Mady Perkins, section 2: Why Grow Up chapter 2

 Susan Neiman's Why Grow Up: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age is a commentary and retort against the youth-obsessed culture we reside in. The strife for preserving youth and "turning back the clock" permeates our culture in many ways. Our consumer-focused economy manipulates this desire for youth and uses it to push products which claim to restore or promote youthfulness. Neiman's definition of maturity states that mature people have learned to cope with the difference in expectation and reality. Neiman establishes stages of life around a problem she calls the "is" vs "ought" problem. The "is" represents the reality of our world, one in which bad things happen, stirring many psychological and moral queries as we grow up. The "ought" is theoretically how the world should be, and the first version of the world we're presented with as children. Neiman uses the "is" vs "ought" problem to structure life into the following three phases: infancy/childhood, adolescence, and maturity. 

Infancy and childhood are where we are receptive of we're told and what we see. We are presented with the "ought" in this phase since we're so vulnerable and in need of guidance. Parents tend to be the ones leading and dictating our worldview in this stage. Consider this phase one of "childlike wonder."

Adolescence is where the "is" begins to enter our worldview. We tend to reject the is, however. Think of teenage rebellion when there begins to be a dissonance or disagreement with the reality and the expectations. We're seeing the flaws in the world for the first time.

Maturity is defined by moving past the rejection phase and accepting the "is." We still believe in how the world ought to be but accept how the world is. Believing in the "ought" keeps us motivated and uncynical. 

Neiman says that real growing up is choosing to see that the is and the ought are different and living with reality while not giving up on the way things should be. This is accomplished by internal belief sets that respond to the way the world is. Many choose pessimistic ways to handle the is vs ought but this is the wrong approach. More people should choose to use their perception of "ought" to change the is.

Often in our culture maturity is dulled and looked down upon. Growing up and growing old are defined by life accomplishments such as career, marriage, and children. Real maturity can be achieved by more than just milestones according to Susan Neiman. Infantilism exists because as life becomes more complex and serious the alleged antidote is to wish for youth and try to turn back the clock. This is where the consumerist culture enters the question—chasing a time when life was simple and easy to understand.

This cartoon speaks to the "is" vs "ought" problem since we choose which version of reality we focus on and accept. Calvin is also exhibiting adolescent rebellion since he's focusing on his version of what life ought to be... free of homework, that is.

This article talks about the obsession we have with youth in America. An interesting point that the author, Dale Archer, makes is that we don't value wisdom as much anymore. Due to the increased efficiency and reach of search engines and technology, we don't look to older, wiser people for answers anymore—they take too long. Now that technology is fast and attention span is short, we can become "experts" on anything in mere minutes and new is always better. When the aged population is no longer looked to for information, this is when we can see the shift to a beauty-obsessed mindset that values fast, fun, energetic youth over all else.

I wonder what this means for the future of Philosophy, the love of Wisdom. We're already seeing a decrease in support for the humanities in education settings while there's an uptick in technical fields like computer science, engineering, etc.

Pabst, Pamphlets and a Petition: A Harvard-Yale Tailgate in the Trump Era

Students and alumni set aside rivalries at the 141st Harvard-Yale football game on Saturday to summon support against attacks on higher education under the Trump administration.

..“Do you want to stand up for academic freedom and the First Amendment?” Ms. Schwartz asked a group of students, shouting above a cacophony of portable sound systems, each playing songs with different beats. “How would you feel about doing that?”
... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/us/politics/yale-harvard-football-trump.html?smid=em-share

Life is Hard - By Kieran Setiya (Chapter 4) Mercy Adedokun

    

     Kieran Setiya wrote “Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” to look into moral philosophy as a way of life. He urges us to live by the original meaning of philosophy, a love for wisdom. Setiya himself was born in England and moved to America to become a philosophy professor at MIT. Setiya believes that we should not write off or justify our suffering. Comforts like “everything will work out in the end,” or “everything happens for a reason,” can lead our suffering to stay unacknowledged. He argues that what we need for our suffering is acknowledgement.

    In chapter 4, Setiya focuses on the topic of failure and how it can define us as people. He discusses many famous examples of failure, in sports and in history. He discusses famous baseball players who would fumble a catch and then have their entire careers defined by their failure. Setiya explores historic examples of failure as well. In 1649, after the execution of King Charles, Gerrard Winstanley led a revolution of trenchant Diggers and proclaimed the “Earth the common treasury of all.” He had hoped that they could create a utopia without private property and that landlords would lose their serfs. Instead, the uprising was crushed by landlords, and the houses they built were burned down.

Life As Narrative

    We all tell ourselves a story about ourselves, and that can heavily influence the ways we act and the actions we take. “We become the autobiographical narratives by which we ‘tell about’ our lives,” - Jerome Bruner.

    There are three elements of life as narrative: first, we are bound to “story” ourselves and present our lives as coherent narrative wholes. Secondly, we are told that a good life must form a coherent narrative. Lastly, we think that it must be one whose subject tells that narrative to himself.

    Setiya writes that society pushes us to want to tell our lives as a narrative. a “dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides.” To believe that your life is heading for a climax that it may not reach is to see it as a potential failure. To see life as a narrative means you either win or lose. The downside of squeezing your entire life into one narrative is that you let the outcome define you. We talk as if someone can be a failure, not as if failure is a single act in a lifetime of small successes and failures.

    Failure itself is incredibly luck-based. There are a million factors outside of our control that determine what happens and where. Perhaps the right people weren’t in the same room as you when you needed them. Maybe you ended up in the wrong place, leading to success or failure. There is so much more to your life than the story you tell yourself about it. A life can’t really succeed or fail at all; it can only be lived. - Joe Moran. By not defining our lives by singular moments or decisions, we are less likely to define ourselves as “losers” or “winners.”

