Episode 075 - The Rise of Life On Earth, And Which Forms Were Possible And Impossible
Date: 06/18/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2052-episode-seventy-five-the-rise-of-life-on-earth-and-which-forms-were-possible-and/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Charles reads Book Five lines 821–924, covering the earth’s gradual exhaustion (compared to a woman past her prime), the early monstrous births (portenta / monstra) that could not survive, which forms nature preserved (lions by courage, foxes by craft, stags by speed, domestic animals by usefulness to man), and which perished. The passage closes with the argument that centaurs, Scyllas, and chimeras could never have existed — primarily because a horse grows old far faster than a man, so a half-horse half-man creature could never have a coherent lifespan.
Don brings in Sedley’s account of Empedocles’ theory: before Epicurus, Empedocles posited that disassociated limbs and organs crawled around independently, combining into “man-faced ox children” — only the fittest survived. Epicureans applauded the materialism but derided the details (confirmed by Plutarch). The panel discusses what the passage anticipates and does not anticipate of Darwinian evolution: natural selection is clearly present; descent with modification / speciation is absent. Don notes the Latin gaudia (“mutual delights of both”) is related to the Bavarian/Austrian Gaudi (fun), the student hymn Gaudeamus igitur, and eventually connects to Nietzsche’s Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 75 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com Forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Norman DeWitt. For anyone who is not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode 1 for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In this episode 75, we’ll read approximately Latin lines 821 through 924 from Book 5. We’ll be talking about the initial forms of life on Earth and how we can judge what types of life were possible and what were not possible in arising here on Earth. Now let’s join Charles reading today’s text.
Charles:
And that the Earth might have some release and not always be in labor, she at length left off as a woman worn out and past her prime. For time changes the nature of the whole world. One body continually rises from another. No being remains long like itself. Things are in a perpetual flux; one thing decays and grows weak by time, another becomes vigorous and flourishes in its strength. Less time alters the face of the whole world, and the Earth passes from one state to another. She can no more produce the creatures she once did, and now she bears what she could not do before.
The Earth, it may be supposed, was at first delivered of many monstrous births, of a wonderful shape and of an uncommon size, and some between the two sexes, not properly of both yet not far removed from either; some without feet, and others without hands; many without a mouth and eyes. Some had their limbs growing and sticking together over all their bodies, and they could do no office of life, nor move from their place, nor fly what was hurtful, nor receive food to preserve their beings. Many other monsters and strange productions of this kind were at first formed, but in vain, for nature was shocked and would not suffer them to increase, nor could they arrive to any maturity of age, nor could they find their food, nor taste the pleasures of love.
For any creature we observe, we must agree it might be able to propagate its kind. First of all, there must be proper food, and then fit organs for the genial seed to flow through from all the limbs, and that the male and female may be closely joined. They must be furnished with those parts that may promote the mutual delights of both. And therefore many kinds of animals must needs be extinct, nor could they all by propagation continue their species; for almost every race of creatures we see living, either their cunning, or their courage, or their swiftness have secured and preserved them from the very beginning.
And there are many that, from their usefulness to mankind, have recommended themselves to our defense. And first the fierce breed of lions, and their savage race, their courage protected. Craft secures the fox, and swiftness the stag. But the watchful and faithful race of dogs, all beasts of burden, the flocks and herds — all these, my Memmius, are commended to the care of man. These fly swiftly from the rage of wild beasts, they love a quiet life, and depend upon us for their fill of provision, without any labour of their own, which we allow them plentifully, as a reward for the benefits we receive from them. With those creatures on whom nature has bestowed no such qualities, that cannot support themselves nor afford us any advantage — why should we suffer such a race to be fed by our care, or defended by our protection? These, by the unhappy laws of their nature, being destitute of all things, became an easy prey to others till their whole species was at last destroyed.
