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Logic Philosophy A Modern Introduction 13th Edition H Hausman
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philosophy
A Text with Readings
philosophy
A Text with Readings
ThiRTeenTh ediTion
Manuel Velasquez
The Charles Dirksen professor
santa Clara University
Philosophy: A Text with Readings, Thirteenth Edition
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For my sons, Brian, Kevin, and Daniel
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Preface xv
The nature of Philosophy 2
1.1 What Is Philosophy? 4
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave 4
Plato’s Allegory and “Doing” Philosophy 6
thinking critically Assumptions and Critical Thinking 8
The Diversity of Philosophy 9
thinking critically Reasoning 10
1.2 The Traditional Divisions of Philosophy 11
Epistemology: The Study of Knowledge 11
thinking critically Avoiding Vague and Ambiguous Claims 12
Metaphysics: The Study of Reality or Existence 13 philosophy and life Philosophical Issues 15
thinking critically Supporting Claims with Reasons and Arguments 15
Ethics: The Study of Values 16
Other Philosophical Inquiries 18
1.3 A Philosopher in Action: Socrates 19
Euthyphro: Do We Know What Holiness Is? 20
thinking critically Evaluating Arguments 24
The Republic: Is Justice Whatever Benefits the Powerful? 24
The Apology: Socrates’ Trial 27
Crito: Do We Have an Obligation to Obey the Law? 31 philosophy and life Breaking the Law for the Sake of Justice 35 thinking critically Identifying Premises, Conclusions, and Assumptions 35
1.4 The Value of Philosophy 38
Achieving Freedom 38
Building Your View of Life 39
Cultivating Awareness 39 philosophy and life Albert Ellis and Rational Emotive
Behavior Therapy 40
Learning to Think Critically 40
The Theme of This Text 41 Chapter Summary 41
1.5 Reading 43
Voltaire, “Story of a Good Brahmin” 44
1.6 Historical Showcase: The First Philosophers 45 Pre-Socratic Western Philosophers 45 Eastern Philosophers 47
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human nature 50
2.1 Why Does Your View of Human Nature Matter? 52 thinking critically Deductive Arguments, Validity, and Soundness 54
The Importance of Understanding Human Nature 56 philosophy and life Is Selflessness Real? 57
2.2 What Is Human Nature? 58
The Rationalistic Version of the Traditional Western View of Human Nature 59 philosophy and life Is Human Nature Irrational? 62
The Judeo-Christian Version of the Traditional Western View of Human Nature 66
The Darwinian Challenge 70 thinking critically Inference to the Best Explanation 76
The Existentialist Challenge 78
The Feminist Challenge 81
2.3 The Mind–Body Problem: How Do Your Mind and Your Body Relate? 86
The Dualist View of Human Nature: You Are an Immaterial Mind with a Material Body 88 thinking critically Evaluating an Argument’s Premises 92
The Materialist View of Human Nature: You Are Your Physical Body 94
The Mind/Brain Identity Theory of Human Nature: Your Mind Is Your Brain 95
The Behaviorist View of Human Nature: Your Mind Is How You Behave 97
The Functionalist View of Human Nature: Your Mind Is Like a Computer 100
Eliminative Materialism: You Have No Mind 104
The New Dualism: Your Mind Has Nonphysical Properties 105
2.4 Is There an Enduring Self? 107
The Soul Is the Enduring Self 111
Consciousness as the Source of the Enduring Self 111
The No-Self View 113
2.5 Are We Independent and Self-Sufficient Individuals? 118
The Atomistic Self 118
The Relational Self 120
Power and Hegel 122
Culture and Self-Identity 123
Search for the Real Self 125
Chapter Summary 126
2.6 Readings 128
Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” 129
Janice M. Steil, “Contemporary Marriage: Still an Unequal Partnership” 130
Jean Grimshaw, “Women’s Identity In Feminist Thinking” 131
2.7 Historical Showcase: Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius 133
Plato 133
Aristotle 140
Confucius 145
Reality and Being 150
3.1 What Is Real? 152 philosophy and life The Experience Machine, or Does Reality Matter? 154
Metaphysical Questions of Reality 154 The Search for Reality 155
3.2 Reality: Material or Nonmaterial? 155 Materialism: Reality as Matter 156 Objections to Materialism 160 philosophy and life The Neutrino 162 Idealism: Reality as Nonmatter 163 philosophy and life Our Knowledge of the World 168 thinking critically Conditional Arguments 173 Objections to Idealism 175
3.3 Reality in Pragmatism 178
Pragmatism’s Approach to Philosophy 179 The Pragmatic Method 180 Objections to Pragmatism 183
3.4 Reality and Logical Positivism 184 philosophy and life Parallel Universes 187 thinking critically Categorical Syllogism Arguments 188 Objections to Logical Positivism 191
3.5 Antirealism: The Heir of Pragmatism and Idealism 193 Proponents of Antirealism 194 Objections to Antirealism 197
3.6 Is Freedom Real? 200
Determinism 202 Libertarianism 207
philosophy and life Does Our Brain Make Our Decisions Before We Consciously Make Them? 212
Compatibilism 213
3.7 Is Time Real? 218
Time and Human Life 218
Augustine: Only the Present Moment Is Real 219
McTaggart: Subjective Time Is Not Real 221
Kant: Time Is a Mental Construct 223
Bergson: Only Subjective Time Is Real 225
Chapter Summary 226
3.8 Readings 228
Sophocles, “Oedipus the King” 229
Robert C. Solomon, “Fate and Fatalism” 238
3.9 Historical Showcase: Hobbes and Berkeley 240
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4
Philosophy, Religion, and God 250
4.1 The Significance of Religion 252
Defining Religion 253
Religious Belief, Religious Experience, and Theology 254
4.2 Does God Exist? 255
The Ontological Argument 256 The Cosmological Argument 260 philosophy and life Religion and Science 265 The Design Argument 266 thinking critically Arguments by Analogy 268
4.3 Atheism, Agnosticism, and the Problem of Evil 275 Atheism 275
philosophy and life God’s Omniscience and Free Will 284 Agnosticism 285 thinking critically Formal and Informal Fallacies 287
4.4 Traditional Religious Belief and Experience 290
Religious Belief 290
“The Will to Believe” 290
Personal Experience of the Divine 295
4.5 Nontraditional Religious Experience 299
Radical Theology 299
Feminist Theology 307
Eastern Religious Traditions 310 Chapter Summary 314
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4.6 Readings 316
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Excerpt From The Brothers Karamazov” 316
William P. Alston, “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition” 318
4.7 Historical Showcase: Aquinas, Descartes, and Conway 321
The Sources of Knowledge 336
5.1 Why Is Knowledge a Problem? 338
Acquiring Reliable Knowledge: Reason and the Senses 341
The Place of Memory 342
5.2 Is Reason the Source of Our Knowledge? 343
Descartes: Doubt and Reason 345 Innate Ideas 352 philosophy and life Innate Ideas? 356
5.3 Can the Senses Account for All Our Knowledge? 359
Locke and Empiricism 359 philosophy and life Science and the Attempt to Observe Reality 364 Berkeley and Subjectivism 366 Hume and Skepticism 370 thinking critically Inductive Generalizations 376
5.4 Kant: Does the Knowing Mind Shape the World? 383 Hume’s Challenge 383
The Basic Issue 384 Space, Time, and Mathematics 386 philosophy and life Knowledge and Gestalt Psychology 387 Causality and the Unity of the Mind 390 Constructivist Theories and Recovered Memories 396
5.5 Does Science Give Us Knowledge? 398
Inductive Reasoning and Simplicity 399 philosophy and life Society and Truth 401
The Hypothetical Method and Falsifiability 402 Paradigms and Revolutions in Science 405 thinking critically Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience 407 Is the Theory of Recovered Memories Science or Pseudoscience? 409 Chapter Summary 409
5.6 Readings 412
Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” 412
Peter Unger, “A Defense of Skepticism” 416
Thomas Nagel, “How Do We Know Anything?” 418
5.7 Historical Showcase: Hume 419
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Truth 426
6.1 Knowledge and Truth 428
Knowledge as Justified True Belief 429
6.2 What Is Truth? 432
Correspondence Theory 433
philosophy and life Truth and Paradox 434
Coherence Theory 439
philosophy and life Historical Facts 445
Pragmatic Theory 447
Does Truth Matter? 451
Reconciling the Theories of Truth 453
6.3 Does Science Give Us Truth? 454
The Instrumentalist View 455
The Realist View of Science 457
The Conceptual Relativist View 458
6.4 Can Interpretations Be True? 461
Symbolic Interpretation and Intention 463
Wittgenstein and the Ideal Clear Language 465
Gadamer and Prejudice 467
Chapter Summary 470
6.5 Readings 471
Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “In a Grove” 472
Hugh Tomlinson, “After Truth: Post-Modernism and the Rhetoric of Science” 475
John Searle, “Reality and Truth” 476
6.6 Historical Showcase: Kant 477
The Problem of Synthetic a Priori Knowledge 478 Space, Time, and Mathematics 479
Our Unified Mind Must Organize Sensations into Changing Objects 480
Causality Is in the World As We Experience It 482
Two Versions of the Categorical Imperative of Morality 483
The Moral Argument for God’s Existence 484
ethics 486
7.1 What Is Ethics? 488
7.2 Is Ethics Relative? 490
7.3 Do Consequences Make an Action Right? 497
Ethical Egoism 499
Utilitarianism 501
Some Implications of Utilitarianism 507
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7.4 Do Rules Define Morality? 510
Divine Command Theory 510
philosophy and life Embryonic Stem Cell Research 513
Implications of Divine Command Ethics 517
Kant’s Categorical Imperative 519
Buddhist Ethics 528
7.5 Is Ethics Based on Character? 533
Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue 534
Love and Friendship 540
Male and Female Ethics? 543
Conclusions 547
7.6 Can Ethics Resolve Moral Quandaries? 549
Abortion 550
Euthanasia 555
thinking critically Moral Reasoning 560
Chapter Summary 562
7.7 Readings 564
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Heavenly Christmas Tree” 564
Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” 566
7.8 Historical Showcase: Nietzsche and Wollstonecraft 568
Nietzsche 568
Wollstonecraft 573
Social and Political Philosophy 578
8.1 What Is Social and Political Philosophy? 580
8.2 What Justifies the State and Its Power? 582
Hobbes and the War of All against All 584
Locke and Natural Moral Laws 587
Contemporary Social Contract: Rawls 592
The Communitarian Critique 594
Social Contract and Women 599
8.3 What Is Justice? 603
philosophy and life Society and the Bomb 605
Justice as Merit 606
Justice as Equality 609