    Setiya offers a counter to Life as Narrative, Nicholson Baker’s novella The Mezzanine, written about a single lunch hour, wherein the narrator goes on about the mundane and basically nothing. There is no life-altering change or intense dramatic arc. Yet, there is enough experience and richness in a single lunch hour to fill a book. If a single hour holds so much meaning, how can we define our entire lives into one coherent arc?

    Setiya clarifies that he doesn’t mean to not engage in long-term projects to better your life or give up your ambitions. Instead, he wants us to resist the urge to try and force our lives into one storyline. We are not successes or failures, and one moment of either does not change the course of our lives. Setiya’s logic reminds me of a different book, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler. In that book, Schafler writes about measuring our lives in terms of goalposts. We tell ourselves that once we reach a certain desire, we will finally be happy or reach fulfillment in life. We believe once we graduate from college, get our dream job, family, or other desire, that we will be complete. However, when we do reach those goals, we won’t be fulfilled. We will find another goalpost to work towards and leave our happiness until after we reach that goal. Schafler suggests that the solution is to get rid of the goalposts and celebrate ourselves while we are still in the process.

Happiness and Telic Living

    Setiya mentions a quote that argues, “Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it. The point is in life, in life alone—in discovering it, constantly and eternally, and not at all in the discovery itself!” Happiness is found in the doing, not the things being done.

    Setiya defines telic and atelic activities. Telic means an action with an endpoint, such as baking a cake, writing an essay, or lifting weights to achieve a certain body type. There is a time when you are baking the cake or writing, and there is a final project, such as the cake or essay. Atelic activities that have no end, and are done the moment you do them. Thinking is an atelic activity; if you are thinking of a dog, you have already thought of one. As well as listening to music, you don’t listen to music to stop listening, you listen because it’s beautiful. We often do telic and atelic activities at the same time. He brings up the example of a parent teaching their child to tie their shoelaces, which has an endpoint (hopefully the kid learns how to tie their shoes), but they are parenting at the same time (an action that has no end). Setiya says it doesn’t matter which one you are doing, but which one you value.

    Framing our happiness in life through telic activities actively ruins the happiness we experience. You aim to succeed and to end your engagement with something you value. He writes that it's “as though you’re trying to destroy a source of meaning in your life. If you value thinking and you are doing that, you have what you value right now. Nothing you have done, or will do, can ruin this.” He urges us to find meaning in the atelic activities we enjoy or find a telic activity that's adjacent to that.

    By valuing the process, we can add some insurance that we will get value out of our lives. There is no way to make yourself immune to failure, and the results of projects (like going to college) do matter. However, we can take back our happiness by making our failures less pivotal and making meaning when things don’t go as planned.

Economic Differences and Failure

    Lastly, Setiya touches on the economic implications of calling someone a “failure.” He discusses the invention of the credit report and how it came to define Americans more than “a bank balance or character reference.” Throughout the 19th century, we increasingly measured our self-worth by prosperity. Economic crashes caused spiritual collapse in people who had failed. “Deaths of despair” were committed overwhelmingly by white men because people saw themselves, not society, as a failure. This myth still prevails today, with people glorifying and idolizing billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

    Nowadays, investment in college and “human capital” seems like the only way through the 99% lose - 1% win economy. Setiya urges us to reform how we gauge human worth by productivity, because as long as we do that, some people will always end up as “failures.” Setiya acknowledges as social animals, we care about whether we are perceived as winners or losers to those around us. Setiya’s solution is not to leave society, but to change it.

All in all, get rid of your goalposts and find happiness in the doing. By valuing the process, you can lessen the impact of failure on your life.

Any comment on this professor’s rant?

Students these days, according to a colleague at another state school, can't or won't read, write atrociously, are addicted to their phones, and can't sit still.

Honors students are in a different category, of course. 😉  But some of this seems spot-on, I have to say. For instance:

"They can't sit in a seat for 50 minutes. Students routinely get up during a 50 minute class, sometimes just 15 minutes in, and leave the classroom. I'm supposed to believe that they suddenly, urgently need the toilet, but the reality is that they are going to look at their phones. They know I'll call them out on it in class, so instead they walk out. I've even told them to plan ahead and pee before class, like you tell a small child before a road trip, but it has no effect. They can't make it an hour without getting their phone fix."

Any comment, on this point in particular or on the essay as a whole?

https://open.substack.com/pub/hilariusbookbinder/p/the-average-college-student-today?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Questions Nov 25

Remember to open your AUTHOR invitations before they expire. If you've not yet requested an AUTHOR invitation, do so before leaving class today. Exam 2 is Dec 2. See Audio Review below.

Setiya, L is H

1. The question of absurdity is about what? 148
2. Why isn't "42" a good answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? 151-2
3. What did Samuel Scheffler say about "the afterlife"?  What's "the Alvy Singer problem"? 161-3
4. What does Rebecca Solnit say about the relation between hope and action? 175
5. What did Seamus Heaney say about the relation between hope and history? 182

Final report blogpost - due Dec 5

OPEN YOUR EMAIL AUTHOR INVITATION, then look for the NEW POST tab in the upper right on our blogsite (do NOT create a new blog, post your final report on our site)... The topic should complement, clarify, and elaborate on some central aspect of your final presentation. Share and defend your own view(s), if you have any. Try to imagine what your best critic would say, and how you'd respond. Address one or more of your discussion questions.... Aim for a minimum of 1,000 words... Include relevant links (at least half a dozen or so), video & textual embeds (a couple), and photos (one or two): let me know if you need instruction on how to do it... When referencing texts we've read in the course, cite page #s and abbreviations (LHP=Little History of Philosophy, LH=Life is Hard, SSHM-Sick Souls Healthy Minds, WGU=Why Grow Up, F=Fantasyland)... Make sure your post has formatted correctly. If not, use the Clear Formatting command in the toolbar in the upper right, above, to fix it... You can continue to edit and revise until the final draft is due...