But never have there been any such things as centaurs, nor could a creature at any time be formed from a doubtful nature, from two bodies and out of members so different and disagreeable. The limbs and faculties of a man and a horse could never act uniformly together with all their power; and this is obvious to a very mean apprehension. For a horse at three years old is strong and active; a child is far from so. At that age he is commonly feeling for the mother’s breast in his sleep. And when the horse’s strength decays by old age and his feeble limbs fail him at the end of his life, then the boy flourishes in the prime of youth and the beginnings of a beard appear upon his cheeks.
Never think, therefore, that there is or ever can be such a creature as a centaur, made up of a human nature and the servile seat of a horse; or that there are any such things as Scyllas, having their loins surrounded with ravenous bodies of half sea-dogs. Believe nothing of other monsters like these, whose members we observe so opposite in disagreeing, which neither live to the same age, nor grow strong or decay together, which are neither inflamed with the same sort of love, nor have the same dispositions, nor preserve their bodies by the same food. For goats, we see, often grow fat with hemlock, which to men is sharp poison. And since fire will scorch and burn the tawny body of a lion as well as the bowels of any other creature living with blood in its veins, how could a chimera, with its body of three kinds — with a lion’s head, a dragon’s tail, and the middle like a goat — blow abroad a fierce flame out of its body?
Cassius:
Thank you Charles for reading that today, and we appreciate your being back with us today — so good to have you back. There’s a lot in this week’s material, even though it’s not particularly long. Going back to the very beginning paragraph, about the Earth no longer producing the same kind of living beings she produced originally — anybody want to suggest a place to jump in?
Don:
It’s descriptive. One thing I did find interesting is that I saw some translations where they used the word “portents,” where other translations use the word “monsters.” And I thought it was odd, but I looked it up, and it looks like the word used in some of those portions is portenta — “portent” — but it was used in a wider sense than just prophecy. It was expanded into the idea that evil things are ugly things, and so it could refer to any unnatural occurrence. One of the examples I saw said that Pliny called an Egyptian with a pair of non-functioning eyes on the back of his head a portentum. So I thought that was interesting. They do also have the word monstrum, and both portentum and monstrum are ways to talk about unnatural things — snakes with feet, birds with four wings, and that kind of stuff.
Cassius:
That’s a good point because “monstrous” has a sort of value judgment connotation nowadays, and you wonder when you come across a word like that whether he’s actually suggesting anything undesirable — because the other two adjectives in this sentence in the 1743 edition are just “wonderful” and “uncommon,” which would indicate that, like you said, it’s just something unexpected or irregular or something that doesn’t happen very often.
Don:
One of the sources I saw said that Suetonius is quoted as saying a monstrum is contrary to nature, or exceeds the nature we are familiar with. So Latin has the word monstrum which in fact may be slightly more closely approximate to our current usage.
Cassius:
Exactly, and so that’s I think where we get the word itself. But it’s just basically something that’s contrary to nature or exceeds the nature we’re familiar with. And the example he gives is the thing with the snakes with feet and the birds with four wings — those are monstra as far as Suetonius is concerned.
There’s got to be a fairly obvious limit to that connotation of the word here, because it may be contrary to what we’re familiar with, but obviously it’s not so contrary or against nature that it wasn’t produced by nature in the first place.
Don:
Exactly — it’s contrary to what we’re familiar with. A snake with feet — that’s a monstrum.
Cassius:
And this is going probably too far into the rest of the material, but the point being made later on that centaurs and certain things are impossible is a distinction from these earlier things.
Martin:
The snake with feet there — I would like to somewhat contradict, because there are snake species that at least have toes left from their evolutionary development. Snakes as a group developed from lizards. Lizards were there before, and some lizards lost their legs. Some of these lizards without legs are still classified as lizards, but most of the former lizards typically without legs are snakes. And among these snakes — especially boas and pythons and some others — there are remnants of the hind legs.
Don:
I think that’s a really good point, because even within the definition Suetonius gives, it’s contrary to what we’re familiar with. If they had brought in a boa from some far-away country, they more than likely would have called it a monstrum, because they had never seen this thing before and it exceeded what they had expected to see from nature. So even though it does exist in nature, if you’re not familiar with it, you’re taken aback by it.