Justice as Social Utility 611
Justice Based on Need and Ability 613
Justice Based on Liberty 615 philosophy and life Welfare 616
8.4 Limits on the State 621
Unjust Laws and Civil Disobedience 622
Freedom 626
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Human Rights 630
War and Terrorism 634
philosophy and life The Purpose of Business 645
Chapter Summary 647
8.5 Readings 649
Erich Maria Remarque, “From All Quiet on the Western Front ” 649
Bertrand Russell, “The Ethics of War” 651
8.6 Historical Showcase: Marx and Rawls 653
Marx 653
Rawls 660
Postscript: The Meaning of Life 666
9.1 Does Life Have Meaning? 668
What Does the Question Mean? 670
9.2 The Theistic Response to Meaning 671
9.3 Meaning and Human Progress 674
9.4 The Nihilist Rejection of Meaning 676
9.5 Meaning as a Self-Chosen Commitment 678
Chapter Summary 682
Glossary 683
Index 687
Preface
When the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus declared “Everything changes!” he could have been speaking of our own era. What word could characterize our time better than the world “change”? New fashions, fads, styles, technologies, and philosophies now supplant each other in ever shorter periods of time. Many believe that the increasing pace of change has profound implications for philosophy. Whether or not this is so, rapid change forces revisions of a more mundane kind in textbooks on philosophy such as this. So although Philosophy: A Text with Readings continues to excite readers about philosophy, changes in philosophy and in the world we inhabit necessitate revising the text. I have tried to retain what users have said they like best about this book: that it provides depth and rigor yet is easy to read, fun to use, and manages to cover all the traditional issues with a unique combination of attention to the history of philosophy, regard for interesting contemporary concerns, and substantial selections from classical and contemporary texts. I have worked hard to explain the difficult concepts and texts of philosophy in a way that is technically rigorous and accurate, yet uses language and style that make it easy for a beginning college student with modest reading skills to understand. I have also worked hard at making philosophy interesting and relevant to contemporary undergraduates by showing how it is directly related to their real-life concerns and preoccupations. In addition, a series of sections on critical thinking provide the tools that will enable students to develop their thinking and logical reasoning skills.
I should emphasize what a quick glance at the table of contents will confirm: this text is designed to cover more than most instructors would want to cover in a single course. The coverage is intentionally broad so that the instructor can select those topics that he or she believes are most important and is not limited by the choice of topics that someone else has made. To make it easier for an instructor to choose what his or her course will cover, the chapters are largely independent of one another so that
reading a later chapter will not require reading an earlier one. Moreover, the materials within each chapter are arranged so that the most basic or fundamental topics are at the beginning of the chapter, while later sections in the chapter address aspects of the topic that are less fundamental but that probe more deeply or more broadly into the topic. This arrangement gives the instructor the option of either having students study only the basic issues in a chapter by assigning only the early sections or pursuing the subject matter of the chapter more in depth by also assigning the later sections. Some instructors may want to cover the basics in class, and then assign students (or groups of students) the later sections as special projects. There are many different ways of teaching the materials in the book and many different courses that can be put together from these materials.
I have always found that working to revise this text is an enormously satisfying and exciting experience because of the new perspectives and ideas it leads me to confront. I hope that readers will be just as excited by their own explorations of the many visions philosophy offers of what it is to be a human being in today’s changing world.
Changes in the Thirteenth edition
The most important change in this edition is one that affects all of the chapters. I have gone through the text sentence by sentence and have rewritten every sentence whose construction was too complex to be easily understood. I have simplified the syntax of each complex sentence, eliminated any jargon or abstruse vocabulary, and shortened any long or convoluted sentences. I believe the text now can be easily comprehended by any reader, including one with poor reading skills.
A second set of changes that affects every chapter is the introduction of two new types of small “boxes” containing questions designed to help students understand the numerous excerpts from primary sources. Each box contains two or three questions
about the excerpt and is positioned next to or immediately after the excerpt. Some of the boxes are entitled Analyzing the Reading. These contain questions that help the student focus on the important philosophical claims made in the excerpt, and to understand and evaluate those claims and the arguments on which they are based. A second type of boxed feature is entitled Thinking Like a Philosopher. These contain questions that ask the student to apply the ideas expressed in the excerpts to his or her own life. Virtually every reading selection has at least one box of questions associated with it. Because these boxes now offer a wealth of questions that are directly related to the readings, I have not felt it was necessary to include the end-of-chapter questions that were in previous editions. However, readers who would like to have such questions can go to the text’s website where such questions are provided for each chapter.
As in the previous edition the text includes sixteen modules entitled Thinking Critically that are spread out over several chapters. Each Thinking Critically module not only teaches important reasoning skills, but also helps the reader apply these skills to the philosophical topics discussed in the text. Beginning with the introduction to critical thinking in Chapter 1, the aim of these logic modules is to teach students, step by step, how to critically evaluate their own philosophical thinking and reasoning, as well as the philosophical thoughts and arguments of others. Because critical thinking skills are so important to doing philosophy, most of the Thinking Critically modules occur in the earlier chapters of the book (most, in fact, are in Chapters 1–4).
Five new end-of-chapter readings, some from works of fiction, have also been added to this edition, while numerous new or expanded excerpts from classical and contemporary texts have been incorporated into the chapters.
In addition to hundreds of minor or stylistic revisions, the more substantive changes in specific chapters are as follows:
Chapter 1
In Section 1.3 the excerpts from Socrates’ Apology and from the Crito have been expanded.
Chapter 2
In Section 2.2 the excerpts from Plato’s Republic, the Phaedrus, and the Phaedo, and the excerpts from St. Augustine’s Confessions, have been expanded.
The previous edition’s short excerpt from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, in Section 2.2, has been replaced with several much longer excerpts from his Existentialism and Humanism and the accompanying discussion has been revised.
New excerpts from Descartes’ Discourse on Method, new excerpts from two of Smart’s articles on the identity theory of the mind, and several new excerpts from Ryle’s The Concept of Mind have been added to Section 2.2. New discussions of these materials have also been added.
A new extended excerpt from one of Armstrong’s articles on functionalism and a new extended excerpt from an article by Churchland on eliminative materialism also have been added to Section 2.2, and the accompanying discussions have been revised.
New excerpts from Hume’s Treatise have been added to Section 2.4 and the discussion has been revised.
The end-of-chapter readings that accompanied the previous edition have been removed and replaced with three new readings on female identity: Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” ; Janice M. Steil’s “Contemporary Marriage: Still an Unequal Partnership”; and Jean Grimshaw’s “Women’s Identity in Feminist Thinking.”
Chapter 3
New excerpts from the writings of the Indian Charvaka philosophers have been added to Section 3.2.
New excerpts from de La Mettrie’s Man a Machine have been added to Section 3.2 together with new accompanying discussions.
Several new excerpts from Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge have been added to Section 3.2 and the excerpts from the previous edition have been expanded, while discussions of these additions have also been added.
The Critical Thinking module in Section 3.2 now discusses only conditional arguments and not disjunctive arguments.
The discussions of pragmatism in Section 3.3 have been revised, and new excerpts from the writings of Pierce and James have been added, while the James excerpts from the previous edition have been expanded.
In Section 3.6 the discussions of Husserl and Heidegger that were in the previous edition have been removed, while most of the discussion of Kierkegaard has been moved into Chapter 4 and much of the discussion of Sartre has been moved into the discussion of determinism and freedom that now occupies Section 3.6.
The discussions of determinism and freedom in Section 3.6 have been revised, and several extended excerpts from the writings of Laplace, Sartre, and Stace have been added.
The end-of-chapter readings in the previous edition have been removed and replaced with two new readings: Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, and Robert Solomon’s “Fate.”
Chapter 4
In Section 4.3 the excerpt from Mackie’s article on the problem of evil has been expanded, and new excerpts from Rowe’s article on the problem of evil and from Augustine’s discussion of the nature of evil, have been added, together with new or revised accompanying discussions.
The excerpt from James’ “The Will to Believe” in Section 4.4 has been substantially expanded, an extended excerpt from Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” has been added, and the accompanying discussions have been revised.
