Dec 31– From “Inaugural Address at Edinburgh University” by Thomas Carlyle (1866)

 15MAD was released in 1916, so 1917 would be the first New Years it was available

Dec 31– From “Inaugural Address at Edinburgh University” by Thomas Carlyle (1866)

Summary: Reading well is the most important thing NEXT TO SERVING GOD! 

Commentary: Carlyle is alllll over the place here. He does point this out in the intro (basically, "I don't have notes, but my rambling will be honest.") Reading, no religion, no history, no democracy! Also, he really likes Oliver Cromwell. I like that they marked the applause, so you'll know where undergrads from 1866 were amused. I said this before when there was another commencement (or something similar) address, but it's comforting to know that even the "best" ones have sucked for the better part of two hundred years.

This feels like it was selected for the by-line (ending a year long reading list with a speech about the importance of reading) not the content (a guy rambling about whatever came to mind, which occasionally included reading).

He does kind of get around to it in the end. He goes on about the danger of "bad books" for a bit. I don't think I agree. A bad book might still have good parts, or might illuminate you on a bad idea (I would qualify this as a bad speech, but I don't think it's damaged me by reading it.)

But, to not end this year's last entry on a whiny note, here's a quote I liked:

 And then, when you leave the University, and go into studies of your own, you will find it very important that you have chosen a field, some province specially suited to you, in which you can study and work. The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,—honest work, which you intend getting done.

I always say that it's not that people don't want to work, they just don't want to do work that they don't see the value in. We can disagree on what a good or valuable job is, but very few people just want to bum around doing literally nothing all day. A lot of people would probably see this job was a bunch of pointless work, but you know what?

I MADE IT!