How to prepare for an exam: RELAX, says WJ

If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, “I won’t waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don’t care an iota whether I succeed or not.” Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently. --William James, “Gospel of Relaxation" 

If you’ve been up all night cramming, in other words, good luck. You’ll need it. But if you’ve been diligent, have steeped yourself in the subject all semester long, and either went out to play or to an early bed the night before, your luck will be the residue of design. You’ll do fine. Relax. But don’t try too hard to relax. It is needless to say that that is not the way to do it. The way to do it, paradoxical as it may seem, is genuinely not to care whether you are doing it or not. Care later. On exam day just show up and do your best.

Exam 2 audio review

 Review the relevant texts addressing these questions... 

‘Human Narratives’

At This College, the English Dept. Is Out. 'Human Narratives' Is In.

At Montclair State University in New Jersey, a departmental restructuring plan is igniting concerns about the future of the humanities.

...The departments of English, classics, philosophy, world languages and Spanish and Latino studies, for example, will be grouped into the tentatively titled School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions. The psychology, linguistics, social work and religion departments will make up the School of Human Behavior and Well-Being. (There will be four schools in all; faculty will help determine the final names.)

...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/nyregion/montclair-state-restructuring.html?smid=em-share

World Philosophy Day

By celebrating World Philosophy Day each year, on the third Thursday of November, UNESCO underlines the enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual.

Philosophy is an inspiring discipline as well as an everyday practice that can transform societies. By enabling to discover the diversity of the intellectual currents in the world, philosophy stimulates intercultural dialogue. By awakening minds to the exercise of thinking and the reasoned confrontation of opinions, philosophy helps to build a more tolerant, more respectful society. It thus helps to understand and respond to major contemporary challenges by creating the intellectual conditions for change...

 

POSTSCRIPT:

World Philosophy Day, if you missed it

My colleague Professor Slack was its face here…

https://www.instagram.com/p/DRSeCtvkoGT/?igsh=eXR2anFsd2p6cGxm

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Sick Souls, Healthy Minds Chapter 3 (Cooper Palowitch)

 Summary of Presentation:

This chapter is titled Psychology and the Healthy Mind; the habit and emotion chapter of James' book The Principles of Psychology are a focal point of this chapter. It is an understatement to say the making of this book was a difficult task. "'It seems to me that psychology is like physics before Galileo's time, –not a single elementary law yet caught a glimpse of,'" (Allen quoting James 318). His book was used as a textbook in many universities after it was published. 

 "Minds of all kinds, James discovered, are pliable things, not exactly fragile but not exactly rigid either," (Kaag 73).The relation of plasticity and habit is that it is easier to change or evade habits while younger. James didn't believe all is lost though when one is "a walking bundle of habits. "He believed that by laying habit bare and revealing its inner workings, he could help his reader harness, and to some extent control, its power," (Kaag 73). A positive outcome of habit is in an example of a pianist refining his skills. "Thus, an impulse which originally spread its effects over the whole body, or at least over many of its movable parts, is gradually determined to a single definite organ, in which it effects the contraction of a few limited muscles," (James 73). Habit increases speed, efficiency, and accuracy. It also lets the mind wander and think about other things than the habitual task being performed.

Kaag then moves onto the chapter about emotions. In this part of Kaag's chapter he relates the topics in James' chapter to the "fake it til you make it" explored in the 2nd chapter of Kaag's book. James believed emotions are tightly bound to actions and bodily states. The main takeaways I got from his emotion chapter were an extended version of that, and that something must trigger an emotion. James believed the actions associated with an emotion are the triggers of that emotion. Another way of phrasing this is emotion devoid of expression and practical consequences is largely meaningless. Kaag acknowledges that one can go through an action associated with an emotion without feeling the emotion but that given enough time and commitment the emotion will emerge via action. He talks about having to cold bloodedly go through desired emotions before they can be achieved.

In the final section of the chapter Kaag mentions that the end of the principles explains how the book as a whole is a manual for circumventing forces that impede free will.

Additional Sources:

        This video linked is a woman talking about general self improvement journeys and applies William James' ideas to them. A strong focus seems to be his "two things he hates a day" idea. She talks about misconceptions about pushing through actions one doesn't really want to participate in but knows it will help them in the future if they stick to it. It is applicable to breaking bad habits or forming good ones. Stick to something difficult enough and it will become second nature.

         Another main focus is the initial thought process of "I hit my limit" which isn't always going to be the limit. She says after someone gets past that it should become easier unless they actually hit their limit.

        I remember when I was first trying to learn how to work a manual transmission on a dirt bike that was probably too powerful for me. I struggled with getting out of first and half the time I got out of first I couldn't control it. My dad was going to sell it if I didn't learn how to drive it and keep it from rotting away in the garage. I thought I would never get it down after the first couple of days of trying, but I stuck to it and after finding the source of the issue I got it down. I had a bad habit of both not letting out the clutch in a smooth manner and not giving it enough gas. Of course it took some time to get rid of those habits, but I got to a point where I could take off from a stop easily. 

https://psu.pb.unizin.org/psych425/chapter/james-lange-theory/

        Many in our time don't agree wholeheartedly with James' theory of emotion. When it is brought up it is for history and that it made the building blocks of theories that followed it. An aspect that is utilized today is the biofeedback loop. Reverse engineer the theory to elicit a desired emotion. This is what Kaag focuses on when he talks about the emotion chapter. He wanted to be calmer, he thought only calm people could do yoga, he did yoga and became calmer. 

        I unknowingly utilized a similar principle while I was cliff jumping in October. The first jump I did was off of the highest jump at the location, and I didn't look over the edge before I did it. I just got a running start and made my leap. I didn't land the best but I survived. When I attempted to make the following jumps, from much lower heights. I would look over the edge. I eventually put two and two together, seeing my distance from the water was preventing me from jumping, I did the same thing I initially did. When I removed the "Big Bear" from the equation I found jumps significantly easier.