In Section 4.5 new excerpts from Kierkegaard’s writings on religion and the “leap of faith” have been added, as well as new excerpts from Tillich’s writings on attempts to prove that God exists, and new excerpts from the Bhagavad-Gita. The discussions accompanying each of these have been revised.
Chapter 5
New excerpts from Descartes’ Discourse on the Method have been added to Section 5.2 along with a fuller discussion of his views.
In Section 5.3 several new excerpts from Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and from Hume’s Treatise and his Enquiry have been added.
In Section 5.4 the excerpts from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason have been expanded and several new excerpts have been added. In addition the text’s discussion of his transcendental idealism has been revised.
Chapter 6
Section 6.1, the introduction to the chapter, has been considerably shortened and simplified by eliminating the discussion of basic and nonbasic beliefs, of foundationalism, and of coherentism. A new brief discussion of truth-bearers has been added.
The discussion of the correspondence theory of truth in Section 6.2 has been simplified and shortened and the discussion of Tarski’s definition of truth has been removed.
The discussion of the coherence theory of truth in Section 6.2 has been completely revised, and several extended excerpts from Blanshard’s The Nature of Thought have been added.
In the discussion of the pragmatic theory of truth in Section 6.2 the excerpts from James’ Pragmatism have been expanded and the discussion has been revised.
A new discussion of “pluralist” views of truth has been added to Section 6.2.
Chapter 7
The discussion of ethical relativism in Section 7.2 has been revised.
The discussion of utilitarianism in Section 7.3 has also been revised.
In Section 7.4, the discussion of the “principle of double effect” has been revised as well as the discussions of Kant and of Buddhist ethics.
The discussion of Aristotle’s theory of virtue in Section 7.5 has been revised, the excerpts from his Nicomachean Ethics have been expanded, and new excerpts from the writings of Gilligan and Noddings have been added.
In Section 7.6, a new discussion of the implications of the principle of double effect has been added, along with a new excerpt from Aquinas’ Summa.
Chapter 8
The introduction, Section 8.1, has a new short discussion of power and authority.
In Section 8.2 a new excerpt from Plato’s Republic has been added, and the excerpts from Hobbes’ Leviathan and Locke’s Second Treatise have been expanded and the accompanying discussion has been revised. The short discussion of Rousseau in the previous edition has been removed.
The excerpts from Mill’s Utilitarianism in Section 8.3 have been expanded, and new excerpts from Rawls’ writings have been added, and the discussion of these has been revised.
The excerpts from Mill’s On Liberty in Section 8.4 have been substantially expanded, along with the discussion of his views.
Chapter 9
In Section 9.1 the excerpt from Tolstoy’s My Confession has been expanded and a new excerpt from Ayer’s writings has been added.
In Section 9.2 the excerpt from Tolstoy’s My Confession has been expanded, and a new excerpt from Baier’s writings has been added.
The excerpt from Taylor’s The Meaning of Life in Section 9.4 has been expanded and the supporting discussion has been revised.
The excerpts from the writings of Kierkegaard and Sartre in Section 9.5 have been expanded.
The aesthetics section entitled “What Is Art?” that was formerly part of this chapter is now available in the MindTap, and instructors who wish to use it may have it custom-published with the text.
organization
Self-discovery and autonomy remain the central notions around which this edition is organized (although these notions are critically discussed in Chapter 2). Each chapter repeatedly returns to these notions and links the materials discussed to the reader’s growth in self-knowledge and intellectual autonomy. The ultimate aim of the text is to empower and encourage self-discovery and autonomy in the reader, in part by developing his or her critical thinking skills.
Although the text is organized by topics, the chapters have been arranged in a roughly historical order. The book opens with an introductory chapter on the nature of philosophy that focuses on Socrates as the exemplar of philosophy and includes substantial selections from the Socratic dialogues. Because of the book’s focus on the self and the intrinsic importance of the topic, and because human nature was an important concern from the earliest time of philosophy, I turn immediately in Chapter 2 to the discussion of human nature, a discussion that raises several issues more fully treated in later chapters. Then, because Chapter 2 raises many metaphysical
and religious issues, I turn to metaphysical issues in Chapter 3 and then to discussions of God and religion in Chapter 4. These issues, of course, were of passionate concern during the medieval and early modern periods of philosophy. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on questions of epistemology, interest in which historically followed the medieval and early modern interest in metaphysical issues. Chapters 7 and 8 are devoted respectively to ethics and social and political philosophy, topics that have preoccupied many philosophers during the late modern and contemporary periods. Chapter 9 focuses on the meaning of life, an issue that is particularly important for many of us today.
Yet no historical period has a monopoly on any of these topics. Consequently, each chapter moves back and forth from classic historical discussions of issues to contemporary discussions of the same or related issues. The chapter on metaphysics, for example, moves from the early modern controversy between materialism and idealism to current discussions of antirealism, some of which hark back to idealism.
Special Features
This text is unique in many ways and includes the following special features:
Learning objectives. The first page of each chapter outlines the chapter contents and describes the pedagogical objectives of each section of the chapter.
extended Selections from Primary Sources.
Substantial excerpts from primary source materials are introduced in the main text, where they are always carefully explained. To make these materials accessible to beginning undergraduates, new and simplified translations of several texts (by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and others) have been prepared, and several standard translations (such as Max Mueller’s translation of Kant) have been simplified and edited. In addition, full versions of many of the excerpts are linked to the eBook in the MindTap for Philosophy, via the Questia database. These Questia versions of the readings are also collected in a folder so that instructors and students can see all the supplemental Questia readings in a single location.
Analyzing the Reading Boxes. These boxed features appear alongside each primary source excerpt and contain questions designed to help the student
understand the source text and the arguments it advances.
Thinking Like a Philosopher Boxes. These boxed features are also associated with each excerpt and contain questions that apply the concepts in the excerpts to the student’s personal life.
Marginal Quick Reviews. These summaries, which appear alongside the text they summarize, help readers identify the main contents of the chapter and give them an easy way to review the materials they have read.
Thinking Critically Modules. A sequence of sixteen modules entitled Thinking Critically, designed to develop the critical thinking and reasoning skills of the reader, is integrated into the text.
Philosophy and Life Boxes. These inserts throughout the text show the impact of philosophy on everyday life or its connections to current issues such as medical dilemmas, sociobiology, psychology, and science. Each box ends with a set of questions designed to spark further thought on the subject.
Color illustrations. Color photos and art reproductions are used throughout the text to provide visual illustrations of the people and ideas discussed in the text and to stimulate student interest.
Glossary of Terms. Unfamiliar philosophical terminology is explained and defined in the text and highlighted in bold. These highlighted terms are defined again in an alphabetized glossary at the end of the book for easy reference.
Philosophy at the Movies. At the end of each section of the text is a short paragraph that summarizes a film that addresses the topics treated in that section, along with questions that link the film to those topics.
Chapter Summary. The main text of each chapter ends with a summary of the major points that have been covered, organized according to the chapter’s main headings and learning objectives (initially laid out at the chapter opening), making them particularly helpful as an overall review.
Readings by Philosophers. Near the end of each chapter are highly accessible readings examining
a philosophical question raised in the text. These questions are as diverse as “Does the existence of evil prove God does not exist?” and “Is war morally justified?”
Literature Readings. At the end of each chapter is a short literature selection that raises the issues discussed in the chapter. These readings provide a friendly entry into philosophy for readers who are unaccustomed to traditional philosophical style.
historical Showcases. Substantial summaries of the life and thought of major philosophers, including female and non-Western philosophers, are placed at the end of each chapter. These historical discussions feature large selections from the works of philosophers who have addressed the issues treated in the chapter. Arranged in chronological order, the Historical Showcases provide a clear and readable overview of the history of philosophy and enable students to see philosophy as a “great conversation” across centuries.
historical Timeline. Inside the front and back covers is a timeline that locates each philosopher in his or her historical context.
Ancillaries
MindTap. Available for this edition is MindTap for Philosophy: A Text with Readings. A fully online, personalized learning experience built upon Cengage Learning content, MindTap combines student learning tools—readings, videos, and activities supporting critical thinking—into a singular Learning Path that guides students through their course. Each chapter contains a wealth of activities written to support student learning. Critical thinking exercises help guide students through complex topics, extended and related readings are integrated with the ebook via the Questia database, and video activators spark connections to the real world, while video lectures reinforce the complex topics presented in the text.
MindTap provides students with ample opportunities to check their understanding, while also providing a clear way to measure and assess student progress for faculty and students alike. Faculty can use MindTap as a turnkey solution or customize by adding their own content, such as YouTube videos or documents, directly into the eBook or within each chapter’s Learning Path. The product can be
used fully online with the eBook for Philosophy, or in conjunction with the printed text.
The Examined Life Video Series. A series of videos has been produced to accompany Philosophy: A Text with Readings. Entitled The Examined Life, the 26 halfhour videos cover most (but not all) of the topics treated in this edition and move in sequence through each section of each chapter. Each video consists of interviews with contemporary philosophers, dramatizations, historical footage of well-known philosophers, discussions of classical philosophical texts, and visual interpretations of key philosophical concepts. Among the philosophers specially interviewed for this video series are W. V. O. Quine, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, James Rachels, Martha Nussbaum, Marilyn Friedman, Hans Gadamer, Gary Watson, Susan Wolf, Peter Singer, Michael Sandel, Daniel Dennet, Ronald Dworkin, and many others. The course is available at www.intelecom.org.
instructor’s Manual and Test Bank. This extensive manual contains many suggestions to help instructors highlight and promote further thought on philosophical issues. It also comes with a comprehensive Test Bank featuring multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-theblank, and essay questions for each chapter.