Cassius:
Now, are you guys talking about the same thing? Martin, what is the point of this paragraph? The point being that he said in the early days the earth produced certain things which were incapable of survival — is where he’s really going with it. Martin, were you making the point that snakes having residual legs is contrary to that, or maybe it’s actually an example of what he’s saying, because obviously the snakes were able to adapt and survive?
Martin:
You know, it’s not really 100% correct. It’s not completely wrong, but it’s just a small correction of this one particular example. I didn’t think further on that one with respect to the meaning of the text here.
Cassius:
Okay. I’m sorry — did he say something about snakes in particular in here?
Don:
Oh no, I’m sorry — that’s from Suetonius. That’s the definition of monstrum that was where he was talking about snakes with feet.
Cassius:
Okay. Well, early in the episode I became completely disconnected from the discussion then. So that’s not a good portent for today’s discussion, but I’ll try to do better. Not be a monstrum.
Okay. Up to the first paragraph. Martin, do you have something you wanted to say on that?
Martin:
So the last sentence of the first paragraph — at first I wasn’t sure I really understood it. But then I saw this: from the idea of continuous genesis, so it elaborates. And because we no more see this with big animals happening, but we still apparently see this with worms — if you accept this theory as superficially somewhat matching observations, then the conclusion is that we see worms come out of the earth. So in the past, the earth could produce dragons. But now it can no more produce dragons; instead it produces worms. Which in that idea apparently it couldn’t produce worms before. And I see no reason why that would be.
Cassius:
I hate to be too nitpicky in what you just said, but I think what he’s going to say at the end of the passage today is that it never could produce dragons, because if dragons are blowing flame out of their body — at any rate, he’s saying that was an impossibility. So maybe your point is correct; it’s just that “dragon” might not be the best example. Maybe “elephant” would be a better one, because we know that elephants exist. We don’t know that dragons exist.
So Martin, your point is that he’s saying that at one time the Earth was able to produce elephants fully formed out of the Earth, and that now it can only produce worms — and as a conclusion, in the past it could not produce worms?
Martin:
Yes. There was a very last phrase in the paragraph: “and now she bears what she could not do before.” So that means at least some of the species produced before — because worms are the standard example of what superficially appears to be produced by the earth — then the conclusion is in the past the earth did not produce worms. Which is nonsense.
Cassius:
I see. I see. You’d have to drill down to the Latin in order to really be certain of what that last sentence is supposed to mean. That’s why I’m glad you’ve brought to us, Don, your excellent interlinear translation so we can immediately go from Latin to English back and forth without any hesitation at all, right? Have you got that for us yet?
Don:
See, now you’re making me… There is at least in the Loeb Classical Library one with the Latin on one side and the English on the other side. That line is translated as: “So therefore time changes the nature of the whole world and one state of the earth gives place to another, so that what she bore she cannot, but can bear what she did not bear before.” And there’s a footnote that goes: “This one author argues perhaps rightly that the relative clauses are subject. She translates: ‘so that what bore cannot — namely the earth — and what could not bear can — namely the parents of each species.’”
Cassius:
I’m still not sure what that even means.
Don:
That is a commonly difficult-to-translate line, as far as I’m concerned. So it looks like he says the what bore cannot — namely, the earth — so the earth can no longer bear children. And what could not bear can — namely, the parents of each species. So now the parents of each species are the ones that will give rise to other animals and things. The earth itself can no longer bear organisms, but now the parents of each species bear the things that will populate the earth. That’s how they translate it.
It seems like a torturous way to translate it, but I certainly can’t translate Latin on the fly.
Cassius:
Yeah. I agree with Martin’s ultimate point, though — that there’s no reason to conclude that an earth which could produce elephants or dinosaurs in the past could not also have produced worms at the same time. So if the Latin goes so far as to imply that, then that would probably be something we would question.
