More on Success--Chesterton

In earlier discussion of whether my friends and I are failures, I missed our strongest defender-- G.K. Chesterton.  Under the title is an essay that I could never succeed in surpassing on the subject.  But I will make some comments on his comments just so I can be close enough to be warmed by the embers of his wordsmithing.

"To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful.  That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide."

This is not what is normally meant we worry about success or failure:  "You are a success at having spent far more money than you have earned."  "You are a success at not paying bills on time and incurring late fees."

For years I have restricted my New Years' resolutions to a plan to eat a little more, gain some more weight and get less exercise.  These are resolutions I can keep.

Chesterton uncovers the real aim when we talk about success:  success in obtaining money or worldly position.  He then exposes the self-help books that pretend to teach success.  There are only two ways to success at any decent occupation, say, bricklaying or writing books:  "One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating. Both are much too simple to require any literary explanation. If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so."

Accepting this and doubting that at this stage that I can get any impressive measure at obtaining money or worldly position, I have decided to merely pretend I have done so.  Please spread the word that wrote the great American Epic poem and then moved on to invent the perpetual motion machine.  For these I won back to back Nobel prizes in literature and science.  My Olympic Gold medal was only in curling, but it shows I am well rounded.  

Chesterton then looks at the surest way to riches:  There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only "instinct" I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as "the sin of avarice."

My Dear Old Dad used to say, "Behind every great fortune is a great crime."  I'm not sure he thought this was a bad idea:  he would have enjoyed both the fortune and the crime.  However, the game was to look at the great fortune and find the crime that preceded it:  smuggling, war-profiteering, consumer fraud, monopoly, theft, murder.

Why shouldn't we view someone who hoards too much wealth the same way as we view someone who drinks too much whiskey or shoots too much heroin?  In all these cases, the harm both to the addict and society is great-- I would suggest greater in the case of the rich man.  After all Jesus never warned against alcohol or drugs.

But Jesus must have meant something when he said,...I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.  Matthew 19:24

Chesterton makes the point about lust:  Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust; what shall we say of books that inflame the viler passions of avarice and pride? 

Austin's interpretation of "That our happiness must not be judged until after our death."

Mr. Dupin observes: Perhaps its the translation,but I find it difficult to take any real meaning from XVIII other than what seems apparent on its face: "That Men Are Not to Judge Of Our Happiness Till After Death" because Fortune plays a role.

This is my reading as well. An aside, Uncle Toby: The translation I read is by Donald M. Frame. It is a 20th Century Translation first published in 1957. Mr. Dupin uses Charles Cotton's translation from the late 17th Century. John Florio's translation from the early 17th Century is the one to which I linked yesterday's post. Both Cotton's and Florio's translations are pleasing to the ear. Frame's is easier for me to understand.

Austin, though, tells me I am missing the whole point of the essay. He gives three clues to support his argument: 1. When referring to the Latin, pre-Christian writers, "fortune" is not capitalized, but when referring to the present day, "Fortune" is capitalized. 2. When reaching his conclusion, he notes, "God has willed it as he pleased...." 3. Montaigne notes three (not two or four) execrable and infamous persons whose deaths were ordered and "in every sense composed to perfection." 4. The "by his fall" language echoes the descent into hell of Jesus and other Christian references.

Austin says, we may dismiss one or two of these clues, but at three,we have to pay attention because Montaigne fills his essays with hints of his true intentions. And however much he may love the classics, Montaigne is still very much the Christian.

This, then, is the the argument Austin gives from the hints: "That our happiness must not be judged until after our death" is a rejection of the pagan virtues and an embrace of salvation through Christ. Upon death, the "power and fame" to which we aspire by a career is surpassed by something more grand and glorious than we have desired or hoped.

The pagans before Jesus recognized that "however fortune (small 'f') may smile on them, men cannot be called happy until they have been seen to spend the last day of their lives. The pre-Christian standard is the "state" of the person. If a king is captured and ends up a carpenter or clerk to Rome, his station in life has changed and he cannot be happy.

Today (Montaigne's time) we have Jesus and the present time is indicated when saying, "For it seems that, as storms and tempests are provoked to humble the pride and loftiness of our buildings," so are there "spirits up above" who are envious of grandeurs here below and will wreak havoc on human things and trample all that speaks of human eminence and laugh them all to scorn.

It further seems (again in Montaigne's Christian present tense) that "Fortune (big 'f') sometimes lies in wait precisely for the last day of our life, to show her power to overturn in a moment what she has built up over many years...."

The three execrable and infamous persons are meant to remind us of Jesus and the two thieves on the cross. And the holy trinity. Who but Jesus had a death that was "ordered and in every circumstance composed to perfection?"

By embracing Christian Grace and rejecting the ambitions and designs of man, we can gain a gallant and fortunate death. Through Christ, we may arrive where we "aspired to without going there, more grandly and gloriously" than we had desired or hoped. By our fall we may go beyond the power and the fame to which we had aspired in by our careers.