        The tallest jump also had the longest swim back which affected my bodily state. This likely influenced my perception of what the next jump would be like and thus intimidated me more.

https://www.sfu.ca/~kathleea/Emotions.html

Everything above the Conceptual Framework of Emotions heading focuses on William James.

Two authors' takes on James' theory of emotion are presented.(both disagreeing)

Both are introductions to their arguments not their complete argument but their entire arguments can be found with the source next to their name.

A + message for you all

from Kamala, in Nashville yesterday:

https://www.threads.com/@fiskuniversity/post/DRN_YdIkgzP?xmt=AQF0ttbkJcb0uAJegrlwAygNHtSHYJt8WzD1hIXtD4zLtBSGGwvFsZMNHBfOwOR4EpjP7oo&slof=1

Questions NOV 20

 SSHM ch6; WJ "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"; "A Pluralistic Mystic" [see below]

1. The greatest use of life is what, according to WJ?

2. What did WJ write to Benjamin Blood about education?

3. What was WJ's final entreaty in "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"?

4. What does WJ say is the difference between resignation and hope?

5. What would we lose, if we were without feeling?

6. When does a life become "genuinely significant"?

7. "To miss ___ ___ is to miss all."

8. "Life is always worth living" if you have responsive sensibilities like ____'s.

9. What is distinctive about B.P. Blood's version of mysticism?

10. What's WJ's last word in philosophy?

LH 

1. Why did Glaucon say we pretend to care about justice? Does KS agree? Do you?
2. What does KS say about Maya? Do you think living well and being happy are the same?
3. What was Simone Weil's self-sacrifice? Is her life and death illustrative of what it truly means to care about injustice?
4. For Weil, reading is a metaphor for what?
5. What do Weil and Iris Murdoch say we need (and not need) in order to appreciate and care about human suffering and injustice?
6. What was Plato's ambition, and what 20th century American philospher shared it?
7. What does ideology distort?
8. What is KS's advice to those who feel overwhelmed by the injustice of the world?
9. What was Marx's eleventh thesis?
10. Why does KS call Theodor Adorno a cautionary tale?
11. What is "the tyranny of the ameliorative"?

Setiya

1. The question of absurdity is about what? 148
2. Why isn't "42" a good answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? 151-2
3. What did Samuel Scheffler say about "the afterlife"?  What's "the Alvy Singer problem"? 161-3
4. What does Rebecca Solnit say about the relation between hope and action? 175
5. What did Seamus Heaney say about the relation between hope and history? 182

And one last question:

Why Grow Up? Thru pg. 79 (Emily Litzenberger)

 This final presentation focused on the chapters of Why Grow Up by Susan Neiman that were titled What is Enlightenment and Breaking Chains. However, I wanted to really focus on the comparisons of how Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau think of growing up and how it’s transferred to modern times. However, I found this article for those who want to learn more about how they affected the Enlightenment.  Otherwise, let’s have a relaxed conversation on growing up. Feel free to respond to this however you want!

Growing Up: What Kant and Rousseau Can Teach Us About Becoming Human

Growing up is weird. One minute you’re convinced the world revolves around you, and the next you’re filing taxes and worrying about finals. But while we’re all busy figuring out adulthood on the fly, two philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, were thinking deeply about what it really means to grow up long before self-help books became a thing.

Their ideas are surprisingly relevant today, especially for anyone trying to understand childhood, adulthood, or why becoming a mature human sometimes feels like assembling IKEA furniture without instructions.

Let’s unpack those ideas in somewhat simple references.

Rousseau: The “Let Kids Be Kids” Guy

If Rousseau had a parenting style, it would be something like:

“Relax. Stop hovering. The kid’s fine.”

Rousseau believed children are naturally good, little sparks of curiosity and innocence just trying to explore the world. According to him, society is what messes them up. The rules, the comparisons, the pressure to grow up too fast, he saw all of that as a fast-track to inauthenticity.

Rousseau was adamant that childhood matters for its own sake. Kids shouldn’t be rushed into becoming mini-adults. They learn by touching, playing, messing up, and trying again. Not by adults lecturing them about how “they’ll understand when they’re older.”

“A free child only submits to the necessity of things, not to the other people’s wills” (Neiman 62).

He would be firmly against flashcards for infants and that competitive-parenting thing where everyone brags about their toddler’s “leadership potential.”

Instead of punishment, Rousseau thought children should experience natural consequences. You break your toy? Well, now you don’t have a toy. You refuse to wear a coat? Okay, you’ll be cold. Lesson learned. He shows this very clearly in Emile, saying that the child only needs to follow natural limits.

To him, real growth comes from experiencing the world directly, not from adults imposing their anxieties on kids.

For Rousseau, the ideal adult stays connected to their natural self, someone who feels, cares, explores, and acts with sincerity. Growing up doesn’t mean becoming someone society wants you to be; it means becoming more authentically you.

Kant: The “Take Responsibility for Your Life” Guy

If Rousseau is the free-range parenting advocate, Kant is more like the parent saying,

“You can do whatever you want… as long as it’s the right thing.”

Kant believed growing up is all about learning to think for yourself, not in a “rebel without a cause” way, but in a responsible, moral way. Kant has this famous line about enlightenment being humanity’s escape from “self-incurred immaturity.” In normal-person terms, that means:

Stop letting other people tell you what to think.

He thought maturity was tied to autonomy, the ability to guide your life using reason rather than impulse or peer pressure. If Rousseau wants us to stay true to nature, Kant wants us to level up with reason.

Kant doesn’t hate freedom; he just thinks it has to be earned. Kids start out impulse-driven (I want candy now, not later). Before they can handle freedom, he says, they need structure: learning to wait, follow rules, and practice self-control. To Kant, discipline is a preparation for real freedom. It’s training wheels for moral decision-making.

