Still technically on time for the week.
Quick review on this week's readings:
June 17 "Brief Narrative" by Elliot: 2/5 Interesting (probably badly whitewashed) story about establishing a church/conversion. Kind of rambly.
June 18 Cinderella by The Brother's Grimm: 4/5 It's so metal! \m/
June 19 "Of Our English Dogs" by Harrison: 3/5 Interesting to see how people looked at dogs then compared to today.
June 20 The Voyage of The Beagle by Darwin: 3/5 One of the less interesting Darwins, but still pretty good.
June 21 "Sesame" by Ruskin: 1/5 Terrible philosophy, followed by some decent poetry analysis.
June 22 "Letter LXXXIII" by Pliny: 3/5 I didn't actually like this one, but it was short, and it was interesting to see ghost stories haven't really changed in a couple thousand years.
June 23 John Stuart Mills Autobiography: 1/5 "A list of books I read because I was a smart kid."
Average: 2.43/5 A meh score for a pretty meh week overall.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
I want to zoom in on Pliny for this week's commentary. Let's start by looking at a (trimmed) quote from Dr. Eliot that's included in the 15 Minute A Day guide and some of the advertising copy for T5FSOB:
My aim was not to select the best fifty, or best hundred, books in the world, but to give, in twenty-three thousand pages or thereabouts, a picture of the progress of the human race within historical times, so far as that progress can be depicted in books. The purpose of The Harvard Classics is, therefore, one different from that of collections in which the editor's aim has been to select a number of best books; it is nothing less than the purpose to present so ample and characteristic a record of the stream of the world's thought that the observant reader's mind shall be enriched, refined and fertilized. Within the limits of fifty volumes, containing about twenty-three thousand pages, my task was to provide the means of obtaining such knowledge of ancient and modern literature as seemed essential to the twentieth-century idea of a cultivated man. The best acquisition of a cultivated man is a liberal frame of mind or way of thinking; but there must be added to that possession acquaintance with the prodigious store of recorded discoveries, experiences, and reflections which humanity in its intermittent and irregular progress from barbarism to civilization has acquired and laid up.
T5FSOB isn't supposed to just be the best books, or to tell you what/how to think. It's supposed to show how we as (western) society have developed over the course of a couple thousand years to today (or 1910's today).
And it's really interesting how little we've developed in the realm of ghost stories in that time. Pliney's story starts with a self fulfilling prophecy (an up and coming general is told he'll get promoted. He does. He's told he'll die near his home and he goes "well, if the prophecy says so...") where none of the actions are really that unusual (and are kind of vague). Then follows up with a "I heard from my friend's brother's roommate's girlfriend's cousin..." story.
Other sections show more change. It's interesting to read Darwin supporting Lamarck's evolution though inheritance of acquired traits, when today we see his theory of evolution as directly opposed to Lamarck.
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