. The problem is if you take Oxyburn too frequently one feels a strain on the heart. But that said, if taken with a certain moderation, the Oxyburn would somewhat compel the bug to go into hiding -- at least for a while (say 6+ hours).
A disease is a living entity, and it had gotten so I had such a hatred of it and wanted to have it finally killed. Then it occurred to me. By transferring my own (sometimes) sorrow to the disease and which had decided to make it a part of myself, then since it would be a part of myself, I would make it cry as in weep. So by a sort of emotional and psychological transference, I endeavored to make it cry; indeed weep such bitter tears, and realizing what it actually was (and not really a part of me), it would finally wish of itself to die.
Guess what? Now it is dead.
Just a few quick thoughts on topics that have come to my attention of late.
In my experience of dealing with them, I have come to learn that criminal spirit people who are pros at deception and masquerade have the ability to recreate Catholic church feels, tastes and smells. Now exactly what the latter consists of is difficult to quite describe; so if you are not already familiar with such, you will have to take my word for it that there are such things. But then to go on to say professional criminal spirit people can bring up or create such sensory experiences by no means impugns the experiences themselves; anymore more than someone dressing themselves in the clothing or costume of a nun or priest makes them a nun or a priest.
The other point I wanted to briefly touch on is the belief that the anti-Christian or pagan belief or else a view point of being friendly with spirit people governance is a morally acceptable and reasonable way of achieving happiness and contentment in this life. What persons who think this way fail to understand and appreciate is that such "pagan" stance necessarily involves animal and or human sacrifice to "the gods." So if you don't mind victimizing some total innocent to pay for and reap "the gods'" favor, then at least you will be consistent. Why, might it be asked, do "the gods" require such sacrificial offerings? Because it raises people's tolerance for murder and cruelty; such tolerance fosters people's stupidity, and then in turn is enhanced "the gods" ability to have all the more sway to rule and take over our lives. (In other words, that's what friends are for.)
But truly we see that the productions of the mind are immortal. For as many as, devoting themselves to the contempt of present things, have handed down to memory the monuments of their genius and great deeds, have plainly gained by these an imperishable name for their mind and virtue. Therefore, if the deeds of the body are mortal for this reason, because the body itself is mortal, it follows that the soul is shown to be immortal from this, because we see that its productions are not mortal. In the same manner also, the desires of the body and of the soul declare that the one is mortal, the other everlasting. For the body desires nothing except what is temporal, that is, food, drink, clothing, rest, and pleasure; and it cannot desire or attain to these very things without the assent and assistance of the soul. But the soul of itself desires many things which do not extend to the duty or enjoyment of the body; and those are not frail, but eternal, as the fame of virtue, as the remembrance of the name. For the soul even in opposition to the body desires the worship of God, which consists in abstinence from desires and lusts, in the enduring of pain, in the contempt of death. From which it is credible that the soul does not perish, but is separated from the body, because the body can do nothing without the soul, but the soul can do many and great things without the body. Why should I mention that those things which are visible to the eyes, and capable of being touched by the hand, cannot be eternal, because they admit of external violence; but those things which neither come under the touch nor under the sight, but are apparent only in their force and method and effect, are eternal because they suffer no violence from without? But if the body is mortal on this account, because it is equally open to the sight and to the touch, therefore the soul is immortal for this reason, because it can be neither touched nor seen.
~ Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325), Divine Institutes (Book VII, ch. 11)
I have a question.
Why is it with all the endless strife and related tragedy there is in the world, whether domestically or internationally, neo-Hollywood for the past 30+ years is so CONSTANTLY, INCESSANTLY obsessed with and promoting slap-you-up-the-side-of-your-head, gun-in-your-face violence and unbridled rage. I defy anyone to show us a movie trailer from this time frame that does not in some noticeable measure express this mental problem. Yet the same persons who put out this insanity tell us the real root cause of our problems is global warming and intolerance of diversity.
Therefore, when the times which God has appointed for death shall be completed, death itself shall be ended. And because temporal death follows temporal life, it follows that souls rise again to everlasting life, because temporal death has received an end. Again, as the life of the soul is everlasting, in which it receives the divine and unspeakable fruits of its immortality; also its death must be eternal, in which it suffers perpetual punishments and infinite torments for its faults. Therefore things are in this position, that they who are happy in this life, pertaining to the body and the earth, are about to be miserable for ever, because they have already enjoyed the good things which they preferred, which happens to those who adore false gods and neglect the true God. In the next place, they who, following righteousness, have been miserable, and despised, and poor in this life, and have often been harassed with insults and injuries on account of righteousness itself, because virtue cannot otherwise be attained, are about to be always happy, that since they have already endured evils, they may also enjoy goods. Which plainly happens to those who, having despised gods of the earth and frail goods, follow the heavenly religion of God, whose goods are everlasting, as He Himself who gave them. What shall I say of the works of the body and soul? Do not they show that the soul is not subject to death? For, as to the body, since it is itself frail and mortal, whatever works it contrives are equally perishable. For Tullius says that there is nothing which is wrought by the hands of man which is not at some time reduced to destruction, either through injury caused by men, or through length of time, which is the destroyer of all things.
~ Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325), Divine Institutes (Book VII, ch. 11)
An "epiphany" is much like a life discovery an individual makes or experiences. Now the trick of James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners is to try to decipher and identify the "epiphany" the main character in the story has -- as there is usually not a whole lot else going on in the way of plot. As a bonus for your trouble, this book's capturing the details of life, nature and people, their flow, moods and rhythms, is as effectively done as any thing else of its kind you could think of.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2814/2814-h/2814-h.htm
CAST OF PLAYERS IN THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE AGES
* Criminal Spirit People (i.e., Grimy Gumps and his organized crime empire of the universe)
* Goomer Party: Those who partner with criminal spirit for purposes for saving the world, and have a decidedly manichean outlook.