Acknowledgments
For their helpful comments and suggestions on this 13th edition revision, I offer sincere thanks to Femi Bogle-Assegai, Capital Community College; Jessica Danos, Merrimack College; Christy Flanagan-Feddon, University of Central Florida; Douglas Hill, Saddleback College and Golden West College; Theresa Jeffries, Gateway Community College; Sharon Kaye, John Carroll University; Richard Kelso, Pellissippi State Community College; Thi Lam, San Jacinto College Central; Bradley Lipinski, Cuyahoga Community College; Ananda Spike, MiraCosta College; Michele Svatos, Eastfield College; and Paul Tipton, Glendale Community College. The members of the Introduction to Philosophy Technology Advisory Board also provided insight into their classrooms that contributed to the development of the MindTap for Philosophy: A Text with Readings. Thank you to Kent Anderson, Clarke University; Tara Blaser, Lake Land College; David Burris, Arizona Western College; Dan Dutkofski, Valencia College; Bryan Hilliard, Mississippi University for Women; Sharon Kaye, John Carroll University; Terry Sader, Butler Community College; Julio Torres, Los Angeles City
College; Jere Vincent, Great Bay Community College; and Timothy Weldon, University of St. Francis. For their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier editions of the text, I offer sincere thanks to Cathryn Bailey, Minnesota State University; Teresa Cantrell, University of Louisville; A. Keith Carreiro, Bristol Community College at Attleboro; Michael Clifford, Mississippi State University; Christina Conroy, Morehead State University; Stephen Daniel, Texas A&M University; Janice Daurio, Moorpark College; Scott Davison, Morehead State University; Dennis Earl, Coastal Carolina University; Miguel Endara, Los Angeles Pierce College; Philip M. Fortier, Florida Community College at Jacksonville; Paul Gass, Coppin State University; Nathaniel Goldberg, Washington and Lee University; Khalil Habib, Salve Regina University; Randy Haney, Mount San Antonio College; William S. Jamison, University of Alaska Anchorage; Jonathan Katz, Kwantlen Polytechnic University; Stephen Kenzig, Cuyahoga Community College; Hye-Kyung Kim, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay; Emily Kul-backi, Green River Community College; Thi Lam, San Jacinto College Central; David Lane, Mt. San Antonio College and California State University, Long Beach; Mary Latela, Sacred Heart University, Post University; Matthew Daude Laurents, Austin Community College; George J. Lujan, Mission College; Darryl Mehring, University of Colorado at Boulder; Scott Merlino, California State University Sacramento; Mark Michael, Austin Peay State University; Jonathan Miles, Quincy University; John C. Modschiedler, College of DuPage; Michael Monge, Long Beach City College; Jeremy Morris, Ohio University; Patrice Nango, Mesa Community College; Joseph Pak, Los Angeles City College; William Payne, Bellevue College; Steven Pena, San Jacinto College, Central Campus; Alexandra Perry, Bergen Community College; Michael Petri, South Coast College; James Petrik, Ohio University; Michael T. Prahl, Hawkeye Community College and University of Northern Iowa; Randy Ramal, Mt. San Antonio College; Matthew Schuh, Miami Dade College; Ted Shigematsu, Santa Ana College; Karen Sieben, Ocean County College; Paula J. Smithka, University of Southern Mississippi; Doran Smolkin, Kwantlen Polytechnic University; Tim Snead, East Los Angeles College; Mark Storey, Bellevue College; Matthew W. Turner, Francis Marion University; Frank Waters, Los Angeles Valley College; Diane S. Wilkinson, Alabama A&M University; Holly L. Wilson, University of Louisiana at Monroe; and Paul Wilson, Texas State University–San Marcos.
CHAPTER
The Nature of Philosophy
The feeling of wonder is the mark of the philosopher, for all philosophy has its origins in wonder.
PLATO
OuTlinE And lEARning ObjECTivEs
1.1
What Is Philosophy?
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: When finished, you’ll be able to:
Explain how Plato’s Allegory of the Cave shows that philosophy is a freeing activity.
thinking critically Explain what critical thinking is and how it is related to philosophy.
Explain the importance of the philosophical perspectives of women and non-Western cultures.
thinking critically Define reasoning and its role in critical thinking.
1.2 The Traditional Divisions of Philosophy
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: When finished, you’ll be able to:
Define epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, and explain the kinds of questions each asks.
thinking critically Recognize and avoid vague or ambiguous claims. thinking critically Identify an argument, its conclusion, and its supporting reasons.
1.3
A Philosopher in Action: Socrates
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: When finished, you’ll be able to:
Explain how Socrates’ unrelenting questioning of conventional beliefs exemplifies the quest for philosophical wisdom.
thinking critically Identify the main premises and conclusions of an argument, and its missing premises or assumptions.
1.4 The Value of Philosophy
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: When finished, you’ll be able to:
Compare Plato’s and Buddha’s claims that philosophical wisdom is related to freedom.
State how philosophy can help you build your outlook on life, be more mindful, and become a critical thinker.
Chapter Summary
1.5 Reading
Voltaire, “Story of a Good Brahman”
1.6 Historical Showcase: The First Philosophers
MindTap for Philosophy: A Text with Readings includes:
● Activator videos that spark connections to the real world
● Critical thinking exercises that help guide student understanding
● Extended versions of the readings excerpted in the text via the Questia database, linked directly from the eBook text
● Video lectures that reinforce complex topics
● Assignable essays and chapter quizzes
QuiCk REviEW
Philosophy begins when we start to wonder about and question our basic beliefs.
QuiCk REviEW
The goal of philosophy is to answer these questions for ourselves and achieve autonomy.
QuiCk REviEW
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, chained prisoners watch shadows cast on a cave wall by objects passing in front of a fire. They mistake the shadows for reality.
1.1 What is Philosophy?
Philosophy begins with wonder. Although many of us know very little about the jargon and history of philosophy, we have all been touched by the wonder with which philosophy begins. We wonder about why we are here; about who we really are; about whether God exists and what She or He is like; why pain, evil, sorrow, and separation exist; whether there is life after death; what true love and friendship are; what the proper balance is between serving others and serving ourselves; whether moral right and wrong are based on personal opinion or on some objective standard; and whether suicide, abortion, or euthanasia is ever justified.
This wondering and questioning begin early in our lives. Almost as soon as children learn to talk, they ask: Where did I come from? Where do people go when they die? How did the world start? Who made God? From the very beginning of our lives, we start to seek answers to questions that make up philosophy.
In fact, the word philosophy comes from the Greek words philein, meaning “to love,” and sophia, meaning “wisdom.” Philosophy is thus the love and pursuit of wisdom. It includes the search for wisdom about many basic issues: what it means to be a human being; what the fundamental nature of reality is; what the sources and limits of our knowledge are; and what is good and right in our lives and in our societies.
Although philosophy begins with wonder and questions, it does not end there. Philosophy tries to go beyond the answers that we received when we were too young to seek our own answers. The goal of philosophy is to answer these questions for ourselves and to make up our own minds about our self, life, knowledge, society, religion, and morality.
We accepted many of our religious, political, and moral beliefs when we were children and could not yet think for ourselves. Philosophy examines these beliefs. The aim is not to reject them but to learn why we hold them and to ask whether we have good reasons to continue holding them. By doing this we make our basic beliefs about reality and life our own. We accept them because we have thought them through on our own, not because our parents, peers, and society have conditioned us to believe them. In this way, we gain a kind of independence and freedom, or what some modern philosophers call autonomy. An important goal of philosophy, then, is autonomy, which is the freedom and ability to decide for yourself what you will believe in, by using your own reasoning powers.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
Plato is one of the earliest and greatest Western philosophers. He illustrated how philosophy aims at freedom with a famous parable called the Allegory of the Cave. The Allegory of the Cave is a story Plato tells in The Republic, his classic philosophical work on justice. Here is an edited translation of the Allegory of the Cave, which Plato wrote in his native Greek:
Now let me describe the human situation in a parable about ignorance and learning. Imagine men live at the bottom of an underground cave. The entrance to the cave is a long passageway that rises upward through the ground to the light outside. They have been there since childhood and have their legs and necks chained so they cannot move. The chains hold their heads so they must sit facing the back wall of the cave. They cannot turn their heads to look up through the entrance behind them. At some distance behind them, up nearer the entrance to the cave, a fire is burning. objects pass in front of the fire so that they cast their shadows on the back wall of the cave. The prisoners see the moving shadows on the cave wall as if projected on a screen. All kinds of objects parade before the fire including statues of men and animals. As they move past the fire their shadows dance on the wall in front of the prisoners. Those prisoners are like ourselves. The prisoners cannot see themselves or each other except for the shadows each prisoner’s body casts on the back wall of the cave. They also cannot see the objects behind them, except for the shadows the objects cast on the wall.
Now imagine the prisoners could talk with each other. Suppose their voices echoed off the wall so that the voices seem to come from their own shadows. Then wouldn’t they talk about these shadows as if the shadows were real? for the prisoners, reality would consist of nothing but shadows.
