Realization

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)

  33. That the speculative sciences were not discovered for the sake of utility is made clear by this fact, that after all sciences of this kind “ had already been developed, ” i.e., acquired or discovered, which can serve as introductions to the other sciences, or provide the necessities of life, or give pleasure (as those arts whose object is to delight man), the speculative sciences were discovered, not for this kind of end, but for their own sake. The fact that they were not discovered for the sake of utility becomes evident from the place in which they were discovered. For they originated in those places where men first applied themselves to such things. Another version reads, “ And first in those places where men had leisure, ” i.e., they had time for study because they were released from other occupations as a result of the abundance of things necessary [for life]. Hence the mathematical arts, which are speculative in the highest degree, were first discovered in Egypt by the priests, who were given time for study, and whose expenses were defrayed by the community, as we also read in Genesis (47:22) 34. But because the names “ wisdom, ” “ science ” and “ art ” have been used indifferently, lest someone should think that these terms are synonymous, he excludes this opinion and refers to his work on morals, i.e., to Book VI of the Ethics, where he has explained the difference between art, wisdom, science, prudence, and understanding. And to give the distinction briefly—wisdom, science and understanding pertain to the speculative part of the soul, which he speaks of in that work as the scientific part of the soul. But they differ in that understanding is the habit of the first principles of demonstration, whereas science has to do with conclusions drawn from subordinate causes, and wisdom with first causes. This is the reason it is spoken of there as the chief science. But prudence and art belong to the practical part of the soul, which reasons about our contingent courses of action. And these also differ; for prudence directs us in actions which do not pass over into some external matter but are perfections of the one acting (which is the reason why prudence is defined in that work as the reasoned plan of things to be done), but art directs us in those productive actions, such as building and cutting, which pass over into external matter (which is the reason why art is defined as the reasoned plan of things to be made). Wisdom deals with causes.

• From Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1974)

  Artistic imagination can be more nearly described as the finding of new form for old content, or—if the handy dichotomy of form and content is eschewed—as a fresh conception of an old subject. The invention of new things or situations is valuable only to the extent that they serve to interpret an old—that is, universal—topic of human experience. There is more imagination in the way Titian paints a hand than in hundreds of surrealist nightmares depicted in a dull, conventional manner. Visual imagination is a universal gift of the human mind, a gift that in the average person demonstrates itself at an early age. When children start to experiment with shape and color, they are faced with the task of inventing a way to represent in a given medium the objects of their experience. Occasionally they are helped by watching others, but essentially they are on their own. The wealth of original solutions they produce is all the more remarkable because their subject matter is so elementary. Figure no shows representations of the human figure copied from drawings by children at early stages of development. Certainly these children were not trying to be original, and yet the attempt to put down on paper what he sees makes each of them discover a new visual formula for the old subject. Every one of these drawings, which could easily be multiplied by the hundreds, respects the basic visual concept of the human body—as witnessed by the fact that it is understood by the beholder—and at the same time offers an interpretation that distinguishes it from the other drawings. It is evident that the object itself dictates only a bare minimum of structural features, thus calling for “imagination” in the literal sense of the word— that is, the activity of making things into images. If we examine the drawings more closely, we find broad variations in many formal factors. The considerable differences in absolute size do not show in Figure no. The relative size of parts, for example, that of the head in comparison with the rest of the body, varies considerably. Many different solutions are found for the subdivision of the body. Not only the number of parts but also the placing of boundary lines varies. There is much detail and differentiation in some, little in others. Round shapes and angular shapes, thin sticks and solid masses, juxtapositions and overlappings, all are used to represent the same object. What is more, the simple enumeration of geometric differences does not do justice to the individuality evident in the overall appearance of these drawings. Some of the figures look stable and rational, others are carried away in reckless action. There are sensitive ones and crude ones, simple ones and subtly complex ones, plump ones and frail ones. Every one of them expresses a way of living, of being a person.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  He called on the people to change their lives and get rid of wickedness, and as a sign of that change of life he bathed them in the Jordan. He said: A voice calls to you; Open a way for God through the wilderness, level a path for him. Make it so that all may be level, that there may be neither hollows nor hills, neither high nor low. Then God will be among you and all will find salvation. And the people asked him: What must we do? He replied: Let him that has two suits of clothes give one to him that has none, and let him that has food give to him that has none. And tax-gatherers came to him and asked: What are we to do? He said to them: Extort nothing beyond what is due. And soldiers asked: How are we to live? He said: Do no one any harm, nor defraud any man, and be content with what is served out to you. And inhabitants of Jerusalem came to him, and the Jews in the neighborhood of Judea near the Jordan. And they acknowledged their wrong-doings to him, and as a sign of a changed life he bathed them in the Jordan. And many of the Orthodox and conventional religionists came to John, but secretly. He recognized them and said: You are a race of vipers: or have you also seen that you cannot escape the will of God? Then bethink yourselves and change your faith! And if you wish to change your faith let it be seen by your fruits that you have bethought yourselves. The axe is already laid to the tree. If the tree produces bad fruit it will be cut down and cast into the fire. As a sign of a changed life I cleanse you in water, but as well as that bathing you must also be cleansed with the spirit. The spirit will cleanse you as a master cleanses his threshing-floor when he gathers the wheat and burns the chaff. Jesus, too, came from Galilee to the Jordan to be bathed by John, and was bathed and heard John's preaching. And from the Jordan he went into the wild places and there felt the power of the spirit. Jesus remained in the desert forty days and forty nights without food or drink. And the voice of the flesh said to him: If you were the son of Almighty God you could make bread out of stones, but you cannot do so, therefore you are not a son of God. But Jesus said to himself. If I cannot make bread out of stones, it means that I am not a son of God in the flesh but in the spirit. I am alive not by bread but by the spirit. And my spirit is able to disregard the flesh.

