Awe

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxii.) Having shewn that it is not right to be anxious about food, He passes to that which is less; (for raiment is not so necessary as food;) and asks, And why are ye careful wherewith ye shall be clothed? He uses not here the instance of the birds, when He might have drawn some to the point, as the peacock, or the swan, but brings forward the lilies, saying, Consider the lilies of the field. He would prove in two things the abundant goodness of God; to wit, the richness of the beauty with which they are clothed, and the mean value of the things so clothed with it. AUGUSTINE. (Serm. in Mont. ii. 15.) The things instanced are not to be allegorized so that we enquire what is denoted by the birds of the air, or the lilies of the field; they are only examples to prove God’s care for the greater from His care for the less. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. For lilies within a fixed time are formed into branches, clothed in whiteness, and endowed with sweet odour, God conveying by an unseen operation, what the earth had not given to the root. But in all the same perfectness is observed, that they may not be thought to have been formed by chance, but may be known to be ordered by God’s providence. When He says, They toil not, He speaks for the comfort of men; Neither do they spin, for the women. CHRYSOSTOM. He forbids not labour but carefulness, both here and above when He spoke of sowing. GLOSS. (non occ.) And for the greater exaltation of God’s providence in those things that are beyond human industry, He adds, I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. JEROME. For, in sooth, what regal purple, what silk, what web of divers colours from the loom, may vie with flowers? What work of man has the red blush of the rose? the pure white of the lily? How the Tyrian dye yields to the violet, sight alone and not words can express. CHRYSOSTOM. As widely as truth differs from falsehood, so widely do our clothes differ from flowers. If then Solomon, who was more eminent than all other kings, was yet surpassed by flowers, how shall you exceed the beauty of flowers by your garments? And Solomon was exceeded by the flowers not once only, or twice, but throughout his whole reign; and this is that He says, In all his glory; for no one day was he arrayed as are the flowers. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Or the meaning may be, that Solomon though he toiled not for his own raiment, yet he gave command for the making of it. But where command is, there is often found both offence of them that minister, and wrath of him that commands. When then any are without these things, then they are arrayed as are the lilies.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Twelve to twenty of these lovely golden spheres radiate in a line from the base to the tip of each secondary feather. I refer to these round golden patches as “spheres” because they are exquisitely and subtly counter-shaded, as if by the skillful brush of a painter, to create a stunningly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional depth. The golden tan at the center of the sphere is outlined from below with a dark, mascara-like smudge, creating the impression of a shadow being cast. On the opposite side of the circle, the golden yellow blends subtly into a bright white crescent that looks like a “specular” highlight—like the shine from the surface of a glossy round apple. As Darwin noted, the color shading on each sphere is precisely oriented so that when the secondary feathers are suspended above and around the female in the giant cone, they produce the startling impression that the golden spheres are three-dimensional objects suspended in space and illuminated from above as if by a shaft of light piercing through the forest canopy. The three-dimensional illusion is further enhanced by the fact that when the male holds these secondary feathers up in the air during the display, ambient light will be transmitted through these unpigmented white highlights, giving them an extra brilliant and luminous quality. [image "(Left) The “golden spheres” on the male Great Argus secondary feathers gradually increase in size toward the tip of the feather. (Right) A forced perspective illusion makes the spheres appear to be nearly uniform in size when viewed at an angle, similar to the view of the female during the display. Photos by Michael Doolittle." file=image_rsrc3MT.jpg] (Left) The “golden spheres” on the male Great Argus secondary feathers gradually increase in size toward the tip of the feather. (Right) A forced perspective illusion makes the spheres appear to be nearly uniform in size when viewed at an angle, similar to the view of the female during the display. Photos by Michael Doolittle. An additional optical illusion is created by the fact that the golden spheres at the bottom of each secondary wing feather are about half an inch wide at the base and gradually increase in size to over an inch wide at the tip. Because the spots become physically larger the farther they are from the female’s eye, they appear to create a forced perspective illusion in which the spheres appear uniform in size from her point of view. Taken together, the elements of the male display add up to a sensory experience of mind-boggling complexity—a throbbing, shimmering hemisphere of three hundred vertically illuminated golden spheres that instantaneously appear suspended in the air against a feathery background tapestry of speckles, dots, and swirls. The golden balls emanate outward from the center of the display, where the male’s black eye and blue face can be glimpsed peeking out. The whole effect is magnificent.