Next imagine that someone freed one of the prisoners from his chains. Suppose he forced the prisoner to stand up and turn toward the entrance of the cave and then forced him to walk up toward the burning fire. The movement would be painful. The glare from the fire would blind the prisoner so that he could hardly see the real objects whose shadows he used to watch. What would he think if someone explained that everything he had seen before was an illusion? Would he realize that now he was nearer to reality and that his vision was actually clearer?
Imagine that now someone showed him the objects that had cast their shadows on the wall and asked the prisoner to name each one. Wouldn’t the prisoner be at a complete loss? Wouldn’t he think the shadows he saw earlier were truer than these objects?
Next imagine someone forced the prisoner to look straight at the burning light. his eyes would hurt. The pain would make him turn away and try to return to the shadows he could see more easily. he would think that those shadows were more real than the new objects shown to him.
But suppose that once more someone takes him and drags him up the steep and rugged ascent from the cave. Suppose someone forces him out into the full light of the sun. Won’t he suffer greatly and be furious at being dragged upward? The light will so dazzle his eyes as he approaches it that he won’t be able to see any of this world we ourselves call reality. little by little he will have to get used to looking at the upper world. At first he will see shadows on the ground best. Next perhaps he will be able to look at the reflections of men and other objects in water, and then maybe the objects themselves. After this, he would find it easier to gaze at the light of the moon and the stars in the night sky than to look at the daylight sun and its light. last of all, he will be able to look at the sun and contemplate its nature. he will not just look at its reflection in water but will see it as it is in itself and in its own domain. he would come to the conclusion that the sun produces the seasons and the years and that it controls everything in the visible world. he will understand that it is, in a way, the cause of everything he and his fellow prisoners used to see.
To read more from Plato's The Republic, click the link in the MindTap Reader or go to the Questia Readings folder in MindTap.
QuiCk REviEW If a prisoner is freed and forced to see the fire and objects, he will have difficulty seeing and will think the shadows are more real than the objects.
QuiCk REviEW If the prisoner were to be dragged out of the cave to the light of the sun, he would be blinded, and he would look first at shadows, then reflections, then objects, then the moon, and then the sun, which controls everything in the visible world.
ANALYZING THE READING
1. At the end of his allegory Plato says the journey up to the sunlight represents the mind acquiring knowledge. What does the sunlight represent? What does the darkness of the cave represent? What do the shadows on the wall of the dark cave represent? Who do the people who stay in the darkness of the cave represent? Who does the person who guides the prisoner out of the dark cave represent? Read the allegory again and indicate what you think other things in the Allegory are supposed to represent.
2. What is Plato trying to say when he writes that a person who sees the real sunlit world and then returns to the dark cave will seem “ridiculous” to those who have stayed in the dark? Do you think Plato is right?
3. What is Plato trying to say when he writes that a person who sees the real sunlit world will “feel happy” and will “endure anything rather than go back to thinking and living like” those who stay in the dark? Is Plato right?
4. Is Plato assuming that knowledge is always better than ignorance? Is it ever true that “Ignorance is bliss”? So do you think Plato is right or not?
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chime in with the first notes of the first psalm, than starting up with a long staff,—the awe-inspiring baton of office,—he belabours the yelping curs with such blessed effect as to restore them to a sense of propriety, and prevent them from mingling their unhallowed chorus with that of the melodious choir.
Having given this brief outline of Mr Houston, we shall proceed through the remaining part of the scene. A large and very substantial dinner forms an agreeable variety in the entertainments of the day; and in the evening the scene of elegant conviviality is transferred to the ball-room, where dancing again commences with renovated spirit. The perpetual motion, also, seems at last to be discovered in that of the three-lugged cog, which circulates unceasing as the sun;— like that, diffusing life and gladness in its growing orbit round the room, and kissed in its course by so many fair lips, bears off upon its edges much of their balmy dew, affording a double-refined relish to its inspiring draughts.
At length the supper is announced, and a rich repast it is: quarters of mutton, boiled and roasted, flocks of fat hens, in marshalled ranks, flanked with roasted geese, luxuriously swimming in a savoury sea of butter, form the élite of the feast; from which all manner of vegetables are entirely excluded, being considered as much too humble for such an occasion.
The company do ample justice to the hospitality of their entertainers; and even the bride, considering the delicacy of her situation, has already exceeded all bounds of moderation. This, however, is entirely owing to her high sense of politeness; for she conceives that it would be rude in her to decline eating so long as she is asked to do so by the various carvers. But now I really begin to be alarmed for her: already has she dispatched six or seven services of animal food, and is even now essaying to disjoint the leg and wing of a goose; but, thank Heaven!—in attempting to cut through the bone, she has upset her plate, and transferred its contents into her lap; which circumstance, I trust, she will consider a providential warning to eat no more.
And now, before leaving the wedding, we will have a little conversation with some of my country friends, who are fond of chatting with those whom they call the gentry; and who, being particularly partial to a pompous phraseology, and addicted to the
use of words, of which they either do not understand the meaning at all, or very imperfectly, are all of the Malaprop school, and often quite untranslatable. A fair specimen of their style may be had from my friend Magnus Isbister, who has taken his seat upon my left hand, but at such a distance from the table that his victuals are continually dropping betwixt his plate and his mouth. I will speak to him.
“I am glad to see you here, Magnus; and looking so well, that I need not inquire after your health.”
Magnus. “Why, thanks to the Best, sir, I’m brave and easy that way; but sairly hadden down wi’ the laird, wha’s threatenin’ to raise my rent that’s ower high already; but he was aye a raxward man,— and, between you and me, he’s rather greedy.”
“That’s a hard case, Magnus; you should speak to the factor, and explain your circumstances to him.”
Mag. “Oh, sir, I hae been doin’ that already; but he got into a sevandable passion, an’ said something about ‘his eye and Betty Martin;’—I’m sure I ken naething about her; but ye maun ken he’s a felonious arguer, an’ ower deep for the like o’ us puir infidel bodies.”
“Had you not better sit nearer to the table, Magnus? You are losing your victuals by keeping at such a distance.”
Mag. “Na, na, sir; I doubt ye’re mockan’ me noo; but I ken what gude manners is better than do ony siccan a thing.”
“Where is your son at present?”
Mag. “Why, thanks be praised, sir, he’s doing bravely. He follows the swindling trade awa in the south, whaur they tell me the great Bishops o’ Lunnon are proclaiming war wi’ the Papists.”
“That they are, Magnus, and ever will do.”
Mag. “Can ye tell me, sir, if it’s true that the king’s intending to part wi’ his ministers? I’m thinking it would be a’ the better for the like o’ us boons folk, and wad free us frae the tithes.”
“You misunderstand the thing, Magnus; the king’s ministers are not those of the Church, but of the State.”
Mag. “Oh—is that it? Weel, I never kent that before. But can ye tell me, sir, wha that gentleman is upon your ither side?”
“He is a young Englishman, who has come north to see this country.”
Mag. “Is he indeed, sir? And, by your leave, what ack o’ parliament does he drive?”
“He is, I believe, a doctor of medicine.”
Mag. “Just so, sir; I wonder if he could tell what would be good for me?”
“I thought you told me you were in good health?”
Mag. “Weel, as I said before, I’m brave and easy that way, indeed; but yet I’m whiles fashed wi’ the rheumaticisms, and sometimes I’m very domalis.”
“Domalis!—what’s that, Magnus?”
Mag. “Weel, never might there be the waur o’ that; I thought you, that’s been at college, wad hae kent that;—domalis is just ‘flamp’ (listless).”
“I would advise you to keep clear of the doctors, Magnus; believe me, you don’t require them at present;—but come, favour me with a toast.”
Mag. (Filling his glass.) “Weel, sir, I’se do my best to gie ye a gude ane (scratching his head);—weel, sir, ‘Here’s luck.’”
“An excellent toast, Magnus, which I drink with all my heart; and, in return ‘Here’s to your health and happiness, and that of the bride and bridegroom, and the rest of this pleasant company, and a good night to you all.’”
THE GHOST WITH THE GOLDEN CASKET.
B A C .
Is my soul tamed And baby-rid with the thought that flood or field Can render back, to scare men and the moon, The airy shapes of the corses they enwomb? And what if ’tis so shall I lose the crown Of my most golden hope, ’ cause its fair circle Is haunted by a shadow?
From the coast of Cumberland the beautiful old castle of Caerlaverock is seen standing on the point of a fine green promontory, bounded by the river Nith on one side, by the deep sea on another, by the almost impassable morass of Solway on a third; while, far beyond, you observe the three spires of Dumfries, and the high green hills of Dalswinton and Keir. It was formerly the residence of the almost princely names of Douglas, Seaton, Kirkpatrick, and Maxwell: it is now the dwelling-place of the hawk and the owl; its courts are a lair for cattle, and its walls afford a midnight shelter to the passing smuggler, or, like those of the city doomed in Scripture, are places for the fishermen to dry their nets. Between this fine old ruin and the banks of the Nith, at the foot of a grove of pines, and within a stone-cast of tide-mark, the remains of a rude cottage are yet visible to the curious eye; the bramble and the wild plum have in vain tried to triumph over the huge gray granite blocks, which composed the foundations of its walls. The vestiges of a small garden may still be traced, more particularly in summer, when roses and lilies, and other relics of its former beauty, begin to open their bloom, clinging, amid the neglect and desolation of the place, with something like human affection, to the soil. This rustic
ruin presents no attractions to the eye of the profound antiquary, compared to those of its more stately companion, Caerlaverock Castle; but with this rude cottage and its garden, tradition connects a tale so wild and so moving, as to elevate it, in the contemplation of the peasantry, above all the princely feasts and feudal atrocities of its neighbour.