When Kant imagines the ideal grown-up, it’s someone who acts with purpose, considers other people’s needs, and lives according to principles they genuinely believe are right. Not because someone told them to. Not because they “felt like it.” Because they’ve thought it through.

Where They Agree (and Don’t)

Rousseau and Kant are like two friends giving totally different advice, yet both making valid points. Even Neiman points this out with her own comparisons of both of the authors’ lifestyles, saying, “On the surface, the only thing the two men had in common was class background…in every other way Kant and Rousseau seem different souls” (Neiman 43). So where do they agree and where don’t they agree?

What They Agree On:

Both philosophers agree that growing up is a journey toward becoming a full human being, that kids aren't adults and shouldn't be treated like they are, and that freedom matters, but how and when it's introduced is key.

Where They Differ:

Rousseau says to trust nature and let kids grow without interruption so they can be authentic. For him, freedom is the starting point. Kant says to trust reason, while kids grow with structure to become responsible adults who know how to be moral. For him, freedom is the destination.

Basically, Rousseau wants you to stay connected to your inner child; Kant wants you to manage that inner child responsibly. Together, they shape a really cool picture of maturity: You’re born with natural goodness and curiosity; however, you need discipline and reasoning to turn that into stable adulthood.

Why This Matters Today

Even though these two lived in the 1700s, with no internet, no screen-time debates, no helicopter parents, they shaped a lot of the ideas we still use to think about childhood and adulthood today. From Rousseau, we get child-centered education, emphasis on creativity and exploration, respect for children’s emotions, and the belief that childhood shouldn’t be rushed. From Kant, we get moral education (more or less), lessons on responsibility, helping kids learning independently, and the idea that real freedom involves self-control. Modern parenting, schooling, and youth development are basically a tug-of-war between their ideas. And honestly? We probably need both sides. Kids need room to explore and be themselves. But they also need guidance so they can become adults who don’t ghost their responsibilities, or people.

So What Does It Mean to “Grow Up” Really?

If we blend Kant and Rousseau together, growing up looks something like this:

1. Start with curiosity and freedom.
2. Experience the world directly.
3. Learn from consequences (natural and logical).
4. Build discipline and self-control.
5. Develop your own principles.
6. Become someone who acts with authenticity and responsibility.

Not a bad roadmap.

Growing up, then, isn’t just about getting older or checking off milestones. It’s about balancing our natural, childlike selves with the rational, principled selves we grow into. It’s not just nature or discipline. Not just feelings or reasoning. Not just childhood freedom or adult responsibility. It’s the ongoing dance between both.

Final Thought: Becoming Human Is a Lifelong Project

Rousseau reminds us to stay grounded in our natural humanity. Kant reminds us to rise into our moral potential. And somewhere between those two poles is the messy, beautiful process of becoming an adult.

Growing up isn’t a one-time event; it’s a lifelong project. You don’t finish it at 18. Or 30. Or even 60. Maybe to grow up well is to keep that inner child alive, curious, open, and honest, while building the inner adult who can steer that energy with purpose.

If Rousseau gives us the heart, Kant gives us the compass. And we probably need both to navigate the wild adventure of being human.

My final question to you is, how do you think Rousseau and Kant have influenced our modern lives?

Sick Souls, Healthy Minds (chapter 2) - Abby Jessen

 

In the first chapter of Sick Souls, Healthy Minds, John Kaag introduces William James’s lifelong struggle with depression, paralysis, and the unsettling question of whether life has any inherent purpose. James is portrayed as someone haunted by the “sick soul” suspicion that existence might be fundamentally meaningless, yet he never relinquished the effort to find reasons to continue living. For Kaag, this central tension, How do we keep going when life feels pointless?, defines not only the book but James’s entire philosophical thinking. That question sets the foundation for Chapter Two, “Freedom and Life,” where Kaag examines how James clawed his way out of despair and underwent what he later described as a kind of psychological rebirth.

At the beginning of Chapter Two, James is operating from the premise that life does not automatically possess meaning. This was not simply an abstract philosophical claim for him; it was grounded in the lived reality he observed in himself and the people around him. James was struck by how individuals who were otherwise intelligent, capable, and morally decent could still feel numb to joy or direction. In a stark summary of this condition, Kaag writes that for James, “suffering is not the exception, but the rule.” This observation became a cornerstone of James’s philosophy: human beings must start by acknowledging the difficulties, disappointments, and tragedies that inevitably accompany life rather than pretending they do not exist.

James came to believe that life is fated in the sense that everything eventually weakens, decays, and dies. But paradoxically, it was precisely this confrontation with finitude that opened space for renewal. Recognizing one’s fragility can allow for a sort of existential reset. As Kaag puts it, hitting rock bottom can mark the beginning of a second life. Once a person survives the feeling of dying, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually, the prospect of continuing to live becomes more bearable, even energizing. This dynamic is central to the “twice-born” individual, a term James later used to describe those who have endured despair and emerged transformed.

James experienced his own version of this rebirth around 1870. During this period, he was crushed by depression, plagued by chronic indecision, and tormented by a sense of nihilism. What shifted his outlook was his encounter with the French philosopher Charles Renouvier. Renouvier argued that the belief in free will cannot be rationally proven but must be chosen—an act of commitment rather than deduction. James found this argument electrifying. If belief itself is an act of freedom, then one can choose to believe in free will without waiting for metaphysical guarantees. James famously wrote in his journal, “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will,” marking the beginning of his recovery.

Following this shift, James began teaching at Harvard, first in physiology and then in psychology and philosophy. Outwardly, he appeared to be succeeding: he had a prestigious academic position, emerging influence, and a growing circle of intellectual peers. Yet Kaag emphasizes that James never fully escaped the fear of backsliding into despair. “The danger of being twice-born,” Kaag writes, “is that you might have to die all over again.” James understood the fragility of his recovery and treated philosophy not as a luxury but as a survival strategy.