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  He had a tremendous baritone voice that was strong and clear. It startled both me and the guard, who stopped his pushing. I’m pressing on, the upward way New heights I’m gaining, every day Still praying as, I’m onward bound Lord, plant my feet on Higher Ground. It was an old hymn they used to sing all the time in the church where I grew up. I hadn’t heard it in years. Henry sang slowly and with great sincerity and conviction. It took a moment before the officer recovered and resumed pushing him out the door. Because his ankles were shackled and his hands were locked behind his back, Henry almost stumbled when the guard shoved him forward. He had to waddle to keep his balance, but he kept on singing. I could hear him as he went down the hall: Lord lift me up, and let me stand By faith on Heaven’s tableland A higher plane, that I have found Lord, plant my feet on Higher Ground. I sat down, completely stunned. Henry’s voice was filled with desire. I experienced his song as a precious gift. I had come into the prison with such anxiety and fear about his willingness to tolerate my inadequacy. I didn’t expect him to be compassionate or generous. I had no right to expect anything from a condemned man on death row. Yet he gave me an astonishing measure of his humanity. In that moment, Henry altered something in my understanding of human potential, redemption, and hopefulness. I finished my internship committed to helping the death row prisoners I had met that month. Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person’s humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own. I went back to law school with an intense desire to understand the laws and doctrines that sanctioned the death penalty and extreme punishments. I piled up courses on constitutional law, litigation, appellate procedure, federal courts, and collateral remedies. I did extra work to broaden my understanding of how constitutional theory shapes criminal procedure. I plunged deeply into the law and the sociology of race, poverty, and power. Law school had seemed abstract and disconnected before, but after meeting the desperate and imprisoned, it all became relevant and critically important. Even my studies at the Kennedy School took on a new significance. Developing the skills to quantify and deconstruct the discrimination and inequality I saw became urgent and meaningful. My short time on death row revealed that there was something missing in the way we treat people in our judicial system, that maybe we judge some people unfairly.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  We have already shown that God’s goodness is the reason for His willing other things to exist, and that by His will He brought things into being. Therefore the love whereby He loves His own goodness is the cause of things being created. Hence, as stated at the beginning of the Metaphysics, certain philosophers of old said that the love of the gods was the cause of all things. Dionysius also says that God’s love did not allow him to be fruitless. Now we established in the foregoing chapter that the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love whereby God loves Himself. Hence the Holy Ghost is the cause of the creation: and this is indicated (Ps. 103:30): Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created. Also, seeing that the Holy Ghost proceeds by way of love, and that love is an impelling and moving force, any movement that God causes in things is rightly appropriated to the Holy Ghost. Now the first change wrought by God in things is that whereby he produced the various species out of formless created matter. Wherefore Holy Scripture ascribes this work to the Holy Ghost: thus it is said (Gen. 1:2): The Spirit of God moved over the waters. For Augustine would have the waters to signify the primary matter over which the Spirit of the Lord is said to move, not as being in motion, but as the principle of movement. Again. God’s government of the world is understood to be a kind of movement, forasmuch as God directs and moves all things to their respective ends. Accordingly if impulse and movement belong to the Holy Ghost as love, it is fitting that government and increase be ascribed to the Holy Ghost. Hence it is said (Job 33:4): The Spirit of God made me; and (Ps. 142:10): Thy good Spirit shall lead me into the right land. And, since to govern subjects is the proper function of a lord, it is fitting that lordship be ascribed to the Holy Ghost: thus the Apostle says (2 Cor. 3:17): Now the Lord is a Spirit: and we say in the Creed: I believe in the Holy Ghost, Lord. Again. Life is revealed especially in movement: for we say that a thing lives when it moves itself, and in a general way we ascribe life to all things that move themselves to action. If then impulse and movement are ascribed to the Holy Ghost as love, life also is fittingly ascribed to Him. Thus it is said (Jo. 6:64): It is the Spirit that quickeneth: and (Ezech. 37:6): I will give you Spirit and you shall live. Also, in the Creed we confess our belief in the Holy Ghost, the life-giver. This is in harmony with the name spirit: for an animal’s body lives by the vital spirit which is diffused throughout its members by the principle of life. CHAPTER XXI

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  [image file=image_rsrc3N3.jpg] CHAPTER 4Aesthetic Innovation and DecadenceIn the understory of a mossy cloud forest in the western Andes of Ecuador, a small cocoa-brown bird with a red fore crown sings from a slim perch. Bip-Bip-WANNGG! The tonal sound rings like feedback from an elfin electric guitar. Three other males within earshot call back in rapid response with increasing excitement. These are territorial male Club-winged Manakins (Machaeropterus deliciosus) at a lek displaying to attract mates. The strange acoustic quality of their songs is associated with an even stranger movement. Instead of opening their beaks to make their electronic-sounding songs, the male Club-wings flick their wings open at their sides to make the initial Bips and then snap their wings up over their backs to set their swollen and twisted inner wing feathers into rapid sideways oscillation to produce the extraordinary WANNGG sound (color plate 12). These male Club-winged Manakins are singing with their wings. We have seen that many other manakins make pop and snap sounds with their wing feathers during courtship display. White-throated Manakins make a loud pop as they stall in flight over their display logs. White-bearded Manakins make their explosive snaps as they leap between the display court and the surrounding saplings, and