It is now some fifty years since I visited the parish of Caerlaverock; but the memory of its people, its scenery, and the story of the Ghost with the Golden Casket, are as fresh with me as matters of yesterday. I had walked out to the river bank one sweet afternoon of July, when the fishermen were hastening to dip their nets in the coming tide, and the broad waters of the Solway sea were swelling and leaping against bank and cliff, as far as the eye could reach. It was studded over with boats, and its more unfrequented bays were white with water-fowl. I sat down on a small grassy mound between the cottage ruins and the old garden plot, and gazed, with all the hitherto untasted pleasure of a stranger, on the beautiful scene before me. On the right, and beyond the river, the mouldering relics of the ancient religion of Scotland ascended, in unassimilating beauty, above the humble kirk of New Abbey and its squalid village; farther to the south rose the white sharp cliffs of Barnhourie; while on the left stood the ancient Keeps of Cumlongan and Torthorald, and the Castle of Caerlaverock. Over the whole looked the stately green mountain of Criffel, confronting its more stately but less beautiful neighbour, Skiddaw; while between them flowed the deep wide sea of Solway, hemmed with cliff, and castle, and town.
As I sat looking on the increasing multitudes of waters, and watching the success of the fishermen, I became aware of the approach of an old man, leading, as one will conduct a dog in a string, a fine young milch cow, in a halter of twisted hair, which, passing through the ends of two pieces of flat wood, fitted to the animal’s cheek-bones, pressed her nose, and gave her great pain whenever she became disobedient. The cow seemed willing to enjoy the luxury of a browse on the rich pasture which surrounded the little ruined cottage; but in this humble wish she was not to be indulged; for the aged owner, coiling up the tether, and seizing her closely by the head, conducted her past the tempting herbage towards a small and close-cropt hillock, a good stone-cast distant. In
this piece of self-denial the animal seemed reluctant to sympathise— she snuffed the fresh green pasture, and plunged, and startled, and nearly broke away. What the old man’s strength seemed nearly unequal to was accomplished by speech:—
“Bonnie leddy, bonnie leddy,” said he, in a soothing tone, “it canna be, it maunna be; hinnie! hinnie! what would become of my threebonnie grandbairns, made fatherless and mitherless by that false flood afore us, if they supped milk, and tasted butter, that came from the greensward of this doomed and unblessed spot?”
The animal appeared to comprehend something in her own way from the speech of her owner: she abated her resistance; and, indulging only in a passing glance at the rich deep herbage, passed on to her destined pasture.
I had often heard of the singular superstitions of the Scottish peasantry, and that every hillock had its song, every hill its ballad, and every valley its tale. I followed with my eye the old man and his cow: he went but a little way, till, seating himself on the ground, retaining still the tether in his hand, he said,—
“Now, bonnie leddy, feast thy fill on this good greensward; it is halesome and holy, compared to the sward at the doomed cottage of auld Gibbie Gyrape—leave that to smugglers’ nags: Willie o’ Brandyburn and roaring Jock o’ Kempstane will ca’ the Haunted Ha’ a hained bit—they are godless fearnoughts.”
I looked at the person of the peasant. He was a stout hale old man, with a weather-beaten face, furrowed something by time, and perhaps by sorrow. Though summer was at its warmest, he wore a broad chequered mantle, fastened at the bosom with a skewer of steel; a broad bonnet, from beneath the circumference of which straggled a few thin locks, as white as driven snow, shining like amber, and softer than the finest flax; while his legs were warmly cased in blue-ribbed boot-hose. Having laid his charge to the grass, he looked leisurely around him, and espying me,—a stranger, and dressed above the manner of the peasantry,—he acknowledged my presence by touching his bonnet; and, as if willing to communicate something of importance, he struck the tethered stake in the ground and came to the old garden fence.
Wishing to know the peasant’s reason for avoiding the ruins, I thus addressed him:—
“This is a pretty spot, my aged friend, and the herbage looks so fresh and abundant, that I would advise thee to bring thy charge hither; and while she continues to browse, I would gladly listen to the history of thy white locks, for they seem to have been bleached in many tempests.”
“Ay, ay,” said the peasant, shaking his white head with a grave smile; “they have braved sundry tempests between sixteen and sixty; but touching this pasture, sir, I know of none who would like their cows to crop it: the aged cattle shun the place;—the bushes bloom, but bear no fruit,—the birds never build in the branches,—the children never come near to play,—and the aged never choose it for a resting-place; but, pointing it out as they pass to the young, tell them the story of its desolation. Sae ye see, sir, having nae gude-will to such a spot of earth myself, I like little to see a stranger sitting in such an unblessed place; and I would as good as advise ye to come ower wi’ me to the cowslip knoll—there are reasons mony that an honest man shouldna sit there.”
I arose at once, and seating myself beside the peasant on the cowslip knoll, desired to know something of the history of the spot from which he had just warned me. The old man looked on me with an air of embarrassment.
“I am just thinking,” said he, “that, as ye are an Englishman, I shouldna acquaint ye wi’ such a story. Ye’ll mak it, I’m doubting, a matter of reproach and vaunt when ye gae hame, how Willie Borlan o’ Caerlaverock told ye a tale of Scottish iniquity, that cowed a’ the stories in southern book or history.”
This unexpected obstacle was soon removed.
“My sage and considerate friend,” I said, “I have the blood in my bosom that will keep me from revealing such a tale to the scoffer and the scorner. I am something of a Caerlaverock man—the grandson of Marion Stobie of Dookdub.”
The peasant seized my hand—“Marion Stobie! bonnie Marion Stobie o’ Dookdub—whom I wooed sae sair, and loved sae lang!— Man, I love ye for her sake; and well was it for her braw English bridegroom that William Borlan—frail and faded now, but strong
and in manhood then—was a thousand miles from Caerlaverock, rolling on the salt sea, when she was brided. Ye have the glance of her ee,—I could ken it yet amang ten thousand, gray as my head is. I will tell the grandson of bonnie Marion Stobie ony tale he likes to ask for; and the story of the Ghost and the Gowd Casket shall be foremost.”
“You may imagine then,” said the old Caerlaverock peasant, rising at once with the commencement of his story from his native dialect into very passable English—“you may imagine these ruined walls raised again in their beauty,—whitened, and covered with a coating of green broom; that garden, now desolate, filled with herbs in their season, and with flowers, hemmed round with a fence of cherry and plumtrees; and the whole possessed by a young fisherman, who won a fair subsistence for his wife and children from the waters of the Solway sea: you may imagine it, too, as far from the present time as fifty years. There are only two persons living now, who remember when the Bonne Homme Richard—the first ship ever Richard Faulder commanded—was wrecked on the Pelock sands: one of these persons now addresses you, the other is the fisherman who once owned that cottage,—whose name ought never to be named, and whose life seems lengthened as a warning to the earth, how fierce God’s judgments are. Life changes—all breathing things have their time and their season; but the Solway flows in the same beauty— Criffel rises in the same majesty—the light of morning comes, and the full moon arises now, as they did then;—but this moralizing matters little. It was about the middle of harvest—I remember the day well; it had been sultry and suffocating, accompanied by rushings of wind, sudden convulsions of the water, and cloudings of the sun:—I heard my father sigh and say, ‘Dool, dool to them found on the deep sea to-night; there will happen strong storm and fearful tempest!’
“The day closed, and the moon came over Skiddaw: all was perfectly clear and still; frequent dashings and whirling agitations of the sea were soon heard mingling with the hasty clang of the waterfowls’ wings, as they forsook the waves, and sought shelter among the hollows of the rocks. The storm was nigh. The sky darkened down at once; clap after clap of thunder followed; and lightning flashed so vividly, and so frequent, that the wide and agitated
expanse of Solway was visible from side to side—from St Bees to Barnhourie. A very heavy rain, mingled with hail, succeeded; and a wind accompanied it, so fierce, and so high, that the white foam of the sea was showered as thick as snow on the summit of Caerlaverock Castle.
“Through this perilous sea, and amid this darkness and tempest, a bark was observed coming swiftly down the middle of the sea; her sails rent, and her decks crowded with people. The ‘carry,’ as it is called, of the tempest was direct from St Bees to Caerlaverock; and experienced men could see that the bark would be driven full on the fatal shoals of the Scottish side; but the lightning was so fierce that few dared venture to look on the approaching vessel, or take measures for endeavouring to preserve the lives of the unfortunate mariners. My father stood on the threshold of his door, and beheld all that passed in the bosom of the sea. The bark approached fast, her canvas rent to shreds, her masts nearly levelled with the deck, and the sea foaming over her so deep, and so strong, as to threaten to sweep the remains of her crew from the little refuge the broken masts and splintered beams still afforded them. She now seemed within half a mile of the shore, when a strong flash of lightning, that appeared to hang over the bark for a moment, showed the figure of a lady richly dressed, clinging to a youth who was pressing her to his bosom.
