Dr.

Robert Hickson

13 June 2013 Saint Anthony of Padua

Memorable Perceptions of Modern Noise and Mans Ingrained Inattentiveness

Epigraphs: On Poverty, Irony, and the Barbarian Poverty has a yet nobler effect by the introduction into our lives of irony : and irony I take to be the salt in the feast of the intelligence ....All the poor of London have irony; even poor gentlemen, after the age of fifty, discover veins of irony and are better for them, as a man is better for salt in his cooking. Remark [also] that irony kills stupid satire, and that to have an agent within one [i.e., irony] that kills stupid satire is to possess an antiseptic against the suppurative reactions of the soul. Poverty, again, makes men appreciate reality. You may tell me that this is of no advantage. It is of no direct advantage; but I am sure that it is of advantage in the long run. For if you ignore reality you will come sooner or later against it like a ship against a rock in a fog, and you will suffer as the ship will suffer . (Hilaire Belloc, Talking of Poverty, in Short Talks with the Dead and Others (London: Sheed & Ward, 1926second edition), p. 195the entire essay extending from pp. 191-196) *** The Barbarian hopesand that is the very mark of himthat he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilisation should have offended him with priests and soldiers. The Barbarian wonders what strange meaning may lurk in that ancient and solemn truth, Sine Auctoritate nulla vita. [Without Authority there is no life.] In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation [or cultured city] exactly that has been true. We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes [e.g., as in the modern attack upon property and upon marriage(279)] and [of] our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile . We permit our jaded intellects to play with the drugs of novelty for the fresh sensation they arouse, though we know well that there is no good in them, but only wasting in the last.....The real interest in watching the Barbarian is not the amusement derivable from his antics, but the prime doubt whether he will succeed or no, whether he will flourish. He is, I 1

repeat, not an agent, but merely a symptom. It is not he in his impotence that can discover the power to disintegrate the great and ancient body of Christendom, but if we come to see him triumphant we may be certain that that body, from causes much vaster than such as he could control, is furnishing him with sustenance and forming for him a congenial soil and that is as much as to say that we are dying. (Hilaire Belloc, The Barbarians, in This and That and The Other (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1912), pp. 281-283my bold emphasis added, italics in the original, the entire essay extending from pp. 273-283) *** This brief essay proposes to consider how two eloquent Catholic authors, Hilaire Belloc and Evelyn Waugh, describe and deal with the phenomenon of noise, an unmistakable mark of the intrusive modern world even in times of putative peace. The first account is from 1925 and deals with a famous city upon the water in northeastern Italy, Venice; and the second account is from 1938, some thirteen years later, and deals with the high, upland capital of Mexico, Mexico City. Hilaire Bellocs account is briefer and more charmingly ironical (and satirical), and it is to be found in his essay, Talking of Venice.1 Evelyn Waughs account is to be found in his book, Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson.2 Belloc at once puts us on alert, as he opens his essay on Venice with a special light tone of drollery, and as he leads us to behold the itch for innovation and the insolence of novelty: 3 I read it in the papers some months ago that they were talking of replacing the gondolas in Venice by motor-boats. I hope they will. What Venice has lacked hitherto in modernity has been noise. It has crowds of tourists, huge advertisements, bombs dropped on it from the air, newspapers with large pictures of murders, American films and a magnificent publicity: but little noise. (16) Continuing to present, with details historical, all that Venice cumulatively has assimilated, but
1 Hilaire Belloc, Short Talks with the Dead and Others (London: Sheed & Ward, 1926second edition), pages 16-22. References to this essay will henceforth be placed in parentheses in the main text above, as will be also done with the page references to Waughs book on Mexico. 2 Evelyn Waugh, Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson (London: The Catholic Book Club, 1940first published in England, in the spring of 1939, and thus shortly before the distracting outbreak of World War II), especially Chapter Two, Tourist Mexico, notably on pages 21-26, where Waughs accent is on a special outbreak of noise! 3 These last two related phrases in quotation marks are memorable insights from the writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson and G.K. Chesterton, respectivelyChestertons words coming from his 1932 book on Geoffrey Chaucer, entitled Chaucer.