• From The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (2008)

  Walking, at its most elementary, is a spinal reflex, but is elaborated at higher and higher levels until, finally, we can recognize a man by the way he walks, by his walk. Migraine, similarly, gathers identity from stage to stage, for it starts as a reflex, but can become a creation. (Sacks, 1981: 224) Walking is a capacity of the biological organism, but it is also a human creation and it can be elaborated to include the ‘goose-step’, the ‘march’ and ‘about-turn’ (Mauss, 1979). Walking is rule-following behaviour, but we can know a particular person by his walk or by the absence of a walk. As Groddeck pointed out, my way of walking may be as much a part of my identity as my mode of speech. Indeed ‘the walk’ is a system of signs so that the stillness of the migrainous person or the limp of the gouty individual is a communication. The external disease becomes part of culture and personality through appropriation and interpretation. This Groddeckian perspective may appear peculiar, but it is an important corrective to some of the literature on sickness which fails to grasp the contradictory, dialectical nature of suffering. In medical sociology, the symbolic interactionist perspective involves the application of concepts from deviance theory which treats disease and illness as a uniform negation of the self-concept. In this respect, illness can be seen as a process which increasingly restricts social contacts and undermines the coherence of personal identity. Illness creates a sense of dependency on others and on medical technology. For example, patients who are dependent on kidney dialysis have a constant daily reminder of their dependence on machinery (Strauss and Glaser, 1975). The social isolation brought about by chronic illness leads to experiences of being discredited, rejected and devalued. The chronically sick can no longer exercise conscious agency over their circumstances because they are repeatedly reminded of their dependence and they experience themselves as a burden (Charmaz, 1983). The interactionist argument is that illness is a form of deviance and, as such, illness is subject to stigmatization which results in a devaluation of the self. The maladies of the body become the stigmatization of the person. Although this perspective clearly illustrates the alienation of the patient from himself and from his social environment, it is important to bear in mind that not all illness is stigmatized; some forms of illness, like some forms of deviance, have a social prestige and in a peculiar way are positively evaluated. Furthermore, negative social labels are not necessarily incorporated by either the sick or the deviant; stigmatization only occurs where isolated individuals actually internalize negative labels. Associations for the blind, diabetics, paraplegics and the like attempt to resist negative labelling by offering a more positive image of the life-style of the sufferer. These comments on the interactionist viewpoint are obviously trivial. The most important issue is the complex and contradictory phenomenological relationship between the individual and their disease.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: “Synderesis” is said to be the law of our mind, because it is a habit containing the precepts of the natural law, which are the first principles of human actions. Reply to Objection 3: This argument proves that the natural law is held habitually; and this is granted. To the argument advanced in the contrary sense we reply that sometimes a man is unable to make use of that which is in him habitually, on account of some impediment: thus, on account of sleep, a man is unable to use the habit of science. In like manner, through the deficiency of his age, a child cannot use the habit of understanding of principles, or the natural law, which is in him habitually. Whether the natural law contains several precepts, or only one?Objection 1: It would seem that the natural law contains, not several precepts, but one only. For law is a kind of precept, as stated above ([2013]Q[92], A[2]). If therefore there were many precepts of the natural law, it would follow that there are also many natural laws. Objection 2: Further, the natural law is consequent to human nature. But human nature, as a whole, is one; though, as to its parts, it is manifold. Therefore, either there is but one precept of the law of nature, on account of the unity of nature as a whole; or there are many, by reason of the number of parts of human nature. The result would be that even things relating to the inclination of the concupiscible faculty belong to the natural law. Objection 3: Further, law is something pertaining to reason, as stated above ([2014]Q[90], A[1]). Now reason is but one in man. Therefore there is only one precept of the natural law. On the contrary, The precepts of the natural law in man stand in relation to practical matters, as the first principles to matters of demonstration. But there are several first indemonstrable principles. Therefore there are also several precepts of the natural law.