According to Austin, in this essay, Montaigne answers the question, "Does it matter, this success or failure in life?" with, "No. Success and failure are replaced by something more grand and glorious--the Peace of Christ. This is what allows us when we die to "go well, that is to say quietly and insensibly."

Mr. Dupin also notes that as with the Bible, "improper translation and interpretation can lead to unintended results." This has long concerned me. If Jesus spoke Aramaic, and then His words were written down in Greek and much later translated to English, how am I to rely on what Jesus supposedly said, not speaking or reading Aramaic or Greek?

Neither do I read French. Oh, to be an exegete.

If At First You Don't Succeed, Failure May Be Your Style. Quentin Crisp

My friend Randall (who hereinafter will be referred to as R. to protect his anonymity) called with a topic. When are we failures in life? His wife tells him he is a failure and he is past 60 with the kid grown and gone, so there is not much time to turn things around at this point.

R. disputes her conclusion. He sees his life as largely a success and his wife sees it as largely (or completely and totally) a failure. A loss. Not really worth having been lived.

I for one would be willing to declare R. a success on the basis of being a successful father alone. This was Jackie O's definition and she was rich and famous. So R. can accept this definition if he wants. His wife won't, but I'll give it to him. For that matter, it would be easy to make an argument for R. He was elected a member of his city counsel and had many successful law suits that mattered at least to his clients. Somehow, though, I don't think these would weigh much in the wifely judgment day.

I have further assured R. that in my experience, all husbands are sooner or later failures, completely and utterly. I further assured him that Kathy is always asking me, "If you're so smart, why aren't we rich." She throws out the decade that has passed without a vacation. She notes my car always looks like a wreck. My clothes are terrible. My dog is fat and has gas. She grumbles about the 32 inch waist I had when we were married that keeps swinging between 40 and 50 inches. Despite my soaring success in life (as I see it), she is sure I have failed and failed her as well. "I'm worried about my future," she cries.

And it is the same with all of our friends. I mentioned our mutual friends, all of whom are now about sixty and failures in the eyes of their wives. Some have actually saved money, have a nice house, annuities and 401 K plans, but their wives are still wrecks about the declining income and the likelihood of destitution. None of this seemed to comfort R.

Anyway, it is now incumbent upon me to redefine success and failure in such a way that R. and I and all of our friends (who have lived so long and have so little to show for it) are not failures.

Oddly, I don't remember much comment about the subject of failure from philosophers or novelists or poets in my decades of aimless and unproductive reading.

However, I do think when we read a translation of Aristotle and his definition of "happiness," this is something we would now call "success." My hope is that Aristotle can bail out R. and me and all others similarly situated. If we can claim to be a success by Aristotelian standards, this would largely negate being a failure when we are weighed in the wifely balance.

The word we translate as happiness is eudaimonia which breaks down, eu, "good" and daimonia, "spirit." By extension, it refers to good fortune or what we might usually call "success."

Happiness for moderns is subjective. You can take a pill or have whiskey and become happy. For Aristotle, a child could never be happy, because not enough life had been lived. Aristotle grappled with the concept of not calling anyone happy until his death and believed that the life of happiness could be negated even after death. If someone based his life on a project that was merely and illusion and false, this may not be learned until later. The happy life would be erased retroactively even if the dead was oblivious to the failure. If the dead man's son turns out to be a murderer, he will not have been happy.

Even for moderns, these things could be said about success. The apparently successful man might be safely in the grave when his children or his life's work goes on to prove he was a terrible failure.

First what I "remember" Aristotle said, but cannot find. Happiness (hereinafter called success) is achieved with good birth, good health, good land, good children and some other things like good horses.

These things are achieved by practicing the virtues. Political virtue is highly ranked. R. served as a counsel member for the poor area of town and worked to help them get the city services of the richer parts of town. Aristotle would give him high marks for this. I'd say a B or maybe an A-.

Aristotle would also judge success on how money is handled. He ranked liberality and magnificence high. Magnificence is something like giving a park to the city. I doubt R. was able to do much of this, but he always ranked high in liberality. He gave political contributions and attended the arts and bought lunches. Aristotle would probably at least give him a C+. Now this is the sticking point and where his wife probably fails him. In fact, a failure here for most wives seems to outweigh all the other grades. It is heavily weighted in the wifely report card.

Aristotle put a lot of stock in honor as well. I think he was talking about war or other sacrifice. R. probably wouldn't get much there.

Aristotle wanted a balance between ambitions and lack of ambition. R. may have fallen a little heavy in the lack of ambition category. OK, only a D, but it isn't failure.

On the anger/good temper grade, after overcoming a childhood inability to lose at ping pong, he would score very high on the good temper grade. Pushing an A, I would say.

Aristotle also graded success on friendliness, truthfulness and good-wit. R. really should get better than average on all of these. Especially on friendliness and good-wit. I don't know if Aristotle graded on a curve or not, but surely R. should get B's or better.

So, on Aristotle's success report card, I think R. would probably be a success.

How then, should he (and I and all others similarly situated) comfort ourselves on having failed on the wife report card? I say we look to true successes in life like Socrates, Tolstoy, Gandhi. If the biographers are correct, their wives would have given them failing grades as well.