Don:
And my take is that the whole idea is that the earth was very fertile when it was first formed and could form all these elephants and dinosaurs and whales and fully formed animals, and then over time it just became worn out. And the only thing it can produce now are worms because it’s worn out. They bring the idea of almost like a woman reaching menopause — the earth itself can no longer bear children out of those wombs that form underground. The only thing the earth itself can bring to life now is worms out of the ground, whereas before it could produce elephants and dinosaurs and whatever else it needed to.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s kind of what he was saying in the first sentence too — he makes the exact analogy of menopause. I guess somebody looking at these arguments might say, well, I don’t find it very persuasive to compare the earth to a woman or any animal that gives birth only when younger. But I guess one response to that concern would be: you do see these things right here in front of you. They came from somewhere. You might think it’s difficult to imagine how they were produced in past times, but it would be even more wonderful — or hard to believe — to say that they just popped into existence from nothing, because they do in fact exist.
Don:
Exactly. So this might be a good place for me to bring up — I mentioned before we started today that I was looking again through Sedley’s Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, and he talks specifically about Empedocles and his idea for this whole concept of animals being formed from the earth.
Evidently, according to Sedley, Empedocles also posited a set of randomly composed monsters that started the whole idea of life on Earth. He used the description of “man-faced ox children” — which is sort of unnerving to think about — and only the fittest of these man-faced ox children survived. Sedley said this earned Empedocles some grudging respect from the Epicureans, but not in the details. Because Empedocles’ idea was that there were originally disassociated limbs and organs crawling around by themselves, and they would come together in different groupings to see what would survive. So he actually started not just with fully formed animals from the Earth, but with disparate limbs and organs — and they finally came together into these man-faced ox children. The Epicureans said, well, that’s just ridiculous, you can’t have limbs and organs existing by themselves. But they said, okay, at least you’re looking for a material cause of these things and not that the gods created them themselves. Epicurus and Lucretius applauded Empedocles and the other presocratic philosophers for coming up with material causes, but they went against their details. They said at least it’s not the teleology of Plato and Aristotle that man is the crowning achievement of everything. There was some random chance and some material causes at work. But in the details, they were like: yeah, limbs and organs coming together randomly — that’s not going to work.
I found the whole idea of limbs and organs crawling around the ground by themselves both unnerving and sort of intriguing at the same time.
Cassius:
That is really helpful to explain why Epicurus and Lucretius are talking about some of the things they’re talking about here. I’d never heard that about Empedocles.
Martin:
I hadn’t either. That was a new one to me.
Cassius:
And I think Epicurus and Lucretius would have the same argument against the man-faced ox children that they do against the centaurs.
Don:
Yes, that seems directly lined up parallel to each other.
Cassius:
And probably in the second paragraph, at the end of it, I see the line about “first of all, there must be proper food, and then fit organs for the genial seed to flow through from all the limbs.” So the idea that organs might have existed before the full beings did is something I’ve never considered. But if it was in Empedocles, then it would be obvious why Epicurus would be entertaining that possibility.
Don:
According to Sedley, it’s Plutarch who writes that the Epicureans specifically derided the details of the man-faced ox children.
Cassius:
That also plays back to the issue of — have we already hit the part about the limbs not being formed for their use? Was that in Book One, or maybe we haven’t gotten to it yet? I believe it was in a prior episode. But it would also now be more logical why he would be talking about which came first, the feet or the use of them, if Empedocles thought there were just feet running around or sitting around on the earth.
Okay. Well, shall we move to the third passage? This next one has some interesting connotations when he starts talking about domesticated animals and how we take care of some but not others. And frankly, it strikes me that there’s one particular sentence here that people could take in all sorts of other contexts: “But those creatures on whom nature has bestowed no such qualities, that cannot support themselves nor afford us any advantage — why should we suffer such a race to be fed by our care, or defended by our protection?”
I would suggest that probably that line will not go on the motto of the naturalist societies of the world.
Don:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s probably not going to be high up on their list of favorite sayings from the ancient world.