they produce a loud flatulent roll—a rapid series of snaps—while perched above their courts. The many variations on snap, crackle, and pop in the manakins are all feather sounds. The existence of these nonvocal communication sounds is evolutionarily baffling, because manakins all have perfectly good vocal songs that remain an important part of their aesthetic repertoires. Why would any species—let alone many separate species—evolve an entirely new way to sing when the traditional avian vocal songs had been working fine, even gloriously, for over seventy million years? Like eyes, limbs, and feathers, the mechanical sounds of manakins are examples of evolutionary innovations—entirely novel biological features that are not homologous with any ancestral, or antecedent, feature. Evolutionary innovations are intellectually exciting because they require more than simple, incremental, quantitative change—more than mere evolutionary tinkering, if you will. Innovations involve the evolution of genuinely new phenomena and features, or qualitative evolutionary novelties. [image "The male White-bearded Manakin produces the roll-snap wing sound by clapping its wings together rapidly over its back." file=image_rsrc3N4.jpg] The male White-bearded Manakin produces the roll-snap wing sound by clapping its wings together rapidly over its back.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  This interest ultimately led her to a duck farm in the Central Valley of California in 2009. Although a duck farm is not an obvious place to pursue new frontiers of evolutionary science, the farm Brennan went to had some very special ducks. These drakes were trained to ejaculate semen into tiny glass bottles. This was done not to satisfy some perverse interest in duck sex but because the duck farmers wanted to create offspring that are a hybrid of male Muscovy Ducks (Cairina moschata) and female Pekin ducks (a captive breed of Mallard). In captivity, such hybrids show extraordinary vigor and put on weight rapidly—two qualities that are very attractive to duck farmers. But the Muscovy and Pekin ducks do not like each other, and if they are left to their own devices in a common pen, they will not mate at high enough rates to produce a commercially viable number of offspring. Modern agriculture’s answer to this problem is artificial insemination, which requires some way of collecting the sperm. Hence the use of the little glass bottles. All of which explains why one day the Latino workers who collected the sperm and performed the artificial inseminations at this farm were confronted with a lovely, well-educated, wise, and wisecracking Latina toting a high-speed video camera. As the videos showed, male Muscovy ducks will perform on demand—despite the little glass bottles, the scrutiny of the camera, and the glare of the lights. The basic artificial insemination procedure goes like this: Male and female Muscovys are kept in separate pens to increase their sexual motivation. When it’s time for the sperm collection to occur, the pair of ducks is placed in a narrow cage with their rear ends facing out of one open side. The male rapidly mounts the female and begins to tread on her back. The female becomes readily sexually receptive, as indicated by her reclining precopulatory posture: her neck extended forward, head lowered, rear end raised with the cloaca exposed, dilated, and secreting volumes of mucus. Soon, the male begins to lower himself toward the female’s proffered rear. And then it happens. Normally, the erection of the drake would take place into the female reproductive tract. During sperm collection, however, the farmworker prevents the male from actually entering the female and places what looks like a small glass milk bottle over the male’s cloaca at just the right moment. The drake’s penis then erects and ejaculates into the bottle. As in a discreet sperm bank, the sample is then passed through a little window into the hand of another worker who prepares it for the Pekin females who are waiting in the room next door. For Brennan’s research observations, the farmers still prevented the male from entering the female but allowed him to erect and ejaculate into the air, or into the special glass contraptions that Brennan brought along on her next trip to the duck farm (more about those later).

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Patty is nothing if not creative, however, and to test our hypothesis, she came up with the idea of creating four glass tubes that would help us analyze the interplay between the male and the female reproductive equipment. Two of the tubes would be designed not to challenge the progress of the duck penis in the vaginal tract. One would be straight; the other would be coiled counterclockwise to match the spiral of the duck penis itself. The other two tubes would be designed to act like a steeplechase obstacle course for the avian penis, mimicking the shape of the female reproductive tract in breeding season. One would be a tube with a hairpin turn similar to the female cul-de-sacs near the cloaca, and the second a tube with a clockwise coil like the upper reaches of the duck vagina. The diameters of all the tubes were to be the same; they would differ only in the shape of the interior space. We hypothesized that the duck penis would proceed without problems through the straight and counterclockwise spiral tubes. Conversely, we hypothesized that the tubes with the female-like hairpin turn and the clockwise spirals could frustrate erection and prevent complete entry. Although glass tubes are nothing like the real thing, they have the advantage of providing a standard rigidity and uniformly smooth surface that would control for all mechanical factors other than the shape of the tube, which was the critical element of the hypothesis we wanted to test. The glass tubes would be unnatural but objective and fair. Plus, glass is clear, so we could observe and record on video the progress of the erecting duck penis down the tube. To find someone to make the glass tubes, Patty and I went to talk to Daryl Smith at the Yale University Department of Chemistry Scientific Glassblowing Laboratory. The motto over the