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

  We must say then that all these many and diverse notions correspond to something in God of which they are likenesses. For it is plain that one form can have but one specific likeness proportionate to it: while there can be many imperfect likenesses, each one of which falls short of a perfect representation of the form. Since then, as we have proved above, the ideas we conceive of the perfections; we observe in creatures are imperfect and improportionate likenesses of the divine essence, nothing prevents the same one essence from corresponding to all these ideas, as being imperfectly represented thereby. So that all these conceptions are in the mind as their subject, but in God, as the foundation of their truth. For the idea that the intellect has of a thing is not true unless that thing corresponds to the idea by its likeness to it. Accordingly the cause of difference or multiplicity in these expressions is on the part of the intellect, which is unable to compass the vision of that divine essence in itself, but sees it through many faulty likenesses thereof which are reflected by creatures as by a mirror. Whereof if it saw that very essence, it would not need to use many terms, nor would it need many conceptions. ‘For this reason God’s Word, which is his perfect concept, is but one: wherefore it is written (Zach. xiv, 9): In that day there shall be one Lord, and his name will be one—when God’s very essence will be seen, and knowledge of God will not be gathered from creatures. Reply to the First Objection. These terms signify one thing indeed, but under different aspects, as stated above: hence they are not synonyms Reply to the Second Objection. Damascene means that in God all things are one in reality except the personal properties which constitute a real distinction of Persons: but he does not deny a logical difference in the terms that are attributed to God. The Reply to the Third Objection is clear from what has just been said: because as wisdom and goodness are in reality the same as the divine essence, so are they identical with each other: and yet they differ logically, as stated. Reply to the Fourth Objection. It has already been explained that though God is absolutely one, yet these many concepts or notions are not false, because to all of them one and the same thing corresponds albeit imperfectly represented by them: but they would be false if nothing corresponded to them. Reply to the Fifth Objection. Since in God there is absolute unity, and multiplicity in creatures, just as God understands many creatures by one intelligible species which is his essence, while there is a manifold relationship of God to creatures: even so in our intellect which mounts up to God from the multiplicity of creatures, there must be many species having relations to one God.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  1. "It must be carefully observed, that Christian liberty is in all its branches a spiritual thing; all the virtue of which consists in appeasing terrified consciences before God, whether they are disquieted and solicitous concerning the remission of their sins, or are anxious to know if their works, which are imperfect and contaminated by the defilements of the flesh, be acceptable to God, or are tormented concerning the use of things that are indifferent. Wherefore those are guilty of perverting its meaning, who either make it the pretext of their irregular appetites, that they may abuse the divine blessings to the purposes of sensuality, or who suppose that there is no liberty but what is used before men, and therefore in the exercise of it totally disregard their weak brethren.

• From How Propaganda Works (2015)

  We can also now understand the quotation from Victor Klemperer about the effects of the word “heroism” on those who grew up under National Socialism. The National Socialists successfully linked the term “heroism” to various symbols of Teutonic hegemony. These symbols, that of the Storm Trooper or the racecar driver, were the social meaning of “heroism.” The concepts of liberalism are universal and neutral; no one group is singled out. In contrast, National Socialist ideology is profoundly illiberal, as it singles out the Teutonic race and the Jews for special treatment. Klemperer notes that as soon as “heroism” was mentioned, the people in the class lost all ability to grasp the concepts of liberal democracy. The reason is that the word “heroism” has a social meaning that is profoundly illiberal. Given the nature of not-at-issue content, that social meaning is immediately accepted by those raised under National Socialism once the word “heroism” is mentioned. Accepting the social meaning of “heroism” leaves one in a speech context with a common ground (in the sense explained) that is incompatible with the presuppositions of liberalism. That explains Klemperer’s comment that “it was impossible to have a proper grasp of the true nature of humanitarianism, culture, and democracy if one endorsed this kind of conception, or to be more precise misconception, of heroism.” Propaganda is of course not just aimed at those who share the propagandist’s ideology. Propaganda is very often aimed at those who are its targets. We will see, in subsequent chapters, that propaganda is the means by which the highly privileged group in a society controls negatively privileged groups. I will explain some psychological and epistemological mechanisms underlying its efficacy. But we now are in a position to see the linguistic mechanisms of efficacy. The notion of not-at-issue content is one way negatively privileged groups come to accept the dominant ideology. As we have seen, the way not-at-issue content works is that it is added to the common ground, that is, accepted, even for further discussion to take place. The dominant group tries to place members of the subordinated group in a position so that merely engaging in debate requires accepting certain claims about their own inferiority. Members of subordinate groups may not believe the not-at-issue content, but to communicate with the chosen words they must act like they believe it. None of this is to deny that the use of these terms may be challenged or reappropriated. For example, in the United States, the term “Obamacare” was initially introduced as a means of referring negatively to the Affordable Care Act. But then it was reappropriated as a nonnegative way of referring to the act. However, such challenges require sufficient control of media and other instruments of power that are often outside the control of members of the subordinated group. Successful challenge and reappropriation very often can take place only in the context of something approximating equal social footing.

