Ragnar Freund
09-22-2011, 08:37 PM
It is interesting that The legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle are Washington Irving’s two most popular tales, whereas Mountjoy (http://www.online-literature.com/irving/crayon-papers/1/), a beautiful philosophical masterpiece, is relatively obscure. Its obscurity is attested to by the fact that a Google search (http://www.google.com/search?q=mountjoy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) for Mountjoy returns no links to Irving’s story on the first page of results! And yet, a great story it is.
As I was reading it, I found an interesting connection between it and another great philosophical tale, Bayard Taylor’s Who was she? (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23166) In both stories, a man falls in love with a woman whose footprints he finds in a secluded area, even though he has never see her in person. In both cases, he become quite obsessed with finding her, and in both tales disappointment ensues, although it comes from different directions in each story. It is, I think, fairly obvious that Taylor borrowed some ideas from Irving, and it is interesting to see whether there are other examples of borrowing on Taylor’s behalf.
Now, back to Mountjoy. It contains many interesting ideas and observations that are presented in small bits and beg further discussion and analysis. Here’s one of them.
Toward the end of the tale, Mr. Somerville advises Mountjoy to turn his attention to physical sciences, at the expense of moral sciences:
"These [physical science] studies," said he, "store a man's mind with valuable facts, and at the same time repress self-confidence, by letting him know how boundless are the realms of knowledge, and how little we can possibly know. Whereas metaphysical studies, though of an ingenious order of intellectual employment, are apt to bewilder some minds with vague speculations. They never know how far they have advanced, or what may be the correctness of their favorite theory. They render many of our young men verbose and declamatory, and prone to mistake the aberrations of their fancy for the inspirations of divine philosophy."
It is indeed a fact that most literary and philosophical scholars today are quite unlearned in the physical sciences, and conversely, that physical scientists are unlearned in the humanities.
Do you think that an education in the physical sciences can make one a better literary or philosophical scholar? Do you agree that without knowledge of the physical world, one’s ability to appreciate art, literature, and philosophy is diminished?
As I was reading it, I found an interesting connection between it and another great philosophical tale, Bayard Taylor’s Who was she? (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23166) In both stories, a man falls in love with a woman whose footprints he finds in a secluded area, even though he has never see her in person. In both cases, he become quite obsessed with finding her, and in both tales disappointment ensues, although it comes from different directions in each story. It is, I think, fairly obvious that Taylor borrowed some ideas from Irving, and it is interesting to see whether there are other examples of borrowing on Taylor’s behalf.
Now, back to Mountjoy. It contains many interesting ideas and observations that are presented in small bits and beg further discussion and analysis. Here’s one of them.
Toward the end of the tale, Mr. Somerville advises Mountjoy to turn his attention to physical sciences, at the expense of moral sciences:
"These [physical science] studies," said he, "store a man's mind with valuable facts, and at the same time repress self-confidence, by letting him know how boundless are the realms of knowledge, and how little we can possibly know. Whereas metaphysical studies, though of an ingenious order of intellectual employment, are apt to bewilder some minds with vague speculations. They never know how far they have advanced, or what may be the correctness of their favorite theory. They render many of our young men verbose and declamatory, and prone to mistake the aberrations of their fancy for the inspirations of divine philosophy."
It is indeed a fact that most literary and philosophical scholars today are quite unlearned in the physical sciences, and conversely, that physical scientists are unlearned in the humanities.
Do you think that an education in the physical sciences can make one a better literary or philosophical scholar? Do you agree that without knowledge of the physical world, one’s ability to appreciate art, literature, and philosophy is diminished?