door read, “If not for glass, science would be blind.” The display cases in the hallway leading up to the shop were filled with complex glass apparatuses with elaborate condensing coils, leading to flasks and bulbs leading to tubes with charcoal filters, and so on. Business was booming. Waiting outside the door was a line of students, each holding drawings of new designs they wanted to be made for their research, proof if any were needed that this classic art form is still a critical part of the science of chemistry. When our turn came to talk to Smith, we gave him a short introduction to the reproductive biology of ducks, to explain why we wanted him to make artificial duck vaginas in various shapes. We discussed the possible designs. Once we had decided on the final specifications, I asked Smith, “So, is this the weirdest request you ever had?” “Well,” he responded, “I’ve been asked to make artificial vaginas before, but never for ducks!” We didn’t inquire further about this previous request.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, Since this science is partly speculative and partly practical, it transcends all others speculative and practical. Now one speculative science is said to be nobler than another, either by reason of its greater certitude, or by reason of the higher worth of its subject-matter. In both these respects this science surpasses other speculative sciences; in point of greater certitude, because other sciences derive their certitude from the natural light of human reason, which can err; whereas this derives its certitude from the light of divine knowledge, which cannot be misled: in point of the higher worth of its subject-matter because this science treats chiefly of those things which by their sublimity transcend human reason; while other sciences consider only those things which are within reason’s grasp. Of the practical sciences, that one is nobler which is ordained to a further purpose, as political science is nobler than military science; for the good of the army is directed to the good of the State. But the purpose of this science, in so far as it is practical, is eternal bliss; to which as to an ultimate end the purposes of every practical science are directed. Hence it is clear that from every standpoint, it is nobler than other sciences. Reply to Objection 1: It may well happen that what is in itself the more certain may seem to us the less certain on account of the weakness of our intelligence, “which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature; as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun” (Metaph. ii, lect. i). Hence the fact that some happen to doubt about articles of faith is not due to the uncertain nature of the truths, but to the weakness of human intelligence; yet the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things, as is said in de Animalibus xi. Reply to Objection 2: This science can in a sense depend upon the philosophical sciences, not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer. For it accepts its principles not from other sciences, but immediately from God, by revelation. Therefore it does not depend upon other sciences as upon the higher, but makes use of them as of the lesser, and as handmaidens: even so the master sciences make use of the sciences that supply their materials, as political of military science. That it thus uses them is not due to its own defect or insufficiency, but to the defect of our intelligence, which is more easily led by what is known through natural reason (from which proceed the other sciences) to that which is above reason, such as are the teachings of this science.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  But how is it, then, that the mate the female chooses can manage to overcome the twists and whorls of her defensive anatomy? How does voluntary sex differ from forced? We do not have any direct observations of the inner workings—again, MRI technology would need to take a huge leap forward and arrive in the barnyard to deliver such data. But, as mentioned above, Patty’s duck-farm observations revealed that when female Muscovys were actively soliciting copulations, they assumed the conspicuously horizontal precopulatory display posture, dilated the cloacal muscles, and released copious amounts of lubricating mucus. It seems clear that females can make the reproductive tract a fully functioning and welcoming place when they want to. To return once again to McCracken’s question—what are the ridiculously long penises of these ducks doing inside the female’s body? The answer turns out to be, “It depends.” If the copulation is solicited, then clearly the female is in for the full ride. These penile structures can easily penetrate to the upper reaches of her reproductive tract if only momentarily. However, if the copulation is resisted by the female, then the penis’s length and surface features are designed, evolutionarily speaking, to try to overcome the barriers imposed by female vaginal complexity. In the text above, I didn’t use the metaphor of the forbidding cliff face lightly. It’s clear that the ridges and hooks on the penis have evolved precisely for the purpose of helping it to claw its way through the various structures within the duck’s vagina that are designed to keep it out. However, by being overwhelmingly successful at bottling up the penis during forced intromission, and preventing the vast majority of attempts at forced fertilizations, female ducks have managed to maintain the advantage in this sexual arms race. Even in the face of persistent sexual violence, female ducks have been able to assert and advance their sexual autonomy—their individual freedom to control paternity through their own mate choices. This is a dark evolutionary tale with an amazing and profoundly redemptive outcome. What we learn from our investigations into duck sex is that despite the ubiquity of sexual violence in these breeding systems, female mate choice continues to predominate. Consequently, male plumages, songs, and displays continue to evolve. Beauty continues to thrive, even in the face of pervasive, violent attempts to subvert the freedom of mate choice that creates it. However, female sexual autonomy is not a form of female power over males. It is merely a mechanism for the assurance of freedom of mate choice. Female ducks do not exert sexual control over males, and they can always be turned down by the mates they prefer. Females do not, indeed cannot, evolve to assert power over others in response to sexual violence. Rather, females can only evolve to assert their own freedom of choice.