Cassius:
But he continues on the very next sentence and says: “By the unhappy laws of their nature, being destitute of all things, they became an easy prey to others till their whole species was at last destroyed.” So I would have to, again, look at the Latin of “unhappy,” but it certainly would probably be something that he’s not necessarily endorsing — he’s just saying that’s the nature of things.
Don:
And I think too, it goes back to the whole idea from the beginning of these animals coming up out of the ground — he talks in previous sections about their limbs not working, or they couldn’t run. So naturally these are going to fall prey to the lions eating them and everything else. And so that’s why we don’t see that particular species anymore — they couldn’t protect themselves, so they’re gone, and we’ll never see them again. A failed experiment.
Cassius:
Right. And that’s no doubt why he’s bringing up this part about the domesticated animals. It emphasizes the point that you just made, Don — you’re either by nature equipped with the abilities to survive, or if you’re not naturally equipped with those abilities, you’ll have to find another method of survival. Because if you don’t do one of those two things, you’re just not going to survive.
Don:
Exactly. I got from that section that it seemed like he was saying that there have always been domesticated animals. He didn’t talk about the process of domestication, that they may have once been wild, and that we domesticated them. It sounded like he was saying humans have always had these animals and have always taken care of them. He didn’t really think of them as once roaming free and then we tamed them. He seemed to be saying that there were wild animals, and there were domesticated animals, and it’s just always been that way, and we’ve always taken care of these particular animals because they were useful to us.
Cassius:
Yeah. He’s not emphasizing any kind of time element that things would develop over time, like Martin talked about last week. Martin, you got any thoughts on that section?
Martin:
No, no. Of course I saw that.
Cassius:
And Charles, how about you?
Charles:
Not really. I find it interesting that it almost has the rudiments of the whole idea of Darwinian evolution and survival of the fittest — in the sense that you have to be able to survive. And there are little inklings in there of that whole idea. I’m not saying that Epicurus was a Darwinian evolutionist, but there are sort of glimmers of the idea, the beginnings of that idea in this, I think.
Cassius:
Yeah, I agree. I would probably even go further and say it’s more than glimmers. This section seems to be devoted to just the observation that things have to be acclimated and prove that they can survive over time in their environment in order to be successful.
Martin:
The only element on selection is clearly there, so that one is an obvious analogy — or we can even go further, it’s not just an analogy, it’s basically that idea. But what’s really missing is the evolution itself. The concept of spontaneous genesis is absolutely contrary to that. That’s an excellent point.
Cassius:
That’s an excellent point, because from the way I’m reading it too, he’s saying that each of the species we see grew fully formed out of the earth. So you have your elephants, dogs, chickens, and cows, and they’ve been that way from the very beginning. There’s no idea of speciation or change within or between species over time.
I think he would say that the horse, as we know it, was fully formed at the beginning and that’s the way it’s always been. There might have been some horses that only had three legs, or didn’t have any tail, or had some flaw that made them unfit to survive — and so we don’t see those kinds of things. But the horse with four legs and the mane and the tail, that’s what came up out of the earth, and that’s the way it’s remained since the beginning of the world.
Don:
I think there have been several instances we’ve probably already covered, and this is another one — in the middle of this third paragraph where he talks about the fierce breed of lions, their courage protected; craft secures the fox; the stag is swift. He seems to have gone through several lists like that where he’s noted the characteristics of a particular type of animal or type of human. And so he’s seeing that there’s a set of characteristics that’s important, but he’s not discussing any mechanism of change within those characteristics over time.
I did want to point out — I thought it was interesting, I jotted down one of the lines as Charles was reading — the section about the propagation of the species and the proper organs to transfer the seed and that sort of thing. The fact that he says “mutual delights of both,” both the male and the female — I thought that was interesting and brings up the whole idea that men and women have equal value and so the mutual delights of both are what he’s talking about.
Cassius:
You could probably also relate it to the word “mutual” in more general concepts of justice — how justice must be based on the mutual interests or pleasures of both. And that’s really where I was going to go next with it — you’ve got the mutual aspect, and then you’ve got the delight aspect, and that’s the pleasure part of it. So he’s talking about pleasure being a component of this selection process.