In this context, James began challenging traditional philosophical ideas about what counts as a justified belief. He questioned the expectation that human reason must always be strictly logical or empirical. Instead, he developed the idea that some beliefs, though unprovable, can be practically or existentially true, that is, they help us live better, more engaged lives. For James, belief has a generative power: to believe in something can help bring that thing into being. Kaag underscores this point by noting that for James, “changing your mind changes your whole being.” The beliefs we commit to ultimately shape the lives we are capable of living. James compared this leap of commitment to falling in love: both require faith before certainty.

This metaphor becomes literal in 1876, when James met Alice Gibbens, who would later become his wife. James had long been preoccupied with personal freedom, how individuals carve out meaning in their own private struggles, while Alice was oriented toward social and political forms of freedom, particularly those involving women’s rights and educational reform. Despite James’s lingering insecurities about his health, temperament, and suitability for marriage, Alice chose to believe in him. Their marriage in 1878 was not simply a romantic union but an affirmation of the idea that another person’s belief in you can create possibilities you could not generate alone.

James later elaborated this dynamic in his essay "The Will to Believe," where he argued that in deeply personal matters—such as love, morality, or religious faith—we often must act as if something is true before we can know it to be true. Evidence does not always precede commitment; sometimes commitment generates the conditions under which evidence appears. Acting as if the world is meaningful or welcoming can, in certain circumstances, make it more so.

Both James and Kaag acknowledge the limits of this idea. One cannot simply will themselves into happiness or invent love that is not reciprocated. But James insists that belief must often come before certainty. Human beings cannot wait passively for proof that life is worth living. Instead, they must take risks, make commitments, and trust that meaning can emerge through action. Kaag closes the chapter with the idea that love and freedom are creative acts requiring vulnerability and courage. The final line, “chance begets chance”, captures the notion that choosing to believe, even tentatively, opens pathways that would otherwise remain closed.

My reflections on the book so far are mixed. I think Kaag’s intentions are sincere; he wants James’s philosophy to be a lifeline for readers who are facing despair or paralysis of their own. But I am not entirely convinced that William James’s thought can “save” many people in the way Kaag hopes. Every person has a different orientation toward meaning, purpose, and belief. If your worldview aligns naturally with James’s pragmatic approach, then Kaag’s interpretation of James’s self-rescue might resonate powerfully. But it feels ambitious—even overly ambitious—for the author to frame this one philosophical toolkit as a universal path out of suffering.

James undeniably transformed his own life, but that does not guarantee his transformation is reproducible for everyone. That said, I have only read the first two chapters, and I acknowledge that my perspective might evolve as I continue. I am curious to see where Kaag will take the narrative now that he has already covered much of James’s early biography and foundational ideas. I expect the later chapters will engage more deeply with how James applied his philosophy in practice and how contemporary readers might interpret or revise those commitments in a modern context. For now, the book offers a compelling portrait of a man who found meaning not by discovering certainty, but by choosing to act in the face of uncertainty.

Do you think that believing life is more meaningful makes it true? 

The Sad and Dangerous Reality Behind ‘Her’

At least a quarter of the more than 100 billion messages sent to our chatbots are attempts to initiate romantic or sexual exchanges.

...ALICE, a computer program built by one of our founders, Richard Wallace, to keep a conversation going by appearing to listen and empathetically respond. After ALICE was introduced on Pandorabots's platform in the early 2000s, one of its interlocutors was the film director Spike Jonze. He would later cite their conversation as the inspiration for his movie "Her," which follows a lonely man as he falls in love with his artificial intelligence operating system.

When "Her" premiered in 2013, it fell firmly in the camp of science fiction. Today, the film, set prophetically in 2025, feels more like a documentary. Elon Musk's xAI recently unveiled Ani, a digital anime girlfriend. Meta has permitted its A.I. personas to engage in sexualized conversations, including with children. And now, OpenAI says it will roll out age-gated "erotica" in December. The race to build and monetize the A.I. girlfriend (and, increasingly, boyfriend) is officially on.

...But there's a dark side to A.I. companions, whose users are not just the lonely males of internet lore, but women who find them more emotionally satisfying than men. My colleagues and I now believe that the real existential threat of generative A.I. is not rogue super-intelligence, but a quiet atrophy of our ability to forge genuine human connection.

The desire to connect is so profound that it will find a vessel in even the most rudimentary machines. Back in the 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum invented ELIZA, a chatbot whose sole rhetorical trick was to repeat back what the user said with a question. Mr. Weizenbaum was horrified to discover that his M.I.T. students and staff would confide in it at length. "What I had not realized," he later reflected, "is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people."

...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/opinion/her-film-chatbots-romance.html?smid=em-share

The American Revolution

A film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, now on PBS.

https://to.pbs.org/3LLvp9U

—Time for another?

Questions NOV 18

 1. What "vectors of meaning" saved James's life?

2. Embracing the pragmatic theory of truth is a commitment to what?

3. As a professional academic philosopher, Kaag has trouble remembering what?

4. James's hallway (corridor) metaphor, treating pragmatism primarily as a method in philosophy, reminds Kaag of what?

5. What's the difference between truth and facts, for WJ?

6. Embracing free will is the first step in what?

7. What is Binnenleben?

8. Where does "zest" come from, according to WJ, and what is it?

9. For James pragmatism was a protest against what proposition about salvation?

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Discussion Questions:

• Can personal struggles, whether with ideas and philosophies or with more tangible life challenges, contribute to a meaningful life and even save it?
• Should truth "mean" something to us, in the existentialist sense of meaning?
• Do you value the experiences in your life that you cannot put into words? Can you give an example? What can you say about it?
• Are you more like tough-minded Hume or tender-minded Leibniz? 132
• Is our world a "mid-world" in Emerson's sense? 133
• What is the "life-and-death significance of the pragmatic method of testing ideas against experience"? 138
• Do you agree that free will is melioristic, where determinism is not? 144
• Have you ever had a Gertrude Stein moment, during an exam? Could her response ever work for you in such a situation, do you think? 152
• How does "zest" makes us all both the same and different? 156
• Is "Hands off" good advice? 158
• Have professors displaced true teachers? 161
• Is "man is the measure" a humanist proposition? 163-5