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Manakins are just one small piece of a vast tapestry of avian beauty. There are over ten thousand species of birds in the world, ranging from the plainest of sparrows to the most exquisite of manakins. Because every single bird species exhibits some specific sexual ornaments that are employed in courtship communication and mate choice, it is clear that the capacity for mate choice in birds originated in an ancestor common to all birds, perhaps even in a lineage of feathered theropod dinosaurs dating all the way back to the Jurassic. From this single common ancestor, the repertoire of aesthetic traits and mating preferences has continued to coevolve and radiate into the many thousands of distinct forms of avian beauty that exist today. On different phylogenetic branches at different times, the pace of coevolutionary change has slowed or increased as new ecologies have contributed to variations in breeding systems and parental care arrangements, which in turn have given rise to tremendous variation in the nature and strength of sexual selection by mate choice. Along the way, mate preferences have continued to evolve in various avian lineages, sometimes occurring in both sexes, sometimes in females only, or, much less often, in males only, and the aesthetic repertoires of the sexes have coevolved accordingly. Each lineage and species has evolved along its own distinctive and unpredictable aesthetic trajectory. The result has been the flowering of more than ten thousand distinctive aesthetic worlds comprising over ten thousand coevolved repertoires of displays and desires. Something comparable has occurred on myriad different branches across the entire Tree of Life. From poison dart frogs and chameleons to peacock spiders and balloon flies, whenever the social opportunity and sensory/cognitive capacity for mate choice has arisen, an aesthetic evolutionary process has taken hold. This aesthetic evolutionary process has arisen hundreds or thousands of times during the history of life, even in plants that have evolved ornamental flowers of distinct shapes, sizes, colors, and fragrances to seduce animal pollinators into dispersing their gametes (in the form of pollen) to other flowers waiting to be fertilized. Throughout the living world whenever the opportunity has arisen, the subjective experiences and cognitive choices of animals have aesthetically shaped the evolution of biodiversity. The history of beauty in nature is a vast and never-ending story.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Again. If Christ atoned sufficiently for the sins of mankind, there would be no need to seek further forgiveness of one’s sins. And yet all who have their salvation at heart seek forgiveness. Therefore Christ did not take away the sins of mankind sufficiently. These and like arguments might appeal to some as indicating that the doctrine of the Catholic Faith about the Incarnation is inconsistent with the majesty and wisdom of God. CHAPTER LIV THAT IT WAS FITTING FOR GOD TO BE INCARNATENEVERTHELESS, if we consider the mystery of the Incarnation carefully and reverently, we shall discover such a depth of divine wisdom, as will surpass all human knowledge; according to the saying of the Apostle (1 Cor. 1:25), The foolishness of God is wiser than men. Hence it is that those who study this mystery with reverence discover more and more its marvellous secrets.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Chrysostom adds a fifth miracle (Hom. lxxxviii in Matth.), saying that “the darkness in this case lasted for three hours, whereas an eclipse of the sun lasts but a short time, for it is soon over, as those know who have seen one.” Hence we are given to understand that the moon was stationary below the sun, except we prefer to say that the duration of the darkness was measured from the first moment of occultation of the sun to the moment when the sun had completely emerged from the eclipse. But, as Origen says (on Mat. 27:45), “against this the children of this world object: How is it such a phenomenal occurrence is not related by any writer, whether Greek or barbarian?” And he says that someone of the name of Phlegon “relates in his chronicles that this took place during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, but he does not say that it occurred at the full moon.” It may be, therefore, that because it was not the time for an eclipse, the various astronomers living then throughout the world were not on the look-out for one, and that they ascribed this darkness to some disturbance of the atmosphere. But in Egypt, where clouds are few on account of the tranquillity of the air, Dionysius and his companions were considerably astonished so as to make the aforesaid observations about this darkness. Reply to Objection 3: Then, above all, was there need for miraculous proof of Christ’s Godhead, when the weakness of human nature was most apparent in Him. Hence it was that at His birth a new star appeared in the heavens. Wherefore Maximus says (Serm. de Nativ. viii): “If thou disdain the manger, raise thine eyes a little and gaze on the new star in the heavens, proclaiming to the world the birth of our Lord.” But in His Passion yet greater weakness appeared in His manhood. Therefore there was need for yet greater miracles in the greater lights of the world. And, as Chrysostom says (Hom. lxxxviii in Matth.): “This is the sign which He promised to them who sought for one saying: ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign; and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet,’ referring to His Cross . . . and Resurrection . . . For it was much more wonderful that this should happen when He was crucified than when He was walking on earth.”