Don:
Not so much just that they survive, but that they find pleasure. And the actual Latin word is gaudia, which literally means joy or delight. G-A-U-D-I-A.
Cassius:
As in “gaudy”? Spelled that way?
Don:
Yes. As in a twisting or change in meaning — “gaudy” means showy or ostentatious today.
Cassius:
That’s etymology for you. Change over time.
Don:
I want to say there’s some hymn or something that has Gaudeamus igitur — I can’t remember the whole phrase now. But so I’m assuming that gaudia would translate euphrosynē in the Greek.
Cassius:
So the joy or delight part — not the resting pleasures, but the joy and delight.
Don:
Exactly, exactly — euphrosynē and chara, the mutual joy or delight, the act of pleasure.
Cassius:
Look at that. Okay, that makes sense then.
Okay, well, to continue to our fourth and final paragraph — this is the part about centaurs not being able to exist. And I noted that when I was preparing this text and reading what Munro had to say about it, that Munro was particularly impressed with this passage. He wrote that it is “extremely well and acutely reasoned out.” And I think what he’s focusing on there is the part about how men and horses grow at a very different rate — when the horse is old and feeble, the boy is still young and just beginning to show a beard. That’s part of the argument that a centaur could never exist because the nature of a horse is to grow old at a much faster rate than a human. So what do you guys think about this final paragraph?
Don:
I will have to agree with him — I thought it was a very astute reasoned argument, and I had never heard it before. It’s a really good way to look at it, because centaurs only exist in the imagination of people, by the combination of different images. But in actuality you couldn’t have such a thing, because of the very reasons he talks about. And the same reasons you can’t have a chimera or a Scylla.
Cassius:
I remember a podcast or two where we discussed this point at relative length — about whether centaurs were something we can rule out as being impossible because of the premises of our physics, or whether centaurs are things we just haven’t seen and maybe are possible. And I think like you said, we’re also talking about how the images coming together to form centaurs is something he discussed earlier, maybe in Book Four.
And the way he’s reasoning it out — you could almost think that a centaur type thing, or a Scylla type thing, or a chimera type thing would be one of those monstra that would have shown up in the early days of the world, but could not have existed because the parts didn’t work well together, so they would have died out anyway.
So you’re saying, Don — if Sedley is correct, this is a direct refutation of… Democritus and his… Actually, I don’t know where I came up with Democritus. Yes — a direct refutation of Empedocles and his ox-faced men type.
Don:
Empedocles, yeah. Yeah, you just couldn’t have these different things coming together because they just don’t work and play well together.
Cassius:
Yeah. I don’t know where I came up with Democritus — yes, direct refutation of Empedocles. And maybe there are two arguments here: the issue of aging separately, and then the issue of whether a flame could exist within the body of a normal animal.
Don:
That’s why I just found this section so well reasoned out — I found it quite entertaining the way he explained it.
Cassius:
Martin and Charles — I don’t guess we even today have examples of animals that produce fire, do we? We haven’t found any unusual animals in Antarctica or unusual places?
Martin:
A guy of Chinese descent once told me that in China they have this idea that a kind of water reptile of the past, now extinct, produced methane and then found a way to incinerate it. And this is said to be the origin of the flame-throwing dragon — that there was actually a species in the past which used this for hunting or defense.
Cassius:
Oh, they could expel the methane and then ignite it after they’d expelled it — so the flame would come outside their body, but they would still be using flame?
Martin:
Yeah. It’s like when men swallow some flammable liquid and spit it out in a forceful way and then incinerate it, so it doesn’t burn inside their mouths. Once they know how to do it, they won’t injure themselves. And this animal would have done the same. But this is not scientific — this is basically Chinese folklore, but they give it a materialistic interpretation.
Cassius:
What is it that people do — I’m sure there’s YouTube videos everywhere. Don, Charles — what is it you put in your mouth and then ignite it after you spit it?
Don:
I’m going to say grain alcohol, I’m assuming — because if you swallow some back, it won’t kill you if it’s in a moderate dose.