• What do you hope to create in your life that will outlast it?
• Do you consider it a mark of education to "dally" with suicide?
• Do you agree that maybe is the right answer to "Is life worth living?"
• Could you resign yourself to a hopeless life? Would that life be worth living?
• Do you believe in an "unseen order"? Must you, to be religious?
• Are you willing to "go further than secular skeptics" with respect to religious experience? 181
• What sorts of experiences give you a feeling of eagerness, zest, reality, importance, etc.?
• Have you had an experience you'd describe as "mystical"?
• Do you ever "tap into the sublime"? 182
• Have you ever had an unbidden moment of "perfect exhilaration"?

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Truth and consequences

LISTEN (11.18.21). Today's poem ("...I begin to wonder about people—I wonder/if they also wonder about how strange it is that we/are here on the earth...") reminds me of this:

“Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others —above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving.” Living Philosophies (via Chris Stevens, Northern Exposure)

Teachers are here for the sake of those others we call students, which makes it so gratifying to hear that one of them has mentioned to a colleague that I've made a memorable impression. We can't all be Einstein, but we can try to contribute in some small way to others' happiness while pursuing our own... (continues)
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Eagerness

LISTEN (11.23.21). We conclude Sick Souls, Healthy Minds today in Happiness, with John Kaag's concluding chapter "Wonder and Hope"--a far cry from the "Determinism and Despair" we began with. We also glance at James's own favorite essay, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," and at his last, "A Pluralistic Mystic."

Is there a greater use of life than to spend it on something that will outlast it? Surely that depends on what the lasting legacy turns out to be. James spent himself defending experience, sometimes "against philosophy" but always against resignation and despair... (continues)

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VI "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth"

When Clerk Maxwell was a child it is written that he had a mania for having everything explained to him, and that when people put him off with vague verbal accounts of any phenomenon he would interrupt them impatiently by saying, "Yes; but I want you to tell me the particular go of it!" Had his question been about truth, only a pragmatist could have told him the particular go of it. I believe that our contemporary pragmatists, especially Messrs. Schiller and Dewey, have given the only tenable account of this subject. It is a very ticklish subject, sending subtle rootlets into all kinds of crannies, and hard to treat in the sketchy way that alone befits a public lecture. But the Schiller-Dewey view of truth has been so ferociously attacked by rationalistic philosophers, and so abominably misunderstood, that here, if anywhere, is the point where a clear and simple statement should be made.

I fully expect to see the pragmatist view of truth run through the classic stages of a theory's career. First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it. Our doctrine of truth is at present in the first of these three stages, with symptoms of the second stage having begun in certain quarters. I wish that this lecture might help it beyond the first stage in the eyes of many of you... (continues)
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The Gospel of Relaxation

William James

I wish in the following hour to take certain psychological doctrines and show their practical applications to mental hygiene,—to the hygiene of our American life more particularly. Our people, especially in academic circles, are turning towards psychology nowadays with great expectations; and, if psychology is to justify them, it must be by showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines.

The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions, commonly referred to in psychological literature as the Lange-James theory. According to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind, but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion suppressed, we should not so much feel fear as call the situation fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the object was indeed astonishing. One enthusiast has even gone so far as to say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid it is because we run away, and not conversely. Some of you may perhaps be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. Now, whatever exaggeration may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions (and I doubt myself whether the exaggeration be very great), it is certain that the main core of it is true, and that the mere giving way to tears, for example, or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. There is, accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept in the moral training of youth, or in one's personal self-discipline, than that which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not to care too much for what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse in time, for example, or if we only don't strike the blow or rip out with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as we live, our feelings themselves will presently be t..he calmer and better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not... (continues)

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THE LESSONS OF THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION
by Ed Craig

The Gospel of Relaxation is an essay by William James. It is, in written form, a commencement address he gave to the 1896 graduating class of Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. James, an M.D. (who never practiced as such), was a professor at Harvard, a psychologist, a philosopher, and a popular lecturer at a time when public lectures were in vogue. Think Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain. He was, in fact, the father of American psychology, and became America’s most eminent philosopher. In 1890, James published his masterwork, ten years in the making, Principles of Psychology. It is volume 53 of The Great Books of the Western World. In 1892 he published an abbreviated form of Principles as Psychology: Briefer Course. After publishing these books, James was asked by the Harvard Corporation to give a few public lectures on psychology to Cambridge teachers. Their purpose was to provide some guidance to the proponents of scientific methods of teaching. There were sixteen lectures, later collected as Talks to Teachers. Additionally, in response to invitations to deliver 'addresses' to students at women's colleges, he gave three. These are included as essays in his 1899 volume titled Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. The first of these addresses to students, delivered to the ladies of Boston Normal, was The Gospel of Relaxation. The Gospel is best seen as a guide to inner peace. It provides psychological and philosophical wisdom on the value of equanimity and how to find it. James gives us lessons, based on physiology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, that we can apply to ourselves, and live a better life. James states his purpose in the first sentence of the essay. He proposes to show the practical application of certain psychological principles to mental hygiene, the conditions or practices conducive to maintaining mental health. (825)i It is to be a self-help lecture. (continues)

https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ao604sECdB1UqR5jed3RRDe9fvGL?e=vDgpNZ
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On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings

William James

OUR judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us. Where we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the idea we frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself associated already with a feeling. If we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only things our mind could entertain, we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any other.

Now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse will treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves.

We are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives. Hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons' conditions or ideals.

