Parting Shots by Holmes

kw: Justice Holmes, quotes, metaphysics, socialism, capitalism, argument

I've finished reading The Essential Holmes by R.A. Posner. A few more quotations I found interesting (offered without further comment):

• To Harold Laski, Dec 9, 1921; on beliefs and metaphysics: "The inevitable is not wicked. If you can improve upon it all right, but it is not necessary to damn the stem because you are a flower."
• To Laski again, May 21, 1927; on social trends, arguing contra socialism: "...as I said the other day, the only contribution that any man makes that can't be got more cheaply from the water and the sky is ideas—the immediate or remote direction of energy which man does not produce, whether it comes from his muscles or a machine. Ideas come from the despised bourgeoisie not from labor."
• Speaking to the Harvard Law School Association, Feb 15, 1913: "I should like to see it brought home to the public that the question of fair prices is due to the fact that none of us can have as much as we want of all the things we want; that as less will be produced than the public wants, the question is how much of each product it will have and how much to go without; that thus the final competition is between the objects of desire, and therefore between the producers of those objects; that when we oppose labor and capital, labor means the group that is selling its product and capital [means] all the other groups that are buying it. The hated capitalist is simply the mediator, the prophet, the adjuster according to his divination of the future desire. If you could get that believed, the body of the people would have no doubt as to the worth of law."
• From "Natural Law" in Harvard Law Review (1918), on the limits to argument: "Deep-seated preferences cannot be argued about—you cannot argue a man into liking a glass of beer—and therefore, when differences are sufficiently far reaching, we try to kill the other man rather than let him have his way. But that is perfectly consistent with admitting that, so far as appears, his grounds are just as good as ours."
• And finally, again to Laski, Feb 1, 1919; on common sense and common law: "A man who calls everybody a damn fool is like a man who damns the weather—he only shows that he is not adapted to his environment, not that the environment is wrong."

Holmes on Life and the Past

kw: Justice Holmes, life as art, the past

More from Oliver W. Holmes, Jr.

• To Lewis Einstein, Jul 23, 1906; on life: "...life is painting a picture not doing a sum." I have seen this elsewhere in his writings. It resonates with me, because of my tendency to look at the vicissitudes of life as problems to be solved rather than as part of a picture; if they trouble me, the best I can often do is manage them. They cannot be "solved."
• To Harold Laski, Aug 24, 1924; on judging the past: "If I may quote myself we must correct the judgment of posterity by that of the time."
• Obituary of George Otis Shattuck, 1897; the passage he quotes above: "People often speak of correcting the hudgment of time by that of posterity. I think it is quite true to say that we must correct the judgment of posterity by that of the time." How often we see people condemning past figures for actions and attitudes that seem offensive to some today, but were either perfectly reasonable in the context of their own times, or were indeed noble compared to the times.

I can think of no better example of the latter than the way certain folks condemn Jesus or one of his apostles for a saying about women or slaves. Such folks do not realize that Jesus did more in his time to elevate women above their chattel status. Nor that Paul, in particular, while exhorting slaves among the believers to refrain from struggling against their condition (for the alternative was imminent death), yet wrote a very touching letter to Philemon, whose runaway slave Onesimus had become a believer, in which he tugs every lever he can reach to persuade Philemon to release the slave. I am sure Onesimus was very wary of carrying this letter back to his master, but history attests that he was freed as a result. Paul was a practical abolitionist.

Holmes Quotes

kw: Justice Holmes, quotes

A few lovely quotes encountered while reading Richard A. Posner's The Essential Holmes, a collection of writing by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. I'm in a section of letters just now. Keep in mind that Holmes was born in 1841, so was 70 in 1911.

• To Frederick Pollock, Dec. 1, 1925; of a legal opinion he was writing: "I am...preparing small diamonds for people of limited intellectual means."
• To Patrick Sheehan, Nov. 23, 1912; of those over-concerned with social consciousness: "To prick the sensitive points of the social consciousness when one ought to know that the suggestion of cures is humbug, I think wicked." (It reminds me that Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always." Jesus didn't advocate "programs" to relieve the poor, but expected each person acting in wisdom and good conscience to relieve any poverty he could.)
• To Harold Laski, Dec. 31, 1916; of Cicero and his confrères: "It did those chaps a lot of good to live expecting some day to die by the sword."
• Later in the same letter; of those who believe we need to be regulated in everything: "...I don't have sufficient respect for the ability and honesty of my neighbors to desire to be regulated by them...I do believe in The fable of the Bees." (See Mandeville's Fable of the Bees at a site maintained by Maarten Maartensz).