• From The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)

  Our ancestors had plenty of parasites and germs to worry about too: tapeworms, herpes, crab lice, common colds, malaria, stomach flu. Their communicable diseases were probably not as severe as those that arise in urban civilizations, because their population densities were much lower. They did not have plagues like medieval European cities. But every one of our hominid ancestors was probably exposed to dozens of species of fast-breeding, fast-evolving, energy-sapping organisms, from micro-parasites like viruses and bacteria to macroparasites like head lice. The variable was not whether they had parasites, but how well they maintained their health and energy despite them. The sexual repulsion we may experience toward someone heavily infected with parasites may reflect more than a fear of contamination. It may be showing that Hamilton is right: that resisting parasites is a major part of fitness for any large animal, and advertising that resistance is a major function of sexual ornaments. Environments fluctuate across space as well as time. Our ancestors lived in small groups spread out over wide areas of Africa. The African continent is not one big flat savannah. Each area has slightly different weather, geology, vegetation, competitors, predators, and parasites. There are many micro-habitats. What is optimal in one area may not be optimal in another. Survival pressures vary across space, so each individual’s fitness varies across space. As long as some of our ancestors migrated from one area to another in every generation, they would never evolve to the point where every individual in every area has maximum fitness relative to their local environment. Like variation in selection pressures over time, this variation in space helps explain why fitness remains heritable. Environmental fluctuations across time and space are best at explaining why physical fitness and health remains heritable. But they are not so useful to us if our interest is in mental fitness indicators. Parasites put evolutionary pressure more on immune systems and bodies than on brains. Variations in climate from one part of Africa to another might maintain heritable variation in physical adaptations, but it is not clear why they should maintain variation in mental adaptations. To explain persistent variation in mental fitness, we need something more. The Black Rain of MutationIn science-fiction films and comic books, “mutations” are Faustian bargains that confer superhuman powers while damning their possessors to abnormal appearance and impaired sexual attractiveness. Spiderman was bitten by a “mutated” spider, and acquired wall-clinging powers but became alienated from his girlfriend. Monster Island apparently had high levels of mutagenic radiation, which is how Godzilla acquired his “atomic breath” that incinerates his enemies but keeps him single. This comic-book view of mutations is only half right. Mutations do undermine normal appearance and sexual attractiveness, but they very rarely bring survival or fertility benefits.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  The old woman often finds serenity toward the end of her life when she has given up the fight, when death’s approach frees her from anxiety about the future. Her husband was often older than she, she witnesses his decline with silent complacency: it is her revenge; if he dies first, she cheerfully bears the mourning; it has often been observed that men are far more overwhelmed by being widowed late in life: they profit more from marriage than women do, and particularly in their old age, because then the universe is concentrated within the limits of the home; the present does not spill over into the future: it is their wife who assures their monotonous rhythm and reigns over them; when he loses his public functions, man becomes totally useless; woman continues at least to run the home; she is necessary to her husband, whereas he is only a nuisance. Women are proud of their independence, they finally begin to view the world through their own eyes; they realize they have been duped and mystified their whole lives; now lucid and wary, they often attain a delicious cynicism. In particular, the woman who “has lived” has a knowledge of men that no man shares: for she has seen not their public image but the contingent individual that every one of them lets show in the absence of their counterparts; she also knows women, who only show themselves in their spontaneity to other women: she knows what happens behind the scenes. But even if her experience allows her to denounce mystifications and lies, it is not enough to reveal the truth to her. Whether she is amused or bitter, the old woman’s wisdom still remains completely negative: it is contestation, accusation, refusal; it is sterile. In her thoughts as in her acts, the highest form of freedom a woman-parasite can have is stoic defiance or skeptical irony. At no time in her life does she succeed in being both effective and independent.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  The initial flush of anxiety would pass, and I would spend my remaining year in Indonesia much as I had before. I retained a confidence that was not always justified and an irrepressible talent for mischief. But my vision had been permanently altered. On the imported television shows that had started running in the evenings, I began to notice that Cosby never got the girl on I Spy, that the black man on Mission Impossible spent all his time underground. I noticed that there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog that Toot and Gramps sent us, and that Santa was a white man. I kept these observations to myself, deciding that either my mother didn’t see them or she was trying to protect me and that I shouldn’t expose her efforts as having failed. I still trusted my mother’s love—but I now faced the prospect that her account of the world, and my father’s place in it, was somehow incomplete. CHAPTER THREE [image file=image_rsrc2W2.jpg] IT TOOK ME A while to recognize them in the crowd. When the sliding doors first parted, all I could make out was the blur of smiling, anxious faces tilted over the guardrail. Eventually I spotted a tall, silver-haired man toward the rear of the crowd, with a short, owlish woman barely visible beside him. The pair began to wave in my direction, but before I could wave back they disappeared behind frosted glass. I looked to the front of the line, where a Chinese family seemed to be having some problems with the customs officials. They had been a lively bunch during the flight from Hong Kong, the father taking off his shoes and padding up and down the aisles, the children clambering over seats, the mother and grandmother hoarding pillows and blankets and chattering endlessly to one another. Now the family was standing absolutely still, trying to will themselves invisible, their eyes silently following the hands that riffled through their passports and luggage with a menacing calm. The father reminded me of Lolo somehow, and I looked down at the wooden mask I was carrying in my hand. It was a gift from the Indonesian copilot, a friend of my mother’s who had led me away as she and Lolo and my new sister, Maya, stood by at the gate. I closed my eyes and pressed the mask to my face. The wood had a nutty, cinnamon smell, and I felt myself drifting back across oceans and over the clouds, into the violet horizon, back to the place where I had once been….