Cassius:
You might know more about this, Martin. And this is completely off topic, but does alcohol burn at a lower temperature than other flammable liquids?
Martin:
Yeah, I read about this one. It depends on the conditions, because when we have alcohol, we usually mean an actual mixture of water and alcohol. The water in there will definitely help bring down the temperature. I read about this as well, because when you play around with fire produced from alcohol, you do not necessarily get severe burns from it. But you can get very severe burns — in the laboratory of a university where my wife worked, one girl was severely burned and almost died from such a fire. So it’s not safe by nature. Under some conditions the temperature may be somewhat lower, especially if you’re not in long contact with it. But one should make a disclaimer: don’t try this at home. You should only do this if you know what you’re doing — figuring it out by yourself means you will get burned a couple of times until you figure it out.
Don:
YouTube video is as close as I would want to get to anybody wanting to actually try that kind of thing.
Cassius:
Well, we’re coming to the end of a normal length episode for today, and we probably ought to begin to think about closing comments. But before we do — anybody have any new material to raise?
Martin:
I have one remark on gaudia. This word exists as a word with the meaning “fun” in Bavarian and Austrian dialects of German — Gaudi — with the meaning of fun, not a derogatory meaning of any kind. I’ve heard this often and read it in Bavarian texts or Bavarian plays.
Don:
That would be a great translation — “the mutual fun of both.”
Cassius:
Martin — you know the word “gay”? I think that comes from the same place. I think of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science — that the word he uses in that title. Or does he use “joyous” or something? I forget.
Martin:
Let me try to find the German title. Say again — what is the title of this one in English?
Cassius:
Isn’t it The Gay Science, Don or Charles? I think that’s the title.
Don:
At least I looked up the etymology of the English word, and it says it’s from the Old French gai, meaning “joyful, laughing, or merry,” usually thought to be a borrowing from Proto-Germanic, and possibly going back to Proto-Indo-European meaning “to stride” or “to step.” But somebody rejects this derivation and treats the Germanic word as having no known etymology. So there you go.
And I see the answer on Nietzsche — the German is Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.
Cassius:
How do you say that, Martin? The V’s and the W’s always kill me. My best attempt would be “the frolicking Wissenschaft” but that’s not exactly it. Can you pronounce the whole German title?
Martin:
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. The W in German is pronounced like a V. So it’s not about witchcraft — it’s essentially the “joyful science” or “frolicking science.” That one would make the most sense. And the second word — Wissenschaft — the W is pronounced like a V: Vissen-shaft.
Cassius:
Okay, so “frolicking” would be a different word entirely than Gaudi, I guess.
Martin:
Yes. But Gaudi as in Bavarian, and fröhlich as in Nietzsche’s title, both convey a sense of joyfulness.
Cassius:
Okay, that was a tangent. Did that finish the tangent, or do we want to go to closing comments now? Martin, do you have anything else to say on that?
Martin:
No, no. Nice on this.
Cassius:
Okay. Charles, again, thank you for being with us today. I know you’re tired — you’ve started a new schedule — and we appreciate your being here. Any closing thoughts for today?
Charles:
No.
Cassius:
All right. Don?
Don:
The only thing I will add is — I did find the thing I was thinking of with gaudia and the hymn. It’s Gaudeamus igitur — “so let us rejoice.” That’s the name of the hymn.
Cassius:
All right. And just because my attention span can get very short sometimes — that’s the word included in what we have as the last sentence in our second paragraph today: “they must be furnished with those parts that may promote the mutual delights of both.”
Don:
Exactly — gaudia was the “delight,” translated as joy or delight. And then it comes back to Gaudeamus igitur — “so let us rejoice.” And we can do the same thing with Epicureans. So “promoting the mutual rejoicings of both” might be another go at it.
Martin:
We’re fun if you’re Bavarian.
Cassius:
Okay, okay, very good. That was another good episode, so thanks everybody for your time today. We’ll do it again next week. Talk to you then.
Don:
Good. Okay. Bye.