“My father exclaimed, ‘Saddle me my black horse, and saddle me my gray, and bring them down to the Dead-man’s bank,’—and, swift in action as he was in resolve, he hastened to the shore, his servants following with his horses. The shore of Solway presented then, as it does now, the same varying line of coast; and the house of my father stood in the bosom of a little bay, nearly a mile distant from where we sit. The remains of an old forest interposed between the bay at Dead-man’s bank, and the bay at our feet; and mariners had learned to wish, that if it were their doom to be wrecked, it might be in the bay of douce William Borlan, rather than that of Gilbert Gyrape, the proprietor of that ruined cottage. But human wishes are vanities, wished either by sea or land. I have heard my father say, he could never forget the cries of the mariners, as the bark smote on the Pellock bank, and the flood rushed through the chasms made by the concussion; but he could far less forget the agony of a lady—the
loveliest that could be looked upon, and the calm and affectionate courage of the young man who supported her, and endeavoured to save her from destruction. Richard Faulder, the only man who survived, has often sat at my fireside, and sung me a very rude, but a very moving ballad, which he made on this young and unhappy pair; and the old mariner assured me he had only added rhymes, and a descriptive line or two, to the language in which Sir William Musgrave endeavoured to soothe and support his wife.”
It seemed a thing truly singular, that at this very moment two young fishermen, who sat on the margin of the sea below us, watching their halve-nets, should sing, and with much sweetness, the very song the old man had described. They warbled verse and verse alternately; and rock and bay seemed to retain and then release the sound. Nothing is so sweet as a song by the seaside on a tranquil evening.
SIR WILLIAM MUSGRAVE.
First Fisherman.
“O lady, lady, why do you weep?
Tho’ the wind be loosed on the raging deep, Tho’ the heaven be mirker than mirk may be, And our frail bark ships a fearful sea, Yet thou art safe as on that sweet night When our bridal candles gleamed far and bright.” There came a shriek, and there came a sound, And the Solway roared, and the ship spun round.
Second Fisherman.
“O lady, lady, why do you cry?
Though the waves be flashing top-mast high, Though our frail bark yields to the dashing brine, And heaven and earth show no saving sign, There is One who comes in the time of need, And curbs the waves as we curb a steed.”
The lightning came, with the whirlwind blast, And cleaved the prow, and smote down the mast.
First Fisherman.
“O lady, lady, weep not nor wail, Though the sea runs howe as Dalswinton vale, Then flashes high as Barnhourie brave, And yawns for thee, like the yearning grave
Tho’ twixt thee and the ravening flood
There is but my arm and this splintering wood, The fell quicksand, or the famished brine, Can ne ’ er harm a face so fair as thine.”
Both.
“O lady, lady, be bold and brave, Spread thy white breast to the fearful wave, And cling to me with that white right hand, And I’ll set thee safe on the good dry land.” A lightning flash on the shallop strook,
The Solway roared, and Caerlaverock shook; From the sinking ship there were shriekings cast, That were heard above the tempest’s blast.
The young fishermen having concluded their song, my companion proceeded.
“The lightning still flashed vivid and fast, and the storm raged with unabated fury; for, between the ship and the shore, the sea broke in frightful undulation, and leaped on the greensward several fathoms deep abreast. My father, mounted on one horse, and holding another in his hand, stood prepared to give all the aid that a brave man could to the unhappy mariners; but neither horse nor man could endure the onset of that tremendous surge. The bark bore for a time the fury of the element; but a strong eastern wind came suddenly upon her, and crushing her between the wave and the freestone bank, drove her from the entrance of my father’s little bay towards the dwelling of Gibbie Gyrape, and the thick forest intervening, she was out of sight in a moment. My father saw, for the last time, the lady and her husband looking shoreward from the side of the vessel, as she drifted along; and as he galloped round the head of the forest, he heard for the last time the outcry of some, and the wail and intercession of others. When he came before the fisherman’s house, a fearful sight presented itself: the ship, dashed to atoms, covered the shore with its wreck, and with the bodies of the mariners—not a living soul escaped, save Richard Faulder, whom the fiend who guides the spectre shallop of the Solway had rendered proof to the perils of the deep. The fisherman himself came suddenly from his cottage, all dripping and drenched, and my father addressed him:—
“‘O, Gilbert, Gilbert, what a fearful sight is this! Has Heaven blessed thee with making thee the means of saving a human soul?’
“‘Nor soul nor body have I saved,’ said the fisherman, doggedly. ‘I have done my best; the storm proved too stark, and the lightning too fierce for me; their boat alone came near with a lady and a casket of gold, but she was swallowed up with the surge.’
“My father confessed afterwards that he was struck with the tone in which these words were delivered, and made answer—
“‘If thou hast done thy best to save souls to-night, a bright reward will be thine;—if thou hast been fonder for gain than for working the
mariners’ redemption, thou hast much to answer for.’
“As he uttered these words, an immense wave rolled landward, as far as the place where they stood; it almost left its foam on their faces, and suddenly receding, deposited at their feet the dead body of the lady. As my father lifted her in his arms, he observed that the jewels which had adorned her hair—at that time worn long—had been forcibly rent away; the diamonds and gold that enclosed her neck, and ornamented the bosom of her rich satin dress, had been torn off,—the rings removed from her fingers,—and on her neck, lately so lily-white and pure, there appeared the marks of hands—not laid there in love and gentleness, but with a fierce and deadly grasp.
“The lady was buried with the body of her husband, side by side, in Caerlaverock burial-ground. My father never openly accused Gilbert the fisherman of having murdered the lady for her riches, as she reached the shore, preserved from sinking, as was supposed, by her long, wide, and stiff satin robes;—but from that hour till the hour of his death, my father never broke bread with him—never shook him or his by the hand, nor spoke with them in wrath or in love. The fisherman from that time, too, waxed rich and prosperous; and from being the needy proprietor of a halve-net, and the tenant at will of a rude cottage, he became, by purchase, lord of a handsome inheritance, proceeded to build a bonny mansion, and called it Gyrape-ha’; and became a leading man in a flock of a purer kind of Presbyterians, and a precept and example to the community.
“But though the portioner of Gyrape-ha’ prospered wondrously, his claims to parochial distinction, and the continuance of his fortune, were treated with scorn by many, and with doubt by all; though nothing open or direct was said, yet looks, more cutting at times than the keenest speech, and actions still more expressive, showed that the hearts of honest men were alienated—the cause was left to his own interpretation. The peasant scrupled to become his servant; sailors hesitated to receive his grain on board, lest perils should find them on the deep; the beggar ceased to solicit alms; the drover and horse-couper—an unscrupulous generation—found out a more distant mode of concluding bargains than by shaking his hand; his daughters, handsome and blue-eyed, were neither wooed nor married; no maiden would hold tryst with his sons, though maidens were then as little loth as they are now; and the aged peasant, as he
passed his new mansion, would shake his head and say—‘The voice of spilt blood will be lifted up against thee; and a spirit shall come up from the waters, and cause the corner-stone of thy habitation to tremble and quake.’
It happened, during the summer which succeeded this unfortunate shipwreck, that I accompanied my father to the Solway, to examine his nets. It was near midnight, the tide was making, and I sat down by his side and watched the coming of the waters. The shore was glittering in starlight as far as the eye could reach. Gilbert, the fisherman, had that morning removed from his cottage to his new mansion; the former was therefore untenanted, and the latter, from its vantage-ground on the crest of the hill, threw down to us the sound of mirth, and music, and dancing,—a revelry common in Scotland on taking possession of a new house. As we lay quietly looking on the swelling sea, and observing the water-fowl swimming and ducking in the increasing waters, the sound of the merriment became more audible. My father listened to the mirth, looked to the sea, looked to the deserted cottage, and then to the new mansion, and said—
“‘My son, I have a counsel to give thee; treasure it in thy heart, and practise it in thy life: the daughters of him of Gyrape-ha’ are fair, and have an eye that would wile away the wits of the wisest. Their father has wealth,—I say nought of the way he came by it,—they will have golden portions doubtless. But I would rather lay thy head aneath the gowans in Caerlaverock kirkyard (and son have I none beside thee), than see thee lay it on the bridal pillow with the begotten of that man, though she had Nithsdale for her dowry. Let not my words be as seed sown on the ocean. I may not now tell thee why this warning is given. Before that fatal shipwreck, I would have said Prudence Gyrape, in her kirtle, was a better bride than some who have golden dowers. I have long thought some one would see a sight; and often, while holding my halve-net in the midnight tide, have I looked for something to appear, for where blood is shed there doth the spirit haunt for a time, and give warning to man. May I be strengthened to endure the sight!’
“I answered not, being accustomed to regard my father’s counsel as a matter not to be debated, as a solemn command: we heard something like the rustling of wings on the water, accompanied by a
slight curling motion of the tide. ‘God haud His right hand about us!’ said my father, breathing thick with emotion and awe, and looking on the sea with a gaze so intense that his eyes seemed to dilate, and the hair of his forehead to project forward, and bristle into life. I looked, but observed nothing, save a long line of thin and quivering light, dancing along the surface of the sea: it ascended the bank, on which it seemed to linger for a moment, and then entering the fisherman’s cottage, made roof and rafter gleam with a sudden illumination. ‘I’ll tell thee what, Gibbie Gyrape,’ said my father, ‘I wouldna be the owner of thy heart, and the proprietor of thy right hand, for all the treasures in earth and ocean.’