for one conspicuous omission, Belloc says (with a wink to Rabelais): Venice had had whole libraries of books written about people who had written other libraries of books about it. Essays were written on Venice (all exactly the same and quoting [John] Ruskin) by boys and girls in England, Wales, the Six counties [of Northern Ireland] and the Lowlands [of Scotland]; by boys and girls of the middle and upper middle classes; 395,288 of those essays were written in 1922 (according to the statistics supplied to me by the present Government) between Thames and Tees alone. Venice already had chemical cooking in a respectable number of restaurants and it had a great number of places where you can change money at a loss . It had buildingspalaces and prisonsturned from their old uses into shows. It had all theses things. But it had not the essential of modernity which is deafening metallic noise . (16 my emphasis added) On the premise that contrast clarifies the mind, and thereby bolstering his own (ironical) point, Belloc continues: Such noise [deafening metallic noise] is the glory of Rome and Paris. I am glad to say we are reaching a high standard here in London. But Venice is abominably backward in this point. Let them see to it. While the Venetians are about this vigorous cleansing up of their world and ridding it of the old nonsense, it occurs to me that they could do worse than fill up their canals. (16-17) Like a Swiftean Projector or a modern Land Developer, Bellocs continues with the viewpoint of his adopted Progressive Persona: Perhaps it would be too expensive to fill up the Grand Canal, but I am sure the multitude of lesser ones could be turned into reasonable lanes and streets at an expense that would be more than covered by the increased rents of the shops and houses along them. As things now are (or were, when I was last in the town), one had perpetually to cast about for a bridge as one walked abroad, and it made the perambulation of the city exasperatingly difficult. Moreover, the greater part of these bridges are shockingly expensive. They are of stone and even carved. It is a sheer waste and one of which a modern municipality should be ashamed. (17) Bellocs Progressive Planner shows that he is a little shaky about certain traditional manifestations of the sacred, as they would be once understood by Catholic Christians, at least: Is it not also rather absurd that, to this day, they should keep St. Marks 3

[Cathedral] in use as a church? In Paris, the Saint Chapelle is no longer encumbered with Masses, Benedictions, Vespers, or whatever they call ceremonies of that kind; it is thrown open to sight-seers at a small entrance fee, and no side-show of little bells, processions or singing or mumbled services is allowed to disturb the intelligent survey of the trippers [tourists]. That is as it should be. I am told that the new [Secular-Masonic] French Government is thinking of doing the same with Notre Dame, and, if they do, all reasonable people will applaud them. (17my emphasis added) Our farsighted, energetic Planner cannot, however, yet entirely leave the topic of the canals of Venice: But to return to the filling up of the canals. Every sensible man will agree that the principal use of Venice to modern Italy (which is that of a port), would be increased many fold [also in the Quantity of Noise!] were the plan of providing the town with proper streets adopted....What is more ridiculous stillI am astonished how few people appreciate itis the fact that there are no wheeled vehicles in Venice. There are not even omnibuses, let alone cabs! . But it remains true that there are vehicles in every other European town, however backward, save Venice. To my mind it speaks ill for the dictatorship established in Italy [under Mussolini in 1922, and then later even moreso, in 1926] that after more than three years of absolute power, it has been so unable to do away with such an anomaly in the national life: one at hearing of which every true compatriot of Nathan [Rothschild?] and [Giuseppe] Mazzini [1805-1872] must hang his head. (18italics in the original) Bellocs Narrator continues to present further novelties to modernize Venicefor example, the water supply, the abnormal infant mortality, and a further unwholesome resort to drinking quite common red wine. Indeed, especially shocking to the Progressive Narrator is this last item: The people of Venice, as is apparent to the most casual observer, have been driven by the absence of a proper hydraulicor perhaps I should say hydrologicalsystem, to drinking quite common red wine habitually as a beverage, with all the evils attendant to so fearful a practice [ pace Rabelais]. I am glad to say that this habit is now somewhat declining among the wealthier classes through the introduction of [bubbly] champagne, Asti, soda water and other sorts of aerated waters, but it is still appallingly common. Things have gone so far that I have observed with my own eyes a priest enter a common bar near the Capo Nero, talk familiarly with the owner thereof, who was his brother, and in broad daylight drink a large glass of red wine as though it were so much milk! The subject is too unpleasant to be dwelt upon at any length. Nothing but a 4