• From The Vagina Bible (2019)

  Pad and tampon manufacturers in the U.S. are not required to list ingredients on the package or on their website, and so this is often offered as a reason for concern. While I agree every product should have all ingredients listed, I’ve researched many tampons and pads for this book, and each one had the ingredients listed. I checked several “Big Company” and “Natural” products with their FDA applications and they matched. Why “Natural” manufacturers are not lying about their ingredients but “Big Companies” are has never been explained to my satisfaction. What About Residues? For a tampon to be approved, the manufacturer must demonstrate that is it free of herbicides and pesticides, or if they are present how the manufacturer determined they are present in acceptable levels for human use. The most prevalent myth surrounds dioxins, which are known carcinogens for animals and probably carcinogenic for people. No one wants to put a probable carcinogen in their vagina! Older methods for bleaching cotton and in the manufacturing of rayon produced low levels of dioxins. Bleaching methods were changed (the culprit was elemental chlorine), but there still are traces of dioxin in tampons, pad, and disposable diapers, even those made of 100 percent cotton. Not because of problematic manufacturing, but because dioxin is everywhere in the raw materials, be it cotton or wood pulp, due to pollution. Exposure to dioxins in tampons is thousands of times less than what you are exposed to in your food, and there is no difference in dioxin levels in 100 percent cotton “health food store” tampons versus “conventional” cotton/rayon blends. Interestingly, in one study the tampon that had the highest level of dioxins was from an “organic” company. According to one study, “exposures to dioxins from tampons is approximately 13,000–240,000 times less than dietary exposures.” So even if you use 12,000 tampons in a lifetime, you are not approaching the lower level of dietary exposure, and there is no evidence that 100 percent cotton products offer a lower exposure. Another internet myth is that “conventional” tampons contain glyphosate, an ingredient in some herbicides, like Roundup. The WHO lists glyphosate as a possible carcinogen; however, there is a lot of science that disagrees with that conclusion. The glyphosate tampon “data” (I struggle to call it that) is unpublished, which makes it as valuable as hearsay. Glyphosate works by binding to an enzyme that humans do not have and is not absorbed across skin or mucosa, found in the vagina, so tampon-wise it seems like a nonissue.