* Anti-Goomer Party: Those who partner with criminal spirit for purposes for saving the world but who don't like the Goomers, yet will partner with criminal spirit if and as they feel necessary.
* (essentially) honest and duly rational persons who want to save the world thru right reason, right morals, seeking peace, law and order, with a mind to respecting human and animal rights (as much as that is possible); will under no circumstances make deals with Gumps and the "celestial" kingdom.
* Innumerable semi-educated, dumb and irrational people who will go along with what everybody else wants.
Thus it happens that in this life there is no reward of virtue, because virtue itself still exists. For as, when vices are completed in their performance, pleasure and their rewards follow; so, when virtue has been ended, its reward follows. But virtue is never ended except by death, since its highest office is in the undergoing of death: therefore the reward of virtue is after death. In fine, Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, perceived, though with doubt, that the chief good does not happen to man except after death. “A man will go,” he says, “with confident spirit, if circumstances shall so happen, to death, in which we have ascertained that there is either the chief good or no evil.” Death, therefore, does not extinguish man, but admits him to the reward of virtue. But he who has contaminated himself, as the same writer says, with vices and crimes, and has been the slave of pleasure, he truly, being condemned, shall suffer eternal punishment, which the sacred writings call the second death, which is both eternal and full of the severest torments. For as two lives are proposed to man, of which the one belongs to the soul, the other to the body; so also two deaths are proposed—one relating to the body, which all must undergo according to nature, the other relating to the soul, which is acquired by wickedness and avoided by virtue. As this life is temporary and has fixed limits, because it belongs to the body; so also death is in like manner temporary and has a fixed end, because it affects the body.
~ Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325), Divine Institutes (Book VII, ch. 10)
"...Of all of Aristides' (of Athens 530-468 B.C.) virtues it was his justice which most impressed itself on the masses, since it was this which he practised most consistently and which affected most people. For this reason, although he was poor and had no standing but that of a popular leader, he won that most royal and godlike title of The Just. That is an epithet which was never sought after by kings and tyrants; some of them delighted in being styled The Besieger of cities, The Thunderbolt, or The Conqueror, and others The Eagle or The Hawk, but all of them, apparently, preferred a renown which was founded on power or violence rather than on virtue. And yet the divine nature, with which these men strive to be associated and to resemble, is believed to be distinguished by three superior attributes, immortality, power, and virtue, and of these the noblest and the most truly divine is virtue. The void and the elements are, in a sense, immortal, and earthquakes, thunderbolts, floods and hurricanes can overwhelm by their power, but justice belongs only to those beings who are capable of reason and the knowledge of the divine.
"So when we consider the three sentiments, admiration, fear and reverence, which divinity inspires among mankind, we find that men appear to admire the gods and think them blessed because they are immortal and unchangeable; to stand in fear and awe of them because of their power and authority. and to love, honour and reverence them because of their justice. At the same time men long for immortality, to which no flesh can attain, and for power, which remains for the most part on the hands of fortune, while they give virtue, the only divine excellence of which we are capable, the last place in their scheme of values. But here they show themselves fools, since a life that is spent in the midst of power and great fortune and authority still needs justice to make it divine, for injustice merely renders it brutish..."
~ Plutarch, "Aristides," ch. 6, 1-4.
"Small family groups gathering together and being loud is the crow community reaction to a dangerous predator. To crows, dangerous predators are predatory birds-some species of hawks, and owls. This loud coming together behavior is called mobbing."
~ a putative expert
Crows are very sociable and sometimes and in some ways affectionate to each other, and it annoys me to hear supposed experts telling us that their coming together in a large group is only and merely for added warmth and security from predators; others ready to employ the pejorative "murder" of crows to describe them as sinister or "creepy." -- This last is all goomeristic or demonistic projection on the poor birds; some of whom while they can sometimes act quite aggressively (such as, for instance, when they see a possum or raccoon making its way through the backyard) really the vast majority of time are well behaved. And granted while we can take large groups, swarms of anything (when that happens) we like less.
I read somewhere not long ago that crows have the intelligence of seven year olds. Imagine that! Right in my own neighborhood at this Spring time of year at dusk, they, about 60 or more or so, gather together (in the wooded park a couple blocks away) in what sounds not unlike a jamboree or Indian pow-wow, with leaders calling to a musically responding chorus, and all seem to be, that is for their purposes, having quite the jolly good time of it. While in some ways funny, it does my own my heart good to follow along listening to the friendly nature and almost religious cadence of their cawing.
(One might even think God loves such birds.)
...But because man is subject to passion, his wisdom also is subject to error; and as many things hinder the life of man, so that it cannot be perpetual, so also his wisdom must be hindered by many things: so that it is not perfect in entirely perceiving the truth. Therefore there is no human wisdom, if it strives by itself to attain to the conception and knowledge of the truth; inasmuch as the mind of man, being bound up with a frail body, and enclosed in a dark abode, is neither able to wander at large, nor clearly to perceive the truth, the knowledge of which belongs to the divine nature. For His works are known to God alone. But man cannot attain this knowledge by reflection or disputation, but by learning and hearing from Him who alone is able to know and to teach. Therefore Marcus Tullius, borrowing from Plato the sentiment of Socrates, who said that the time had come for himself to depart from life, but that they before whom he was pleading his cause were still alive, says: Which is better is known to the immortal gods; but I think that no man knows. Wherefore all the sects of philosophers must be far removed from the truth, because they who established them were men; nor can those things have any foundation or firmness which are unsupported by any utterances of divine voices.
~ Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325), Divine Institutes (Book VII, ch. 2)