Take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world; and yet, outside of that tie of friendly fondness, how insensible, each of us, to all that makes life significant for the other!—we to the rapture of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts, they to the delights of literature and art. As you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behavior? With all his good will toward you, the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension. To sit there like a senseless statue, when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch! What queer disease is this that comes over you every day, of holding things and staring at them like that for hours together, paralyzed of motion and vacant of all conscious life? The African savages came nearer the truth; but they, too, missed it, when they gathered wonderingly round one of our American travellers who, in the interior, had just come into possession of a stray copy of the New York Commercial Advertiser, and was devouring it column by column. When he got through, they offered him a high price for the mysterious object; and, being asked for what they wanted it, they said: "For an eye medicine,"—that being the only reason they could conceive of for the protracted bath which he had given his eyes upon its surface.

The spectator's judgment is sure to miss the root of the matter, and to possess no truth. The subject judged knows a part of the world of reality which the judging spectator fails to see, knows more while the spectator knows less; and, wherever there is conflict of opinion and difference of vision, we are bound to believe that the truer side is the side that feels the more, and not the side that feels the less.

Let me take a personal example of the kind that befalls each one of us daily:—
(continues)
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A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

Not for the ignoble vulgar do I write this article, but only for those dialectic-mystic souls who have an irresistible taste, acquired or native, for higher flights of metaphysics. I have always held the opinion that one of the first duties of a good reader is to summon other readers to the enjoyment of any unknown author of rare quality whom he may discover in his explorations. Now for years my own taste, literary as well as philosophic, has been exquisitely titillated by a writer the name of whom I think must be unknown to the readers of this article; so I no longer continue silent about the merits of Benjamin Paul Blood.

Mr. Blood inhabits a city otherwise, I imagine, quite unvisited by the Muses, the town called Amsterdam, situated on the New York Central Railroad. What his regular or bread-winning occupation may be I know not, but it can’t have made him super-wealthy. He is an author only when the fit strikes him, and for short spurts at a time; shy, moreover, to the point of publishing his compositions only as private tracts, or in letters to such far-from-reverberant organs of publicity as the Gazette or the Recorder of his native Amsterdam, or the Utica Herald or the Albany Times. Odd places for such subtile efforts to appear in, but creditable to American editors in these degenerate days! Once, indeed, the lamented W. T. Harris of the old “Journal of Speculative Philosophy” got wind of these epistles, and the result was a revision of some of them for that review (Philosophic Reveries, 1889). Also a couple of poems were reprinted from their leaflets by the editor of Scribner’s Magazine (“The Lion of the Nile,” 1888, and| “Nemesis,” 1899). But apart from these three dashes before the footlights, Mr. Blood has kept behind the curtain all his days.[2]

The author’s maiden adventure was the Anesthetic Revelation, a pamphlet printed privately at Amsterdam in 1874. I forget how it fell into my hands, but it fascinated me so “weirdly” that I am conscious of its having been one of the stepping-stones of my thinking ever since. It gives the essence of Blood’s philosophy, and shows most of the features of his talent–albeit one finds in it little humor and no verse. It is full of verbal felicity, felicity sometimes of precision, sometimes of metaphoric reach; it begins with dialectic reasoning, of an extremely Fichtean and Hegelian type, but it ends in a trumpet-blast of oracular mysticism, straight from the insight wrought by anaesthetics–of all things in the world–and unlike anything one ever heard before. The practically unanimous tradition of “regular” mysticism has been unquestionably monistic; and inasmuch as it is the characteristic of mystics to speak, not as the scribes, but as men who have “been there” and seen with their own eyes, I think that this sovereign manner must have made some other pluralistic-minded students hesitate, as I confess that it has often given pause to me. One cannot criticise the vision of a mystic–one can but pass it by, or else accept it as having some amount of evidential weight. I felt unable to do either with a good conscience until I met with Mr. Blood. His mysticism, which may, if one likes, be understood as monistic in this earlier utterance, develops in the later ones a sort of “left-wing” voice of defiance, and breaks into what to my ear has a radically pluralistic sound. I confess that the existence of this novel brand of mysticism has made my cowering mood depart. I feel now as if my own pluralism were not without the kind of support which mystical corroboration may confer. Morrison can no longer claim to be the only beneficiary of whatever right mysticism may possess to lend prestige.

This is my philosophic, as distinguished from my literary, interest, in introducing Mr. Blood to this more fashionable audience: his philosophy, however mystical, is in the last resort not dissimilar from my own... (continues)
...
“There are sadness and disenchantment for the novice in these inferences, as if the keynote of the universe were low, but experience will approve them. Certainty is the root of despair. The inevitable stales, while doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the universe is wild–game flavored as a hawk’s wing. Nature is miracle all. She knows no laws; the same returns not, save to bring the different. The slow round of the engraver’s lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the difference is distributed back over the whole curve, never an instant true–ever not quite.”

“Ever not quite!”–this seems to wring the very last panting word out of rationalistic philosophy’s mouth. It is fit to be pluralism’s heraldic device. There is no complete generalization, no total point of view, no all-pervasive unity, but everywhere some residual resistance to verbalization, formulation, and discursification, some genius of reality that escapes from the pressure of the logical finger, that says “hands off,” and claims its privacy, and means to be left to its own life. In every moment of immediate experience is somewhat absolutely original and novel. “We are the first that ever burst into this silent sea.” Philosophy must pass from words, that reproduce but ancient elements, to life itself, that gives the integrally new. The “inexplicable,” the “mystery,” as what the intellect, with its claim to reason out reality, thinks that it is in duty bound to resolve, and the resolution of which Blood’s revelation would eliminate from the sphere of our duties, remains; but it remains as something to be met and dealt with by faculties more akin to our activities and heroisms and willingnesses, than to our logical powers. This is the anesthetic insight, according to our author. Let my last word, then, speaking in the name of intellectual philosophy, be his word.–“There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be given.–Farewell!”