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  She sub- jects the protagonists to fearsome travails, but she rescues them too. Th is uncanny mixture of whim and providence, of fl ux and order, is within the mainstream of religious currents in the high empire. Th e Fortune of the novels is no mere literary ornamentation. She is the same awesome divinity who was worshipped, in cult, across the Mediterranean, like never before in the Roman Empire— a syncretistic, cosmological goddess in a syncretistic, cosmological age. Th e romances were, like the temples where Fortune was worshipped, monuments built in awe of her supervenient power over hu- man aff airs.  Th e Fortune who presides over the romances is a literary spirit. Over and over again, Fortune is said to be a dramatist. One character tells Chareas, “Fortune loves invention, and you have been cast in an unhappy drama.” Not just the authors of romance, but also the characters are aware that their lives have the shape of literature. Clitophon launches on his story with the refl ection, “I was nineteen years of age when Fortune began her drama.” Later he laments yet another bad turn. “Fortune as usual has set upon me and contrived a new drama.” In Th e Ethiopian Tale the characters experience the “ceaseless turning of the human lot, full of twists.” In despair Th eagenes wonders if he and Charicleia should not just submit to the “destiny that everywhere chased” them by surrendering. Th e gods’ vendetta was “making us into playthings, as though our aff airs were a drama on a stage.” Chari- cleia, by contrast, counsels re sis tance. In the fi nal scenes, the king and his people alike marvel at the “theatrics of Fortune.” Th e literary pretensions of Fortune are part of the high- pitched aesthetic self- awareness of the ro- mances. But given the real place of Fortune in the imperial pantheon, it would be misleading to dismiss these comparisons as empty authorial self- aggrandizement.  ROMANCE IN THE LATE CLASSICAL WORLD  Th e canny allusions to life as literature manifest themselves in a reveal- ing meta phor that recurs across the romances. When Anthia is enslaved in the brothel, she laments her fate, but she steels her resolve and decides to fi nd “some contrivance” for protecting her chastity: the feigned fi t of epi- lepsy. After she survives and is re united with her lover, she attributes her chastity to the fact that she contrived “every device” for the protection of virtue. Similarly, in Th e Ethiopian Tale, the protagonist can rely, in the most hopeless of circumstances, on “some contrivance” that will allow escape.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  In the penulti- mate scene, as Charicleia and Th eagenes are married, the high priest pro- nounces them solemnly wed by the law of procreation. In the fi nal scene the two are invested as priest and priestess and march into the city to per- form even “more sacred” mysteries. In any other ancient novel, such an al- lusion would clearly be to the rites of the nuptial couch, but here there is no hint of sex. Gone is the warm eroticism of carnal friction, in its place an obsession with purity that is sacerdotal in its tone and timbre.  Th e fi fth- century church historian Socrates reported, in the fi fth book of his ecclesiastical history, that the same Heliodorus who wrote Th e Ethiopian Ta l e in his youth became a Christian bishop in Th essaly. Unlike later Byz- antine tales which have Achilles Tatius converting to the faith, this bio- graphical note is not so far removed in time and it is not an obvious speci- men of literary wish fulfi llment. Th e report deserves credence, as does the detail, added by Socrates, that Heliodorus introduced strict clerical continence  FROM SHAME TO SIN in his church. Th at the author of this fi nal romance, so frigid in its erotic outlook, enjoined sexual abstinence on even the married members of his clergy, is entirely consonant with the hieratic fi xation on purity and pollu- tion in Th e Ethiopian Tale. Heliodorus lived against the backdrop of mass conversion to Christianity and became a leader in the movement at a par- ticularly consequential moment. He may well have found the sexual auster- ity of the religion congenial and familiar. But what he would have quickly discovered, on the entry to his new faith, was its will to impose rigorous codes of corporal purity on all its adherents, not just a priestly race, set apart, with special privileges of divine communication. Th e Christians would soon develop a literature adequate to such an ambitious project, and it would entail reworking the conventions of romance so thoroughly that we cannot but wonder if a nostalgic spirit like Heliodorus would have been enthused or scandalized. He lived on the cusp of a tremendous literary revolution.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  The evolution of limbs, eyes, and feathers is an important subject in evolutionary biology. Indeed, I have worked a lot myself on the evolutionary origin of feathers. But the mechanical sounds of manakins are distinct from all of these evolutionary novelties because they are aesthetic innovations that have evolved by mate choice. Aesthetic innovations provide us with a unique opportunity to investigate both how sexual coevolution works and how evolutionary innovations happen. In recent years, biologists have discovered that adaptation provides at best an incomplete account of the process of evolutionary innovation. I hope that by exploring aesthetic innovation here, we will see that adaptive mate choice provides an insufficient explanation of the origin and diversification of ornament as well. So, how did the innovative mechanical sounds of manakins evolve? The best hypothesis is that manakin display movements produced incidental noises—the whirrs or shuffles or other sounds of moving feathers—in the same way that running and dancing produce incidental noises as feet touch the ground. However, through aesthetic coevolution, these incidental sounds became subject to female preferences along with the rest of the display. Consequently, distinct preferences for such sounds evolved and diversified, until the sounds themselves became a distinct part of the aesthetic repertoire of the species, much as tap dancing became its own genre of dance. Mating preferences for mechanical wing songs probably evolved from earlier acoustic preferences for vocal advertisement songs and became distinct, new preferences over evolutionary time. The Club-winged Manakin has gone in for innovation in a big way. Most manakins, like tap dancers, are satisfied making percussive pops, snaps, and riffles, but the male Club-winged Manakin really sings. Sings, perhaps, even better than he flies. As we’ll see, the Club-winged Manakin is not only an example of aesthetic innovation; it also shows us how adaptation and aesthetic selection can be at odds with each other and how decadent beauty can win. —

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Of course, it could be argued that any definition of art should rest on the kind of cultural transmission of ideas that we see in human artworlds. The human arts are cultural phenomena that are transformed by aesthetic ideas that pass from person to person within a social network—a cultural mechanism of aesthetic innovation and influence. If we accept a cultural definition of art, that might seem to suggest that aesthetically coevolving, genetic entities cannot be art. However, this definition will not eliminate the biotic arts. For example, nearly half of all species of birds on the planet learn their songs from other members of their own species. These bird species have avian cultures that have persisted, thrived, and diversified for over forty million years. Consequently, learned bird songs have regional variations (that is, dialects), and cultural transmission can give rise to rapid and sometimes radical changes in these songs, just the way change sometimes occurs in the human arts. Similar aesthetic cultural processes occur in whales and bats. In short, when we get out of the art museum and the library, and look closely at the aesthetic complexity of nature, and think about how it all came into being, we find that it is difficult to define the arts in any way that will include everything we recognize as human art but exclude the aesthetic productions of all nonhuman animals. Some aesthetic philosophers, art historians, and artists may find the recognition of myriad new biotic art forms to be more of an annoyance, or even an outrage, than a contribution to their fields. But I think there is reason to welcome this more inclusive, “post-human” view of art as a real opportunity for progress in aesthetics. Originally, we humans conceived of ourselves as being at the center of all creation, with the sun and the stars revolving around us. Over the last five hundred years, however, scientific discoveries have demanded that we reframe our view of the cosmos and our place in it. With each discovery, humans have moved further and further from the organizing center of the universe. The reality is that we live in an entirely normal solar system, in the boring backwaters of a thoroughly vanilla galaxy—literally, a cosmic Nowheresville. Although the size of earth and its distance from the sun are indeed special, in every other way our position within the cosmos is profoundly random, unpredictable, and unimpressive. While many have found this intellectual change disconcerting, I think such knowledge can only enhance our appreciation of the astounding, unexpected richness of the biological world, human existence, our conscious experience, and our technological and cultural accomplishments.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was, as Charles had said, a big night, and the lino-tiled hallway was full of family people—rather got up, I suspected: mothers with arms crossed anxiously under their bosoms, and fathers showing the suppressed pride of parents at a speech-day. Many youngsters were rushing about, and the sense of private occasion made me feel more than ever out of place. I went over to the glass-fronted NoBos and communed for a second with my reflection before scanning the lists of activities, notices about excursions, and team photographs, routinely seeking out the faces of pretty boys (of which there were several) and those inevitable glimpses of underwear up the rucked short-legs of seated footballers. Then, in the next frame, there was a larger notice, printed in an old-fashioned and distinguished way, announcing that on this very day, in contests of three rounds each, the London and Home Counties Boys’ Club Boxing Championship would be decided, and the winning team presented with ‘the Nantwich Cup’. I felt how slow and incurious I had been now that I saw this evidence of Charles’s further influence and philanthropy. Of course he hadn’t sent me all this way merely to speak to the mysterious Shillibeer; I was amused and impressed that there was more to it, as well as getting the uneasy feeling that Charles was orchestrating his revelations with some expertise. I became convinced that when the line had gone dead two nights before it was a deliberate foreclosure on his part, and that back in the City he would now be nodding expectantly. Coming hard upon the grotesque and momentary episode in the churchyard it made me feel just a little out of control. I heard applause and a voice raised beyond the swinging green doors into the hall. I went in, trying to look as if I knew what to expect. The ring was raised in the middle of the room, which still had its galleries on three sides, supported on thick wooden pillars. Seating rose in scaffolded tiers around the ring, leaving a kind of ambulatory under the galleries, through which I could walk almost unnoticed. Up above, too, the place was packed, and I hoped I would be allowed to drift around rather than getting penned in a seat for the evening. I loitered in one of the aisles, leaning against the stepped edge of the temporary arena. The man whose feet were by my elbow leant over and said, ‘You want a seat?’—making accommodating gestures and showing how he and his party could squeeze up. But I declined.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Achilles has no doctrine, other than eros and its compatibility with the narrative arc of human life. It is the genius of his art to raise romance to heights of self- awareness that allow it to compete with philosophy. Achilles does not argue for eros. He, unlike Plato, unlike the Stoics, embraces the world, with its ceaseless cycle of rebirth and death in which eros fi nds its natural place. And he laughs at anyone who believes it might be otherwise. CONCLUSION: COSMOS AND EROS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE Th e sexual culture of the high Roman Empire was dominated by the im- peratives of social reproduction. Th e symphony of sexual values, in all its various movements and complex harmonies, was set to the rhythms of the material world: early marriage for women, jealous guarding of honorable female sexuality, an expansive slave system, late marriage for men, and basi- cally relaxed attitudes toward male sexual potential, so long as it was conso- nant with