• From Epistemology of the Closet (1990)

  Some Binarisms (JI) 133 tity and an "immemorial," very naturalized English one, though, as we shall see, one none the less under definitional stress for that. German unification under Prussian leadership, culminating with the proclamation of the Second Reich in 1871, led newly to the criminalization of homosex- ual offenses for the entire Reich-a process that coincided, as James Steakley points out, with "the escalating estimates of the actual number of homosexuals" in Germany, from .002 percent of the population in 1864, to 1.4 percent in 1869, to 2.2 percent in 1903. "These estimates," Steakley says, "appear astonishingly low in light of modern studies, but they nonetheless document the end of homosexual invisibility." The same period encompassed the first formation - in Germany-of organized ho- mosexual emancipation movements. 2 It seems patent that many of Nietzsche's most effective intensities of both life and writing were directed toward other men and toward the male body; it's at least arguable, though not necessary for my present argu- ment, that almost all of them were. Given that, and especially given all the thought recently devoted to the position of women in Nietzsche's writing, it is striking how difficult it seems to have been to focus on the often far more cathected position of men there. There are reasons for this even beyond the academic prudishness, homophobia, and heterosexist ob- tuseness that always seem to obtain: Nietzsche offers writing of an open, Whitmanlike seductiveness, some of the loveliest there is, about the joining of men with men, but he does so in the stubborn, perhaps even studied absence of any explicit generalizations, celebrations, analyses, reifications of these bonds as specifically same-sex ones. Accordingly, he has been important for a male-erotic-centered anarchist tradition, ex- tending from Adolf Brand and Benedict Friedlander through Gilles De- leuze .md Felix Guattari, that has a principled resistance to any minoritiz- ing model of homosexual identity. (Friedlander, for instance, ridiculed those with an exclusively hetero- or homosexual orientation as Kum- merlinge [atrophied or puny beings].) 3 But the harder fact to deal with is that Nietzsche's writing is full and overfull of what were just in the process of becoming, for people like Wilde, for their enemies, and for the institu- tions that regulated and defined them, the most pointed and contested signifiers of precisely a minoritized, taxonomic male homosexual identity. 2. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, pp. 14, 33. 3. On Brand and Friedlander, see Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, pp. 43-69; on Kummerlinge, pp. 46-47.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  During his year at Wittenberg, Luther’s progress was swift. Already on March 9, 1509, Luther earned his first theological degree, bachelor of the Bible, and that autumn he took the examination for a second theological degree, which was a bachelor’s in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, universally reckoned the most important theology textbook of the Middle Ages. Of course Luther also studied Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, and judged the latter guilty of “rambling long-windedness.”3 During this year in Wittenberg, Luther participated in an academic debate—a disputation, as they were called—on dogmatic principles. Luther argued against the established idea that theological ideas must simply be accepted and advocated instead for proofs. This, in its small way, is an augury of what was to come. Luther was hardly bold in condemning the way things were, but it is clear in retrospect that he was unsatisfied with what he was finding. His view of the truth was far too high for him to let confusing things or errant things slip by the wayside. He wanted real answers, and he wanted to read the Bible in such a way that he could get those answers, and he now began to suspect that some of the official answers being peddled might be as much obfuscation as anything else. When they heard of how quickly their temporarily uprooted brother was progressing in Wittenberg, a number of his colleagues at Erfurt were resentful. In any case, after a year at Wittenberg, Luther was called back to his home monastery. But he was never required to take the standard oath at Erfurt saying that those who got their bachelor’s degrees there must get their doctorate degrees at Erfurt too. Why this is, we do not know. But it would cause trouble for him later. In any event, Luther had not been back at Erfurt for very long when his studies were interrupted by a call to travel to Rome.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  3. No official role was allowed for women in the hierarchy of the church, but prophetic visions were a medium for women to exert teaching authority. 4. The role of males could be supportive (confessors and spiritual directors) or suppressive. C. Female mystics can be found in three social settings, which are, in some ways, interconnected. 1. Monastic (e.g., Benedictine) and mendicant (e.g., Dominican) orders lived by canonical rules and had female houses. They also had third orders for laypeople who were more loosely associated with the religious life. 2. In northern Europe, during the 12 th and 13 th centuries, the Beghards and the Beguines lived communally in local houses and practiced religious vows and good works. These relatively independent movements tended to make the church hierarchy nervous. 3. Anchorites and anchoresses (from Greek anachorein means “to withdraw”) lived as hermits in local churches under the supervision of pastors. II. Three women visionaries of various styles and from different parts of Europe give us a glimpse of an even greater diversity. A. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) came from a noble family, was dedicated to the Lord at age eight, and became a Benedictine abbess whose work in several fields was notable. 1. In addition to her mystical writings, she wrote music (the Symphonia), drama (Ordo Virtutum), and works on plants and medicine. Her experience of pain and visions has been correlated to a form of migraine. 2. Hildegard’s mystical works in Latin (Scivias, Book of Life’s Merits, Book of Divine Works) include highly detailed visions accompanied by drawings, the meaning of which she explicates. 3. The Scivias contains 26 visions, beginning with creation and extending to the end of time. In this work, Hildegard also sets forth an argument concerning why women should not be priests. B. Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden (1303–1373) came from a wealthy family, married at 13, and bore eight children. When her husband died in 1344, she started the Order of the Holy Savior (Birgittines). ©2008 The Teaching Company. 79