“A loud and piercing scream from the cottage made us thrill with fear, and in a moment the figures of three human beings rushed into the open air, and ran towards us with a swiftness which supernatural dread alone could inspire. We instantly knew them to be three noted smugglers who infested the country; and rallying when they found my father maintain his ground, they thus mingled their fears and the secrets of their trade, for terror fairly overpowered their habitual caution.
“‘I vow by the night tide, and the crooked timber,’ said Willie Weethause, ‘I never beheld sic a light as yon since our distillation pipe took fire, and made a burnt instead of a drink offering of our spirits; I’ll uphold it comes for nae good—a warning maybe—sae ye may gang on, Wattie Bouseaway, wi’ yer wickedness; as for me, I’se gang hame and repent.’
“‘Saulless bodie!’ said his companion, whose natural hardihood was considerably supported by his communion with the brandy cup —‘saulless bodie, for a flaff o’ fire and a maiden’s shadow, would ye foreswear the gallant trade? Saul to gude! but auld Miller Morison shall turn yer thrapple into a drain-pipe to wyse the waste water from his mill, if ye turn back now, and help us nae through wi’ as strong an importation as ever cheered the throat, and cheeped in the crapin. Confound the fuzhionless bodie! he glowers as if this fine starlight were something frae the warst side o’ the world, and thae staring een o’ his are busy shaping heaven’s sweetest and balmiest air into the figures of wraiths and goblins.’
“‘Robert Telfer,’ said my father, addressing the third smuggler, ‘tell me naught of the secrets of your perilous trade; but tell me what you
have seen, and why ye uttered that fearful scream, that made the wood-doves start from Caerlaverock pines.’
“‘I’ll tell ye what, goodman,’ said the mariner, ‘I have seen the fires of heaven running as thick along the sky, and on the surface of the ocean, as ye ever saw the blaze on a bowl o’ punch at a merrymaking, and neither quaked nor screamed; but ye’ll mind the light that came to that cottage to-night was one for some fearful purport, which let the wise expound; sae it lessened nae one’s courage to quail for sic an apparition? ’Od, if I thought living soul would ever make the start I gied an upcast to me, I’d drill his breast-bane with my dirk like a turnip-lantern.’
“My father mollified the wrath of this maritime desperado, by assuring him that he beheld the light go from the sea to the cottage, and that he shook with terror, for it seemed no common light.
“‘Ou, then,’ said hopeful Robin, ‘since it was ane o’ our ain cannie sea apparitions, I care less about it. I took it for some landward sprite! And now I think on’t, where were my een? Did it no stand amang its ain light, with its long hanks of hair dripping and drenched; with a casket of gold in ae hand, and the other guarding its throat? I’ll be bound it’s the ghost o’ some sonsie lass that has had her neck nipped for her gold; and had she stayed till I emptied the bicker o’ brandy, I would have asked a cannie question or twa.’
“Willie Weethause had now fairly overcome his consternation, and began to feel all his love return for the ‘gallant trade,’ as his comrade called it.
“‘The tide serves, lads! the tide serves; let us slip our drap o’ brandy into the bit bonnie boat, and tottle awa amang the sweet starlight as far as the Kingholm or the town quarry—ye ken we have to meet Bailie Gardevine and Laird Soukaway o’ Ladlemouth.’
“They then returned, not without hesitation and fear, to the old cottage; carried their brandy to the boat; and as my father and I went home, we heard the dipping of their oars in the Nith, along the banks of which they sold their liquor, and told their tale of fear, magnifying its horror at every step, and introducing abundance of variations.
“The story of the Ghost with the Golden Casket flew over the country side with all its variations, and with many comments. Some said they saw her, and some thought they saw her; and those who
had the hardihood to keep watch on the beach at midnight had their tales to tell of terrible lights and strange visions. With one who delighted in the marvellous, the spectre was decked in attributes that made the circle of auditors tighten round the hearth; while others, who allowed to a ghost only a certain quantity of thin air to clothe itself in, reduced it in their description to a very unpoetic shadow, or a kind of better sort of will-o’-the-wisp, that could for its own amusement counterfeit the human shape. There were many others who, like my father, beheld the singular illumination appear at midnight on the coast; saw also something sailing along with it in the form of a lady in bright garments, her hair long and wet, and shining in diamonds; and heard a struggle, and the shriek as of a creature drowning.
“The belief of the peasantry did not long confine the apparition to the sea coast; it was seen sometimes late at night far inland, and following Gilbert the fisherman, like a human shadow—like a pure light—like a white garment—and often in the shape and with the attributes in which it disturbed the carousal of the smugglers. I heard douce Davie Haining—a God-fearing man, and an elder of the Burgher congregation, and on whose word I could well lippen, when drink was kept from his head—I heard him say that as he rode home late from the Roodfair of Dumfries—the night was dark, there lay a dusting of snow on the ground, and no one appeared on the road but himself; he was lilting and singing the canny end of the auld sang, ‘There’s a cutty stool in our kirk,’ which was made on some foolish quean’s misfortune, when he heard the sound of horses’ feet behind him at full gallop, and ere he could look round, who should flee past, urging his horse with whip and spur, but Gilbert the fisherman! ‘Little wonder that he galloped,’ said the elder, ‘for a fearful form hovered around him, making many a clutch at him, and with every clutch uttering a shriek most piercing to hear. But why should I make a long story of a common tale? The curse of spilt blood fell on him, and on his children, and on all he possessed; his sons and daughters died; his flocks perished; his grain grew, but never filled the ear; and fire came from heaven, or rose from hell, and consumed his house and all that was therein. He is now a man of ninety years; a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, without a house to put his white head in, and with the unexpiated curse still clinging to him.’
While my companion was making this summary of human wretchedness, I observed the figure of a man, stooping to the earth with extreme age, gliding through among the bushes of the ruined cottage, and approaching the advancing tide. He wore a loose greatcoat, patched to the ground, and fastened round his waist by a belt and buckle; the remains of stockings and shoes were on his feet; a kind of fisherman’s cap surmounted some remaining white hairs, while a long peeled stick supported him as he went. My companion gave an involuntary shudder when he saw him—
“Lo and behold, now, here comes Gilbert the fisherman! Once every twenty-four hours does he come, let the wind and the rain be as they will, to the nightly tide, to work o’er again, in imagination, his old tragedy of unrighteousness. See how he waves his hand, as if he welcomed some one from the sea; he raises his voice, too, as if something in the water required his counsel; and see how he dashes up to the middle, and grapples with the water as if he clutched a human being!”
I looked on the old man, and heard him call in a hollow and broken voice—
“Ahoy! the ship ahoy,—turn your boat’s head ashore! And, my bonnie leddy, keep haud o’ yer casket. Hech be’t! that wave would have sunk a three-decker, let a be a slender boat. See—see an she binna sailing abune the water like a wild swan!”—and wading deeper in the tide as he spoke, he seemed to clutch at something with both hands, and struggle with it in the water.
“Na, na—dinna haud your white hands to me; ye wear ower mickle gowd in your hair, and ower mony diamonds on your bosom, to ’scape drowning. There’s as mickle gowd in this casket as would have sunk thee seventy fathom deep.” And he continued to hold his hands under the water, muttering all the while.
“She’s half gane now; and I’ll be a braw laird, and build a bonnie house, and gang crousely to kirk and market. Now I may let the waves work their will; my wark will be ta’en for theirs.”
He turned to wade to the shore, but a large and heavy wave came full dash on him, and bore him off his feet, and ere any assistance reached him, all human aid was too late; for nature was so exhausted with the fulness of years, and with his exertions, that a spoonful of
water would have drowned him. The body of this miserable old man was interred, after some opposition from the peasantry, beneath the wall of the kirkyard; and from that time the Ghost with the Golden Casket was seen no more, and only continued to haunt the evening tale of the hind and the farmer.
RANALD OF THE HENS: A TRADITION OF THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS.
Early in the sixteenth century, Macdonald of Clanranald married the daughter of Fraser Lord Lovat, and from this connection some very unfortunate consequences to both these powerful families followed. Soon after his marriage Clanranald died, and left but one lawful son, who was bred and educated at Castle Donie, the seat of Lovat, under the care of his maternal grandfather. The name of the young chieftain was Ranald, and, unhappily for himself, he was distinguished by the appellation Gaulta, or Lowland, because Lovat’s country was considered as approaching towards the manners, customs, and appearance of the Lowlands, compared to his own native land of Moidart, one of the most barren and mountainous districts in the Highlands.
Ranald was an accomplished youth, and promised to be an ornament to his family and his country; his disposition was amiable, and his personal appearance extremely handsome and prepossessing. While yet a stripling, he visited his estate; and his people being desirous to give him the best reception in their power, he found at every house great entertainments provided, and much expense incurred by the slaughter of cattle and other acts of extravagance, which appeared to Ranald very superfluous. He was a stranger to the customs of the country, and it would seem that he had no friendly or judicious counsellor. In an evil hour, he remarked that he was extremely averse to this ruinous practice, which he was convinced the people could ill afford; and said that, for his own part, he would be perfectly satisfied to dine on a fowl. Ranald had an illegitimate brother (or, as some say, an uncle’s son), who was born and bred on the estate. He was many years older than the young