masculine protocols and social hierarchies. Moral expectations were in tune with social roles, and social roles strictly determined both the points of release and the rigid constraints in ancient sexual culture. Th e value of a sexual act derived, fi rst and foremost, from its objective location within a matrix of social relationships. Th e romances of the Roman Empire are such extraordinary witnesses to the experience of eros because they transform the exigencies of social repro- duction into the workings of a cosmic destiny, they toy with the tensions between fl ux and order in the individual’s coming- to- be in the world, and in the end, they spiritualize the mysterious erotic energies that connect man to nature. In the romances, these stirrings are a constitutive source of the self. When a romancer like Achilles Tatius looked out upon the gloomy counsels of the phi los o phers, it was not as a partisan of one ideology upon another, competing for supremacy in the public mind; it was, rather, as a spokesman for life, and the timeless patterns of sexual experience, upon a THE MORALITIES OF SEX IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE  small reformation movement.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I was drawn the more to this aim by my love of things foreign; I liked to deal with the barbarians. This great country lying between the mouths of the Danube and the Borysthenes, a triangular area of which I have covered at least two sides, is one of the most remarkable regions of the world, at least for us who are born on the shores of the Interior Sea and are used to the clear, dry line of southern landscape, with its hills and promontories. At times there I worshipped the goddess Earth in the way that we here worship the goddess Rome; I am speaking not so much of Ceres as of a more ancient divinity, anterior even to the invention of the harvest. Our Greek and Latin lands, everywhere supported by bone-structure of rock, have the trim beauty of a male body; the heavy abundance of the Scythian earth was that of a reclining woman. The plain ended only where the sky began. My wonder never ceased in presence of the rivers: that vast empty land was but a slope and a bed for their waters. Our rivers are short; we never feel far from their sources; but the enormous flow which ended there in confused estuaries swept with it the mud of an unknown continent and the ice of uninhabitable regions. The cold of Spain's high plateaus is second to none, but this was the first time that I found myself face to face with true winter, which visits our countries but briefly. There it sets in for a long period of months; farther north it must be unchanging, without beginning and without end. The evening of my arrival in camp the Danube was one immense roadway of ice, red at first and then blue, furrowed by the inner working of currents with tracks as deep as those of chariots. We made use of furs to protect ourselves from the cold. The presence of that enemy, so impersonal as to be almost abstract, produced an indescribable exaltation, and a feeling of energy accrued. One fought to conserve body heat as elsewhere one fights to keep one's courage. There were days when the snow effaced the few differences in level on the steppes; we galloped in a world of pure space and pure atoms. The frozen coating gave transparency to the most ordinary things, and the softest objects took on a celestial rigidity. Each broken reed was a flute of crystal.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  On this point, however, credence is to be given rather to Dionysius, who is an eyewitness as to this having occurred by the moon eclipsing the sun. For he says (Ep. ad Polycarp): “Without any doubt we saw the moon encroach on the sun,” he being in Egypt at the time, as he says in the same letter. And in this he points out four miracles. The first is that the natural eclipse of the sun by interposition of the moon never takes place except when the sun and moon are in conjunction. But then the sun and moon were in opposition, it being the fifteenth day, since it was the Jewish Passover. Wherefore he says: “For it was not the time of conjunction.”—The second miracle is that whereas at the sixth hour the moon was seen, together with the sun, in the middle of the heavens, in the evening it was seen to be in its place, i.e. in the east, opposite the sun. Wherefore he says: “Again we saw it,” i.e. the moon, “return supernaturally into opposition with the sun,” so as to be diametrically opposite, having withdrawn from the sun “at the ninth hour,” when the darkness ceased, “until evening.” From this it is clear that the wonted course of the seasons was not disturbed, because the Divine power caused the moon both to approach the sun supernaturally at an unwonted season, and to withdraw from the sun and return to its proper place according to the season. The third miracle was that the eclipse of the sun naturally always begins in that part of the sun which is to the west and spreads towards the east: and this is because the moon’s proper movement from west to east is more rapid than that of the sun, and consequently the moon, coming up from the west, overtakes the sun and passes it on its eastward course. But in this case the moon had already passed the sun, and was distant from it by the length of half the heavenly circle, being opposite to it: consequently it had to return eastwards towards the sun, so as to come into apparent contact with it from the east, and continue in a westerly direction. This is what he refers to when he says: “Moreover, we saw the eclipse begin to the east and spread towards the western edge of the sun,” for it was a total eclipse, “and afterwards pass away.” The fourth miracle consisted in this, that in a natural eclipse that part of the sun which is first eclipsed is the first to reappear (because the moon, coming in front of the sun, by its natural movement passes on to the east, so as to come away first from the western portion of the sun, which was the first part to be eclipsed), whereas in this case the moon, while returning miraculously from the east to the west, did not pass the sun so as to be to the west of it: but having reached the western edge of the sun returned towards the east: so that the last portion of the sun to be eclipsed was the first to reappear. Consequently the eclipse began towards the east, whereas the sun began to reappear towards the west. And to this he refers by saying: “Again we observed that the occultation and emersion did not begin from the same point,” i.e. on the same side of the sun, “but on opposite sides.”