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  To assume that human life will go in the direction indicated by Christ is the same as assuming that a boatman, in crossing a rapid river and directing his boat almost against the current, will move in that direction. Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the parallelogram, of both the eternal, indestructible forces, of which man's life is composed,—the force of the animal nature and the force of the consciousness of a filial relation to God. Without saying anything of the animal force, which, asserting itself, always remains equal to itself and exists outside of man's power, Christ speaks only of the divine force, calling man to recognize it in the highest degree, to free it as much as possible from what is retarding it, and to bring it to the highest degree of tension. In this liberation and increase of the force does man's true life, according to Christ's teaching, consist. The true life, according to the previous conditions, consisted in the execution of rules, of the law; according to Christ's teaching, it consists in the greatest approach to the divine perfection, as pointed out to every man and inwardly felt by him, in a greater and ever greater approach toward blending our will with the will of God, a blending toward which a man strives, and which would be a destruction of life as we know it. Divine perfection is the asymptote of the human life, toward which it always tends and approaches, and which can be attained by it only at infinity. The Christian teaching seems to exclude the possibility of life only when men take the indication of the ideal to be a rule. It is only then that the demands put forth by Christ's teaching appear to be destructive of life. Without these demands the true life would be impossible. "Too much should not be demanded," people generally say, in discussing the demands of the Christian teaching. "It is impossible to demand that we should not care for the future, as it says in the Gospel; all that we should do is not to care too much. It is impossible to give everything to the poor; but we should give a certain, definite part to them. It is not necessary to strive after chastity; but debauchery should be avoided. We must not leave our wives and children; but we should not be too much attached to them," and so forth. But to speak in this manner is the same as telling a man who is crossing a rapid river, and who is directing his course against the current, that it is impossible to cross the river by going against the current, but that to cross it he should row in the direction he wishes to go. Christ's teaching differs from previous teachings in that it guides men, not by external rules, but by the internal consciousness of the possibility of attaining divine perfection.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  I think it’s a real good community to raise a family in.” DeLoy says this, and means it, even though he’s talked at length to several of the women in town who’ve reported being sexually abused as girls and insist that pedophilia is rampant within the community. “I don’t doubt their stories are true,” he acknowledges. “I know for a fact there’s men in the priesthood who have slept with their own daughters, which is horrible. But that kind of thing goes on everywhere, and I actually think there’s less of it here than in the outside world.” In any case, it wasn’t the culture’s sexual customs or its lifestyle constraints that finally induced DeLoy to apostatize. Rather, he says, “It just got to be where I could no longer ignore that the religion is a lie. It’s not like the prophets that control everybody are intentionally fooling the people—as far as I can tell Rulon and Warren and Winston and them sincerely believe the lie themselves. I’m not sure about that, but I think so. And it’s not just their religion that’s a lie. I’ve really come to believe that all religions are lies. Every single one of ’em. “Could there be supreme power out there somewhere? Is there a grand plan behind the big bang, the creation of the universe, the evolution of species? I don’t know, I suppose it’s possible; I guess I’d like to at least allow for the possibility in the back of my mind. But common sense tells me otherwise.” Although DeLoy says that he was “extremely religious” throughout his youth, he also had a probing, unremittingly curious mind. “Even as a young boy,” he says, “I remember wondering about contradictions between what the religion taught and scientific truth. But Uncle Roy told us that the way to handle that was just to avoid asking certain kinds of questions. So I trained myself to ignore the contradictions. I got good at not letting myself think about them.” Because DeLoy was smart and the religion needed educators for its school, when he turned eighteen the prophet—his adoptive grandfather, Uncle Roy—sent him to Southern Utah State College, an hour up the road in Cedar City, to become a teacher. “I was sent with him,” recalls DeLoy’s first wife, Eunice Bateman, who had been commanded by the prophet to marry DeLoy a short while earlier. “Neither of us had ever lived outside of Colorado City. Our second child was born a year after he started school. I felt so different from everyone there—I felt like an outcast. I was homesick for Colorado City the whole time Dee was in college. But I kept pretty busy raising babies and doing his typing and helping with his homework.” After getting his degree, DeLoy returned to Colorado City and went to work educating the town’s youth.