strong sense of duty has made me touch upon it even in the briefest way. (20) But, in conclusion, we soon find out that all is not lost and that the prospects of outside help in dealing with Venice are even looking very good; and, thus, all is not demoralizing to our Narrator, who says: However, there is some hope for the future. An active group of American and English ladies and gentlemen (with whom are acting, I am glad to say, a certain number from the Dominions [e.g., Canada, Australia, South Africa et al.]) have recently formed a society with offices in Kingsway entitled: the V.R.C., or Venice Reconstruction Company, and there is every hope that when the present irresponsible regime [of Benito Mussolini] in Italy comes to its natural end, and free institutions are restored, this admirable and disinterested body will be given a concession which it has sought in vain from the existing Government at Rome. If difficulties are still put in their way, they will appeal to the League of Nations. (21-22my emphasis added) This will, of course, greatly facilitate the possibilities, and a manifold expansion, of the phenomenon of noise, especially the essential of modernity which is a deafening metallic noise (16) and may even accomplish the itch for innovation and the insolence of novelty without the added cacophony of modern, amplifying sound systems purporting to make music, always sensate (and even re-tribalizing) throbs and loud beats. Let us now consider how a different sort of man, who is a comparably vivid writer, also approaches and reacts to the experience of noise in Mexico. Evelyn Waugh first imparts details of the scene and then more subtly shows the precedence given to certain noisy projects, thereby showing what the oligarchs in power want and desire to protect. First of all, Waugh introduces us to the larger setting and atmosphere, as it was in 1938: It is to Mexico City that the tourist naturally goes, and from there that he plans his journeys. It is a huge, cosmopolitan, infernally noisy place where everything contrives to puzzle and stun the stranger, so that in the first days of his visit he lives in a kind of breathless tranceactually breathless, for the altitude [7,350 feet, similar to Colorado Springs, Colorado at the U.S. Air Force Academy] plays tricks with even the most robust constitution, so that the eventempered find themselves liable to sudden, unreasonable explosions of rage, the heartiest eaters lose their appetite, and the most energetic are overcome by lassitude. It is doubtful how much humankind can become properly at ease in this climate; perhaps one may attribute to it a great part of the otherwise 5

unaccountable alternations of listlessness and violence that have made Mexican history. (21my emphasis added) After warning us that it depends upon the circumstances of his arrival whether listlessness or violence is dominant in the strangers mind during his first hours in the country, (21) he gratefully reports upon his own fortunate experience. (21-22) For, a friend has heroically risen at dawn to meet him, and he could thus pass through the railroad station in an agreeable daze, shielded from too early contact with the inhabitants. (22my emphasis added) About his quarters to which he was hospitably conducted, he says: The principal hotel [the Ritz] stands in the old Spanish town....There are others larger, more expensive, and more recently built, offering an equal profusion of hot, cold, and iced water, but it is to the Ritz that people naturally gravitate who are spending any length of time in the city. It is the only hotel frequented by the Mexicans themselves and it has the somewhat equivocal advantage of standing in the heart of the busiest street [the street now named Avenida Madero]. (22my emphasis added) Now, having overcome this first grey and chilly morning, he, himself a widely traveled man in the world, warms up to his specific description and theme: Busiest street!...Mexico is the most shrill and thunderous city in the world. Noise is the first, shattering greeting to the stranger, it is the constant companion of all his days, the abiding memory he takes home with him to the nordic stillness of London or New York. Noise of every kind, competing for predominance. Noise of traffic ; the old-fashioned courtesy for which many Mexicans are justly famous seems to forsake them when they get behind the wheel of a motor car . They move, as all urban drivers must, in a series of rushes, like infantry advancing through machine-gun fire; when halted they hoot continuously to be released; when they go, they still hoot to scare off the streets any aged or infirm persons who have got caught, half way across, by the change of lights; embedded here and there in the turmoil, raised sometimes on little platforms covered with advertisements [i.e., with Visual Noise!], stand policemen, whistling [with Auditory Noise thus now added!]. (23my emphasis added) Passing on to the manifestations of the human voice, he says: The sidewalks....are very narrow and full of foot passengers, but, oddly enough, they are the main center of social life and the noise of human voices is louder, even than the claxons [the loud horns of the motor cars!];...during the day, at the crowded hours, if a Mexican wants to talk with his friends, he 6

stands in the middle of the sidewalk and yellspolitics, politeness, business negotiation, anything that requires full verbal expression . Above them againfor as the conversationalists seek to outtalk the traffic , so they must interrupt the conversationalistsrise the voices of the street sellers , calling the numbers of lottery tickets and the headlines of the newspapers. In justice to the beggars who throng the side streets, it should be said that they are, when sober, a quiet lot; they rely for their appeal on proximity, pushing their faces very close and muttering confidentially or, in the case of children, merely swinging on ones coat-tails and reciting the rosary . There are, however, street singers with curiously penetrating tones and I met one old Indian who was well ahead of the traffic, playing an instrument entirely new to methe nose-organ. (23-24my emphasis added) Seeming to build up more gradually to a crescendo, after already almost overloading our senses, Waugh impishly moves us a little further into the Realm of Noisealong with a nod to visual non-representational art, or abstract expressionism: Besides these purely communicative and representational sounds, there is the abstract noise for noises sake the bashing together of pieces of wood or iron, preferably in the light-wells of the larger buildings , for no other purpose than the general good; for Mexicans feast on sound, as the more ascetic nordics feast on stillness, and count no man happy until his ear drums are ringing. Thus if one arrives early at the leading restaurant of the place, the head-waiter hospitably puts himself out to set you at ease and relieve the unhomely silence, by grinding the legs of the furniture on the tiled floor till the tables round you fill up and all is Babel again. (24my emphasis added) Waughs deft selection and combination of words and tonal diction are truly inimitableand, by way of his tacitness and restraint, he imbues us with further delight, as we imagine him sitting there in his nordic disorientation! And now he will take us into the night: At night in the shabbier parts of the city, and in all quarters of the provincial towns, the stranger is liable to be alarmed by what sounds like rifle fire . Occasionally, no doubt, it is so. In the brave days of Carranza and Calles people were fairly free with firearms; they used to shoot the street lamps after a party and not infrequently their fellow guests . But most of those explosions [now] come from fireworks and from bits of dynamite stolen from the mines. Europeans [not just Nordics, be it noted!] like fireworks for their visual effect and regard the noise as an inevitable concomitant. The Mexicans [, however,] like the noise alone and most of their fireworks provide plain, large bangs. (24-25my emphasis added) Now cometh, so long anticipated, the climax: 7

But of all the noises of Mexico City the loudest and most individual was made by the mechanical pile-driver opposite the Opera House. Thud-shriek, thud-shriek; it worked day and night; the hammer fell, the compressed air escaped and the great tree trunks sank foot by foot into the soft sub-soil. While in the general [economic-financial] slump [in 1938], other major works were at a standstill, this infernal machine pounded on incessantly, dominating a whole quarter of the city. By a peculiar irony it was constructing new vaults for the metallic reserves of the National Bank. The national finances that summer were a joke which was offensive to nobody. Revenue was down, production was down, credit was down, trade was down; the pile-driver seemed to thump home monotonously the simple facts of national bankruptcy. No figures had been published for some time but everyone, whatever his politics, believed that the [Mexican] President was keeping up the peso by buying American dollars at a rate which would completely empty the treasury in a few months; after that lay the prospect of inflation, repudiation, confiscation. Everyone, for various reasons, wanted a crisis (with the possible exception of the American ambassador and it did not occur to him that a crisis was imminent [even as World War II approached]) for when the metal reserves left the country, the Mexican government would have to readjust itself, one way or another. And everyone had different ideas of the readjustment that was required. Meanwhile the pile-driver prepared the new vaults. (27-28my emphasis added) What a picture of Noise and Delusion. Preparing metallic vaults that will soon be empty of the nations metallic reservesand the strident unceasing sounds of the pile-driver further reflect the emptiness and the lassitude and the recurrent listlessness underlying all the other surface forms of noise earlier, and so vividly, depicted by Waugh. We may also recall in this context what Hilaire Belloc, some thirteen years earlier, wrote about the essential of modernity which is deafening metallic noise . But now we know even more about heavy-metal sound systems that stun and benumb the auditors and their minds, and further prepare them for the technologies of electronic servitude which follow, all of which help constitute (along with, for example, Big Pharma and Video Games and Multi-Media Manipulations) our true and somewhat intractably interdependent Drug Culture. Amidst so much auditory and visual noise, how can we, how may we, learn to listen and to see once again? With receptive and contemplative attentiveness; and even to know a feast of stillness, not just of sound.

CODA In 1952, Josef Pieper first published an essay, entitled Learning How to See Again, which was first prompted by his visit to the United States shortly after World War II, and then later made part of a collection of his wide-ranging and deeply discerning essays on art and contemplation, entitled Only the Lover Sings.4 It seems therefore fitting that we first consider this brief reflection, in contrast and counterpoint to the above presentations of noise and its effects; and then to complement Josef Piepers insights with those of Simone Weil in her highly differentiated essay, entitled Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God 5the latter being essentially about the discipline and cultivation of the faculty of attention that we may thereby learn to see the human face in need of help and our mercy. Josef Pieper begins his essay with a short declaration, which he then proposes to illustrate: Mans ability to see is in decline. Those who nowadays concern themselves with culture and education will experience this fact again and again. We do not mean here, of course, the physiological sensitivity of the human eye. We mean the spiritual capacity to perceive the visible reality as it truly is . (31italics in the original, my bold emphasis added) The traditional concept of the Veritas Rerumor the Truth of Thingsmeans reality manifesting itself to a knowing mind. Being comes before Knowing. In other words, it means reality unveiling or disclosing itself to one who is interiorly serene and attentively receptive, while being respectful both of the intelligibility, as well as the unfathomability and irreducible mystery of reality: objective reality, extra mentem, in its fertilizing fullness. This also requires in the perceiver himself, therefore, a certain inner order and purity. Josef Pieper continues: To be sure, no human has ever really seen everything that lies visibly in front of his eyes. The world, including its tangible side, is unfathomable. Who would ever have perfectly perceived the countless shapes and shades of just one wave
4 Josef Pieper, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990). The original German title, published in 1988, was Nur der Liebende singt. The little books two epigraphs are from Saint Augustine of Hippo and Joseph de Maistre, respectively: Cantare amantis est (To sing is characteristic of the one who loves); and Reason speaks in words alone, but love has a song. The short essay, Learning How to See Again is to be found on pages 3136. 5 Simone Weil, The Simon Weil Reader (edited by George A. Panichas) (Mt. Kisco, New York: Moyar Bell Limited, 1977), pp. 44-52. The volume in its entirety is some 570 pages in length.

swelling and ebbing in the ocean! And yet there are degrees of perception. Going below a certain bottom line quite obviously will endanger the integrity of man as a spiritual being. It seems that nowadays we have arrived at this bottom line. I am writing this on my return from Canada aboard a ship sailing from New York to Rotterdam. Most of the passengers have spent some time in the United States, many for one reason only: to visit and see the New World with their own eyes. With their own eyes: in this lies the difficulty. (31italics in the original) After giving several specific examples of hearing almost without exception [from fellow passengers] rather generalized statements and pronouncements that are plainly the common fare of travel guides, (32) Dr. Pieper shows what was also unfortunately missed, even in our ships bow wake, because nobody had the patience to let the eyes adapt to the darkness (32) in order to see the magnificent fluorescent sea creatures whirled up to the surface (32)and he thus comments: To repeat, then: mans ability to see is in decline. Searching for reasons, we could point to various things: modern mans restlessness and stress, quite sufficiently denounced by now, or his total absorption and enslavement by practical goals and purposes. Yet one reason must not be overlooked either: the average person of our time loses the ability to see because there is too much to see! There does exist something like visual noise, which just like the acoustical counterpart, makes clear perception impossible. One might perhaps presume that TV watchers, tabloid readers, and movie goers exercise and sharpen their eyes. But the opposite is true. The ancient sages knew exactly, they called the concupiscence of the eyes a destroyer. The restoration of mans inner eyes can hardly be expected in this day and ageunless, first of all, one were willing and determined simply to exclude from ones realm of life all those inane and contrived but titillating illusions incessantly generated by the entertainment industry. (32-33italics in the original) With his characteristic integrity, Josef Pieper then anticipates a strong objection, and then attempts to answer it: You may argue, perhaps: true, our capacity to see has diminished, but such a loss is merely the price all higher cultures have to pay. We have lost, no doubt, the American Indians keen sense of smell, but we no longer need it since we have binoculars, compass, and radar. Let me repeat: in this obviously continuing process there exists a limit below which human nature itself is threatened, and the very integrity of human existence is directly endangered. Therefore, such an ultimate danger can no longer be averted with technology alone. At stake here is this: how can man be saved from becoming a totally passive consumer of mass-produced goods and a subservient follower beholden to every slogan the managers may 10

proclaim? The question really is: How can man preserve and safeguard the foundation of his spiritual dimension and an uncorrupted relationship to reality? (33-34my emphasis added) Amidst much visual and acoustical noisesuch as what was depicted by Evelyn Waugh in Mexico Citywe must, Dr. Pieper says, come to realize that The capacity to perceive the visible world with our own eyes is indeed an essential constituent of human nature. We are talking here about mans essential inner richnessor, should the threat prevail, mans most abject inner poverty. And why so? To see things is the first step toward that primordial and mental grasping of reality, which constitutes the essence of man as a spiritual being. I am aware that there are realities we can come to know through hearing alone [e.g., Fides ex auditu, says Saint Paul; or the wordless jubilation that comes with simply hearing Bach or Vivaldi!]. All the same, it remains a fact that only through seeing, indeed seeing with our own eyes, is our inner autonomy established. Those who are no longer able to see reality with their own eyes are equally unable to hear correctly . It is specifically the man thus impoverished who inevitably falls prey to the demagogical [or alluringly sophistical] spells of any powers that be. Inevitably, because such a person is utterly deprived of the potential to keep a critical distance (and here we recognize the direct political relevance of our topic). (34my emphasis added) Acknowledging that the diagnosis is indispensable, although only as a first step, he thus poses the additional and urgent (not just important) questions: What, then, may be proposed; what can be done? (35) After making certain fundamental distinctions about removing barriers, he will come to consider some more constructive remedies for our greater good: We already mentioned simple abstention [i.e., even especially giving up a lesser good for a greater good], a regimen of fasting and abstinence, by which we try to keep the visual noise of daily inanities at a distance [even in Mexico City!]. Such an approach seems to me indeed an indispensable first step, but, all the same, no more than the removal, say, of a roadblock. A better and more immediately effective remedy is this: to be active itself in artistic creation, producing shapes and forms for the eye to see . Nobody has to observe and study the visible mystery of a human face more than the one who sets out to to sculpt it in a tangible medium. And this holds true not only for a manually formed image. The verbal image [as in good literature] as well can thrive only when it springs from a higher level of visual perception . We sense the intensity of observation required simply to say, The girls eyes were gleaming like wet currents (Tolstoy). (35my emphasis added)

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Josef Pieper, after these preparatory diagnoses and proposed incipient remedies, leads us now to his concluding affirmations: Before you can express anything in tangible form, you first need eyes to see. The mere attempt, therefore, to create an artistic form compels the artist to take a fresh look at the visible reality ; it requires authentic and personal observation. Long before creation is completed, the artist has gained for himself another and more intimate achievement: a deeper and more receptive vision, a more intense awareness, a sharper and more discerning understanding, a more patient openness for all things quiet and inconspicuous, an eye for things previously [or ungratefully!] overlooked. In short, the artist will be able to perceive with new eyes the abundant wealth of visible reality, and, thus challenged, additionally acquires the inner capacity to absorb into his mind such an exceedingly rich harvest . The capacity to see increases. (35-36my bold emphasis added; italics in the original) So many sound and formative insights, in such a small essay, has Josef Pieper generously given usto purify our own perceptions and to enhance our receptive, contemplative vision. For, we are, indeed, fertilized from without. As with infused Grace. Desursum descendens. As a substantial complement to Josef Piepers essay about increasing ones capacity (potentiality or ability) to see, we shall now consider the insights of a more mystical, young French woman, Simone Weil (1909-1943), from her above-referenced essay, which begins with the following words: The key to a Christian conception of studies is that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it. The highest part of attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such contact [touch!] to be established; but the whole attention is turned to God. Of course school exercises only develop [by way of preparation] a lower kind of attention. Nevertheless they are extremely effective in increasing the power of attention that will be available at the time of prayer [or to see a suffering human countenance], on the condition that they are carried out with a view to this purpose and this purpose alone. Although people seem to be unaware of it today [even in the first half of the 20th century, at least in France], the development of the faculty of attention 12

forms the real object and almost the sole interest in studies....All tasks that really call upon the faculty of attention are interesting....School children who love God....should learn to like all these subjects [e.g., French or Greek], because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer. (44-45my emphasis added) Regrettably passing over much else of specific inspiration and illumination, we shall consider the last part of her essay, while at the same time recommending that the entirety of her essay be read attentively and savored: Happy then are those who pass their adolescence and youth in developing this power of attention. No doubt they are no nearer to goodness than their brothers working in fields or factories. They are near in a different way. Peasants and workmen posses a nearness to God of incomparable savor which is found in the depths of poverty, in the absence of social consideration [prestige, esteem] and in the endurance of long drawn-out sufferings . If, however, we consider the occupations in themselves, studies are nearer to God because of the attention which is their soul. Whoever has gone through years of study without developing this attention has lost a great treasure. (51my emphasis added) She then moves on to consider our neighbor, and with some fresh and even surprising insights, even if, at times, somewhat idealistically overstated: Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance; the love of our neighbor, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance. Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention [as in spiritual and corporal works of mercy]. The capacity to give ones attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing....Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not posses it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough. In the first legend of the Grail, it is said that the Grail (the miraculous vessel that satisfies all hunger by virtue of the consecrated Host [Latin Hostia, Victim]) belongs to the first comer who ask the guardian of the vessel, a king three-quarters paralyzed by the most painful wound , What are you going through? The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: What are you going through? It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled unfortunate, but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction . For this reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way. 13

This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth. Only he who is capable of attention can do this.... Should the occasion arise [for those disciplined and cultivated and properly prepared by studies], they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need. (51-52my emphasis added) Returning to the young student again at the very end of her reflections and recommendations, Simone Weilalso aware that we shall finally be judged by our lives of practical charity compassionately says (with a hint of religious indifferentism, however), as follows: For an adolescent, capable of grasping this truth and generous enough to desire this fruit above all others, studies could have their fullest spiritual effect, quite apart from[??] any particular religious belief. Academic life is one of those fields containing a pearl so precious [as Christ himself particularly said] that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves [alone], in order to acquire it. (52my emphasis added) Belloc and Waugh have prepared us well to receive what Pieper and Weil would further draw us to cultivate and to cherish. Instead of the roaming unrest of spirit ( evagatio mentis) and the listless (or slothful), passive acceptance of noise, we are drawnnot pushedto a quies mentis in Deo (a repose of the mind in God) and a greater receptive attentiveness to His unfathomably rich and inwardly fertilizing Gift of Creation (Creatio). So that we may overcome our perhaps ingrained inattentiveness6; and also more adequately perceive the visible mystery of a human face and be able, thereby, to reach out more attentively and promptly to human afflictionand to come, then, bearing true consolation, sub Gratia, not only an alleviation.

Finis
2013 Robert D. Hickson

6 Professor Josef Pieper, speaking in English, used this acute phrase in one of our conversations in Spain in the early 1970s. I have never forgotten it, and have reflected many times upon my beloved mentors resonant meaning.

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