• From A Contextual-Bandit Approach to Personalized News Article Recommendation (2012)

  Third,ǫ-greedy algorithms (on the left of Figure 2) achieved sim- ilar CTR as upper confidence bound ones (on the right of Figure2) in the deployment bucket when appropriate parameters were used. Thus, both types of algorithms appeared to learn comparablepoli- cies. However, they seemed to have lower CTR in the learning bucket, which is consistent with the empirical findings of context- free algorithms [2] in real bucket tests. Finally, to compare algorithms when data are sparse, we repeated the same parameter tuning process for each algorithm with fewer data, at the level of30%,20%,10%,5%, and1%. Note that we still used all data to evaluate an algorithm’s CTR as done in Algo- rithm 3, but then only a fraction of available data were randomly chosen to be used by the algorithm to improve its policy. 5.5.2 Results for Evaluation Data With parameters optimized on the tuning data (c.f., Figure 2), we ran the algorithms on the evaluation data and summarized theCTRs in Table 1. The table also reports the CTR lift compared to the baseline ofǫ-greedy. The CTR ofomniscientwas1.615, and so a significantly larger CTR of an algorithm indicates its effective use of user/article features for personalization. Recall thatthe reported CTRs were normalized by the random policy’s CTR. We examine the results more closely in the following subsections. On the Use of Features. We first investigate whether it helps to use features in article rec- ommendation. It is clear from Table 1 that, by considering user features, bothǫ-greedy (seg/disjoint/hybrid)and UCB methods (ucb (seg)andlinucb (disjoint/hybrid)) were able to achieve a CTR lift of around10%, compared to the baselineǫ-greedy. To better visualize the effect of features, Figure 3 shows how an article’s CTR (when chosen by an algorithm) was lifted compared to its base CTR (namely, the context-free CTR). 4 Here, an article’s base CTR measures how interesting it is to a random user, and was estimated from logged events. Therefore, a high ratio of thelifted and base CTRs of an article is a strong indicator that an algorithm does recommend this article to potentially interested users. Fig- ure 3(a) shows neitherǫ-greedynorucbwas able to lift article CTRs, since they made no use of user information. In contrast, all 4 To avoid inaccurate CTR estimates, only50articles that were chosen most often by an algorithm were included in itsownplots. Hence, the plots for different algorithms are not comparable.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  will establish their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith.’53 This is the first surviving formulation of an idea of apostolic succession in Christian ministry. The Corinthians listened and restored their old leaders, so it was also the first known occasion that a Roman cleric had successfully influenced the life of another Church: a moment with much significance for the future of Christianity generally. Clement actually took as given the twofold order of bishop/presbyter, which can also be seen in the Didachē, even though most sources are agreed in regarding him as Bishop in Rome. Another tract from Rome, not much later than the time of Clement, the book by Hermas known as the Shepherd, also talks of a collegiate ministry of presbyter-bishops, even though the final version of the Shepherd was written when Hermas’s brother Pius was Bishop of Rome. This suggests that a twofold and threefold view of ministry could coexist; yet the elevation of one leading bishop figure above other presbyters was virtually complete by the end of the second century. One powerful force in this development was the prestige enjoyed in all parts of the Church by the seven letters written to various Churches and to Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch. They relate to his journey from Antioch to Rome following his arrest just after 100 CE and were written in the certain expectation (indeed joyful hope) that he would die as a martyr.54 In these letters Ignatius spoke much of his concern at what are recognizable as forms of gnostic belief, including docetic views of Christ’s Passion. To combat this, he emphasized the reality of both Christ’s divinity and his humanity, which he saw best expressed in the Church’s continuing celebration of the Eucharist. But how could this doctrine be guaranteed? Ignatius pointed to what he saw as a standard of doctrine set by the beliefs affirmed by the Church in Rome, which he knew would be the city of his martyrdom; it is worth noting that he made no mention of the Bishop of Rome, simply of the Church. He linked with this the role in each community of the bishop, who should be the one person in every place responsible for handing on the faith and guarding against deviation. The bishop, after all, presided at the Eucharist and should be the automatic source of authority: ‘You must all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ [followed] the Father … Let no one do anything apart from the bishop that has to do with the Church. Let that be regarded as a valid Eucharist which is held under the bishop or to whomever he entrusts it. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the congregation be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the whole [katholikē] Church.’55 The cynical might say that it was easy for Ignatius to take this line, since there was already one bishop in Antioch and his name was Ignatius. Noticeably, a letter written by his correspondent and fellow martyr Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna