U NCOMMON V IRTUES #9: T HE G REAT AND THE S UBLIME

THE CALL TO ARMS

The road had led here.
 
Born in 1889 in the illustrious capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna, Ludwig was the youngest of Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein’s nine children.
 
It’s easy to forget now what Vienna would have been in those years. The realm was ruled by Monarchs; Vienna had a claim to being one of the most important cities in the world.
 
It was not-at-all obvious that Austria-Hungary would be dismantled in the Great War; it is only obvious with hindsight.
 
It was even less obvious that the untalented son of one Alois Hitler, a minor customs official, would come to take over the war-ravaged and beaten-down Germany some decades later – and absorb Austria into the Third Reich with the Anschluss.
 
In one of those odd quirks of history, Ludwig was born six days after Alois’s son, Adolf – they almost certainly met each other in school, though they would have had very little in common and not associated much with each other.
 
No one could possibly have predicted Adolf’s rise to Reichskanzler and Fuhrer – who could possibly have imagined that this poor student from a family of no regard would come to rule the most fiercely belligerent European Empire in modern times, and lead Germany and Austria down into flames?
 
No, none of this was obvious – in fact, if we try to place ourselves in the shoes of those living in Vienna and Cambridge of those years, it seems positively absurd.
 
If we want to really understand the history as they lived it  of those times, we need to erase our hindsight – the outcome of the Great War was by no means obvious; the disastrous rise of Nazism wasn’t even “non-obvious” – it would have seemed impossibly absurd  if you tried to explain to someone in the early 1900’s that this was what was going to happen.
 
Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein was 42-years-old when his ninth and youngest child, Ludwig, was born.
 
Karl had built one of the largest fortunes in Europe in steel; he has been compared to better-known American magnate, Andrew Carnegie. At Ludwig’s birth, they were the second wealthiest family in Austria-Hungary, after only the Rothschilds.
 
Ludwig being the “baby” of the family is noteworthy and important – Karl, with that hard-driving and obsessive personality common to the great industrialists, drove his eldest children very hard.
 
Too hard, perhaps – two of Ludwig’s elder brothers committed suicide when he was still a young boy.
 
Somewhat heartbroken – what tragedy could be worse for a parent? – Karl had softened with both age and regret by the time Ludwig was born. The youngest child of the family, Ludwig would have been treated a little more softly, indulged a little more, driven a little less hard. He would not face parental pressure into a particular career or profession; he would be free to choose his own path through the world.
 
Ludwig first pursued engineering, and had a natural talent for it – receiving a mechanical engineering diploma from Berlin’s Technische Hochschule in three semesters, and patenting an early prototype of a propeller-bladed jet engine.
 
Ludwig had the marks of genius with him from an early age – he excelled across many domains across his life; were he to have become something other than a philosopher, there is little doubt he could have made great strides in whichever domain he chose.
 
But he came to fall in love with philosophy and mathematics, and made his way to England in 1911, appearing suddenly before Bertrand Russell at Cambridge’s Trinity College.
 
Wittgenstein wins Russell over after a time – at first, there was some uncertainty on Russell’s part if the young Ludwig was a genius or a crank – eventually Russell came to see the young man as a genius, a prodigy who could do amazing work.
 
Karl Wittgenstein, the father, dies in 1913, and Ludwig becomes one of the wealthiest men in Europe.
 
On 28 June of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo – and Europe’s armies begin mobilization for war.
 
Ludwig Wittgenstein – already recognized as an incredibly talented engineer and philosopher at age 25, young genius and prodigy, one of the wealthiest young men in Europe, and having a medical exemption from the military – immediately volunteers for combat service.
 
*** 

UNCOMMON VIRTUES, FINALE: “THE GREAT AND THE SUBLIME”

The final proposition Wittgenstein's masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus  looms –
 
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
 
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
 
Wittgenstein was obsessed with truth and accuracy across his life – to an astounding degree.

He recognized that there were experiences beyond what could be put in logical propositions and statements – but of those, we cannot speak truly,  and therefore, must be silent.

This is humbling... powerful... such humility and such a penetrating eye into the nature of things... this is such a useful compass to carry...

... and yet – !
 
I’m not sure if Wittgenstein would have approved of this chapter; perhaps not.
 
But I would like to investigate two phenomenon with you –
 
The Great
 
and
 
The Sublime
 
***
 
A FALSIFIABLE CRITERIA FOR THE SUBLIME IN WRITING?
 
I dare say that Longinus’s 1st Century work, On the Sublime, is the greatest work of literary criticism in all of history .
 
Longinus can be a little difficult to read and get one’s mind around, but has many things to recommend it. There are examples of good and bad writing, good and bad poetry, many examples from the writers of Antiquity – Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Homer, etc.
 
There are guidelines for when the writing truly works , and when it does not – how to capture passion  without veering into dreadful bombast .
 
These technical points are useful and interesting – but are not, I think, why the work is so great.
 
It is great because it lays out a more-or-less falsifiable scientific-type definition of sublime writing  –
 
“ A lofty passage does not convince the reason of the reader, but takes him out of himself.  That which is admirable ever confounds our judgment, and eclipses that which is merely reasonable or agreeable.  To believe or not is usually in our own power; but the Sublime, acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every reader whether he will or no.  Skill in invention, lucid arrangement and disposition of facts, are appreciated not by one passage, or by two, but gradually manifest themselves in the general structure of a work; but  a sublime thought, if happily timed, illumines an entire subject with the vividness of a lightning-flash, and exhibits the whole power of the orator in a moment of time. ”
 
If Longinus is correct – and I believe he is – then we might have a truly rare, precious, and incredibly powerful thing on our hands...

***
 
WHITHER “BETTER” AND “WORSE”?
 
Throughout our explorations of Uncommon Virtues , we’ve traced why some important ideas and ways of thinking became uncommon  that were previously common.
 
In Chapter 6, The Romantic and the Aesthetic, we discussed the aftermath of World War I on beauty and romantic thought.
 
To put it briefly – the love of beauty and romance were grievously wounded  by the Great War.
 
But I think – not fatally so.
 
This way of thinking can recover – must recover – will recover.
 
After the First World War, there’s been a deep distrust – perhaps calling it “hatred” wouldn’t be too strong – for the ideas of “better” and “worse.”
 
It is understandable. World War I might be the worst downgoing of mankind in all of history; it was the parent of World War II, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and all sorts of crises and destructions.
 
And how  the soldiers and people of Europe were led into the “Great War” is informative – with trumpets blaring, marching in colored uniforms and plumed hats, with esprit de corps  and élan  – “the war to end all wars” – and all of that.
 
Truly, each of the battling participants went into the World War believing themselves good – right – proper – better – superior.
 
It’s understandable why the baby gets thrown with the bathwater in this case.
 
But I think – I know – that not only are some things “better” and others “worse” – but that we can actually identify why things are better or worse across domains, and doing so is immensely profitable on every level as a human.
 
***
 
THOUGHT AND SPIRIT
 
Here is one of my favorite parts of Longinus.

First, he looks at what type of character and spirit can do truly sublime  work…
 
“It is absolutely essential, then, first of all to settle the question whence this grandeur of conception arises; and the answer is that true eloquence can be found only in those whose spirit is generous and aspiring. For those whose whole lives are wasted in paltry and illiberal thoughts and habits cannot possibly produce any work worthy of the lasting reverence of mankind. It is only natural that their words should be full of sublimity whose thoughts are full of majesty…”
 
Then Longinus notes this grandeur and eloquence is not confined to professional writers or authors, but that with a cultivated spirit of generosity and aspiration, with thoughts full of majesty, the sublime flows right from that…
 
“Hence sublime thoughts belong properly to the loftiest minds.  Such was the reply of Alexander to his general Parmenio, when the latter had observed, “Were I Alexander, I should have been satisfied”; “And I, were I Parmenio.” ”
 
What a scene!
 
 “And I, were I Parmenio” … … … !
 
***
 
LONGINUS AND CARLYLE
 
So, we are at somewhat of a remarkable place here – we have a reasonably precise definition of “sublime” from Longinus .
 
This, by itself, is really remarkable and marvelous.
 
The truly sublime “takes a man out of himself” – it cuts through mere argument with the vividness of a lightning-flash; the whole subject is illuminated, and all who read it are convinced.
 
Longinus elaborates on this with many details – he notes, for instance, that if a work seems to get worse on every re-reading, then it is not sublime. There are many technical details and elaborations – we’ve touched only briefly on the core point – and yet, is this not marvelous?
 
There can be good  work that is not sublime, but there cannot be sublime work that is not good .
 
We thus have a standard of judgment – testable, largely falsifiable, with a surprisingly high level of objectivity.
 
Let us turn, then, to the greatest man of letters of the 1800’s in the United Kingdom – Tomas Carlyle, renowned and acclaimed to both friends and enemies of his day, universally acknowledged in his greatness among his contemporaries, largely forgotten in our age.
 
In Carlyle’s 1840 work  On Heroes , he advances what is now called and largely disdained as the “Great Man theory of history.”
 
But few of the people who disdain it have actually read it.
 
Carlyle, like Longinus, lays out some rather objective criteria for Greatness.
 
You might be surprised at the core foundation of Greatness, as Carlyle put it in his own words –
 
“No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell,  no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.  Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed;— a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly . The Great Man’s sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day?  No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather,  his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere!  The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; undeniable, there, there!—I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. ”
 
You should actually read Carlyle – On Heroes  is magnificent. You have to get a bit of historical context for it to make sense, and you have to fight through the Victorian English a little bit – it’s worth it.
 
In On Heroes , Carlyle actually lays down some reasonably objective definitions of “heroism,” “religion,” “sincerity,” and so on – he’s writing in a literary sense, with bold and big language, not in a terse style like Wittgenstein would later write.
 
And yet, you can easily deduce a syllogism, a set of logic, key propositions and corollaries in Carlyle’s work. – if you were to read it.
 
Carlyle’s first definition of a Hero is someone who is genuinely sincere.
 
***
 
WHITHER GREATNESS?
 
In the ravages of the First and Second World Wars, it is understandable why people were… less-than-interested in lofty ideas.
 
But if you’re following along closely and haven’t disagreed with anything said so far, we might have two remarkable tools to add to our life’s toolbox –
 
*We might have a way to assess truly remarkable word-usage; truly Sublime thought translated into word, from Longinus.
 
*We might have a way to assess truly remarkable living ; Greatness-in-character, from Carlyle.
 
No, let’s not overreach – we don’t have these as “tools” – not the way we have a hammer, a Philips or Flathead screwdriver, a fountain pen and paper.
 
But we have perhaps some rough schematics  and some raw ore  that might, perhaps, become tools – if  these rough schematics check out as actually viable, and if  we can manufacture the tools from the ore.
 
If.
 
In any sort of invention, there are false starts, needed refinements, constant working at it. It’s one thing to know something is possible in theory, another thing entirely to be able to actually do it.
 
But if  these ideas check out – and I believe that they do… and if  we can actually turn these ideas into viable tools – and I believe we can… then we might have started to bridge just a little bit of the gap between the subjective and the objective.
 
And then – and I don’t want to overreach here, but can’t help myself – we might have unlocked some of the keys of Greatness.
 
***
 
THE PROGRESSION OF THE PHILOSOPHER IN COMBAT
 
For obvious reasons, action movies tend to be focus on the explosively dramatic moments in combat.
 
Most of war is not this; most of it is dreadfully boring.
 
Ludwig Wittgenstein is 25 years old when he volunteers for military service.
 
He begins to keep a coded diary of his military service – his entries break down almost evenly among three lines: reflections on the conditions and people around him (most of whom he dislikes, finds them getting drunk and not caring about deep thinking at all, and doesn’t want to be around), reflections on whether he is able to “work” (do philosophy), and admonishing himself to hold faith in God and be more charitable to others.
 
Dr. John Preston of the University of Reading has assembled a remarkably insightful “ Wittgenstein Chronology ” covering his diaries and timelines during the World War –
 
Saturday 15th August, 1914 : In his private diary, LW [Ludwig Wittgenstein] reports that yesterday he was ordered to operate a searchlight on a ship captured by the Austrians on the river Vistula. The crew he deems a gang of hoodlums – ‘No enthusiasm, incredible rudeness, stupidity and wickedness!’. So he reflects that it can’t be true that a great common cause must ennoble people. The work itself he characterises as tedious forced labour, but he muses on how, under the present circumstances, this work could make for a wonderful happy time. He speculates that it will impossible for him to communicate with the people surrounding him (except perhaps with the lieutenant, who he thinks seems to be a very nice person). So he urges himself to do the work in humility (GT1, SS.4-5).
 
Sunday 16th August, 1914 : In his private diary, LW notes that he is now serving on board a ship, the Goplana on the river Vistula. (The Goplana was a Russian patrol ship which had already been captured by the Austrians). He remarks again on ‘the stupidity, audacity and wickedness of these unfit people’ (the crew) which knows no bounds. However he reports that he was today able to do some work (i.e. philosophical work), and that he also wrote a card today to ‘den lieben David’ (David Pinsent). ‘Heaven protect him and preserve his friendship!’ he implores. He notes that the night itself along the Vistula is gorgeous, and that he is in a good mood. Finally, he adds a logical note: aRb.aRc.bSc = aR[bSc] Def. (GT1, s.5).
 
Monday 17th August, 1914 : ‘A pack of rogues!’, LW’s private diary entry begins, referring to his fellow soldiers. The officers, however, he approves of, finding them to be nice people. He and his unit, on board the Goplana, are now in Russia, and he has had to sleep on the bare ground without blankets. ‘Through the hard work’, he remarks, ‘I have become quite unsensuous’. He notes that he did no (philosophical) work today, and mentions that on deck it’s too cold and below deck are ‘too many people who talk, scream, smell etc.’ (GT1, s.6).
 
The war marches on for Wittgenstein.
 
Friday 18th September, 1914 : In his diary, LW reports that the previous night had been dreadfully exciting. He had been afraid every moment that his searchlight would go out. They were in a very precarious position, and had his light gone out the whole responsibility would have fallen on him. Then there was a false alarm. LW reports that he kept schtum when he had to hear the train driver denigrate his Lieutenant, which annoyed LW terribly. He was at his post from 1-3, and got very little sleep. He did no philosophical work yesterday. He records how incredibly difficult it is to set himself against evil all the time, as well as how hard it is to serve the Spirit with an empty stomach and lack of sleep. ‘But what would I be if I couldn’t do so?, he asks himself. His supervisors he deems rude and stupid, his comrades stupid and coarse (with very few exceptions). Today he traveled to Krakow ‘with Galären’ (a fellow soldier, or officer?). ‘The day was calm and not unpleasant’, and he did a bit of (philosophical) work (GT1, SS.25-27). 
 
Saturday 19th September, 1914 : In his diary, LW records that yesterday evening he had to work up to 11pm on his searchlight. In the night it’s extremely cold, and the men have to sleep in their boots. LW slept badly. He hasn’t changed his clothes or his boots for four days. He worries what will happen to him in Krakow (GT1, SS.27-28). 
 
LW notes that a proposition like ‘this chair is brown’ seems to say something enormously complicated, since if we wanted to express it in such a way that nobody could raise objections to it on grounds of ambiguity, ‘it would have to be infinitely long’ (NB, p.5).
 
There is so  much to make of all this; it is hard to even start.
 
The last notes are a fascinating window into Wittgenstein’s mind – he has already been, and continues to be, deeply obsessed with truth. Truth – and accuracy.
 
Need we remark on how he constantly tries to develop his character, and how he constantly attempts to “work” – do philosophy – even while not neglecting his duties of soldiering?
 
Tuesday 29th September, 1914 : In his diary, LW mentions that this morning a corporal who is sick with dysentery was brought to the hospital, and that there are now many cases. He notes that he himself did some (philosophical) work, but without success: ‘I’m still not clear and have no overview. I see details, without knowing how they [something – one word illegible here] are likely to fit into a whole’. In an entry whose text is incomplete and heavily scratched over, he then records that ‘every problem is the main problem’. He urges himself not to be fainthearted, but to take courage. In the evening, he records, he worked, not without success (GT1, S.31). 
 
The notebook entry corresponding to this not unsuccessful work begins by declaring that ‘The general concept of the proposition carries with it a quite general concept of the co-ordination of proposition and situation: The solution to all my questions must be extremely simple’. 
 
He then has the insight arising from the Paris law court scenario he had recently read about (in August): the idea of propositions as models (Potter 2009, pp.226-7; Monk, p.118; Sterrett, pp.xvii, xx, 16, 212). In a proposition it is as if a world is put together experimentally. This, he thinks, must straight away yield the nature of truth. 
 
He then considers hieroglyphic writing, in which ‘each word is a representation of what it stands for’, as well as the fact that pictures of situations can be right or wrong. 
 
He sketches two people, A and B, swordfighting, and explains how this sketch might assert ‘A is fencing with B’ by virtue of one stick-figure representing A and the other representing B. In this picture-writing form, the proposition can be true or false, and its sense is independent of its truth or falsehood. LW declares that ‘It must be possible to demonstrate everything essential by considering this case’. 
 
While we cannot be certain that all situations can be pictured, nevertheless we can be certain that all logical properties of situations can be portrayed in a two-dimensional script. 
 
He finishes by noting that ‘This is still very much on the surface, but we are on good ground’ (NB, p.7).
 
Is this not a remarkable man?
 
The above entry shed much light on his later descriptions of language as a picture, which either corresponds with reality – or does not.
 
The whole of Wittgenstein’s journey is remarkable – it’s an odd mix of downgoing and upgoing.
 
Upgoing – you can see, in those entries, his early-life masterpiece the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus  being formed.
 
By anyone else’s standards, each of his progressive assignments in the World War are worse than the last.
 
He begins on searchlight duty on the Goplana  patrol ship – bad enough, perhaps, but he continues to want to go deeper into the fray.
 
In December of 1914, he is promoted to Militärbeamter  – the first of a number of promotions and military honors he’ll receive for his service – and transferred to an artillery workshop, putting his engineering talents to work servicing and repairing guns, and overseeing the manufacture of ammunition.
 
In the summer of 1915, a cannon he is working on explodes, landing him in the hospital with wounds and shock.
 
Is he much concerned with this?
 
No –
 
Friday 22nd October, 1915 : LW writes to Bertrand Russell, and has the letter sent via his aunt (Else Gröger) in neutral Switzerland. He reports that he has recently done a lot of successful work, and is now in the process of summarizing it in the form of a treatise [Abhandlung]. He asks Russell to ensure that, if he doesn’t survive the war, LW’s family send Russell all his manuscripts. He also asks after his friend David Pinsent, and W.E.Johnson (Wittgenstein in Cambridge, p.84, McGuinness, pp.236-7). (See Potter 2013, pp.24-5). 
 
***
 
THE PHILOSOPHER IN COMBAT: GALICIAN FRONT, 1916
 
Wittgenstein repeatedly presses for more dangerous assignments.
 
His wish is granted – eventually winding up in one of the most dangerous posts possible, artillery observer supporting front-line infantry.
 
An artillery observer would climb into a disguised hideout as close as possible to enemy troops – if there were cliffs or ruined buildings nearby, the observer would take advantage of those. If not, the artillery company would build a makeshift platform out of ladders and wood, and attempt as much as possible to disguise it as a tree.

With modern aircraft not yet developed, artillery was the most fatal thing on the battlefield in the First World War.
 
To use it most effectively, it required much higher degrees of precision, mathematical and geometrical skill, maintenance, and engineering than had ever before been needed in combat.
 
The observer – Wittgenstein – would be in the observer’s post, mapping enemy formations using binoculars and calculating what trajectories of fire would hit advancing enemy troops.
 
Naturally, all infantry on the other side despise this role. The observer is the guide for devastatingly accurate and fatal fire on their position.
 
It is a prime target for both snipers and for “counter-battery fire” – for enemy artillerymen to destroy the post, if detected.
 
Wittgenstein is in this dangerous role during Russia’s greatest success of the war – the Brusilov Offensive, which leaves 440,000 of the victorious Russians dead or wounded – and 567,000 Austrians dead or wounded, with another 408,000 taken prisoner.
 
There are very high casualties as Wittgenstein’s company barely repulses the Russian shock attacks attempting to overwhelm their position.
 
He is promoted again after the battle, and receives numerous commendations. He would serve on various fronts until taken prisoner in November 1918, in the very closing days of the war.
 
Amidst the chaos and danger, he managed to finish the Tractatus  in the summer of 1918 and send it off for publishing.
 
The War had been the backdrop of the work.
 
***
 
WITTGENSTEIN’S GREATNESS
 
I see in Wittgenstein the two qualities we discussed earlier –
 
His work, at times, seems to explode into one’s mind. Some of his arguments, once read, cannot be unread – they are true , and no more argument can be had.
 
And too, his sincerity  – you see his commitment to strife and working-through… everything. How many of us complain about relatively trivial issues?
 
This man wrote one of the most important works of philosophy – ever – while working on a military patrol ship in hostile waters, an artillery workshop with less-than-perfect safety conditions, and – finally – in one of the most dangerous and macabre roles that war had ever known.
 
The chance of death was lurking constantly – he was aware of it – no matter, he did his work. How could he not?
 
***
 
… THROUGH GREATNESS OF SOUL NEGLECT IT
 
This only begins to scratch the surface of Wittgenstein’s life – had he done nothing else, he would certainly qualify as a remarkable man… but it was only the start.
 
Longinus investigated the nature  of the sublime, and the mechanics  of the sublime, but he also spent considerable time on who would be capable of reaching such levels.
 
And, some 18 centuries before Wittgenstein’s time on the planet, Longinus remarks –
 
“It is proper to observe that in human life nothing is truly great which is despised by all elevated minds. For example, no man of sense can regard wealth, honour, glory, and power, or any of those things which are surrounded by a great external parade of pomp and circumstance, as the highest blessings, seeing that merely to despise such things is a blessing of no common order: certainly those who possess them are admired much less than those who, having the opportunity to acquire them, through greatness of soul neglect it. ”
 
Following the events of the war and publishing of his first masterpiece, the Tractatus,  Wittgenstein gives away his entire vast fortune to his siblings, with the strictest instructions that it not be held in trust for him.
 
He did not want material wealth to distract him.

***
 
CAN WE CULTIVATE THESE VIRTUES? SHOULD WE?
 
Longinus suggests, at first, that you must be born with a certain loftiness of spirit to do truly sublime work.
 
But then, he walks it back –
 
“We may learn from this author, if we would but observe his example, that there is yet another path besides those mentioned which leads to sublime heights. What path do I mean?  The emulous imitation of the great poets and prose-writers of the past. On this mark, dear friend, let us keep our eyes ever steadfastly fixed.  Many gather the divine impulse from another’s spirit, just as we are told that the Pythian priestess, when she takes her seat on the tripod, where there is said to be a rent in the ground breathing upwards a heavenly emanation, straightway conceives from that source the godlike gift of prophecy, and utters her inspired oracles; so likewise  from the mighty genius of the great writers of antiquity there is carried into the souls of their rivals , as from a fount of inspiration, an effluence which breathes upon them until, even though their natural temper be but cold, they share the sublime enthusiasm of others. ”
 
Carlyle echoes the same thought –
 
“ One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. ”
 
If you have followed along with me, and not disagreed thus far, then you might be starting to wonder if…
 
*…there are somewhat objective criteria for the sublime  usage of language, emotion, communication, thought.
 
*…there are somewhat objective criteria, or at least precursors, for greatness  – for that aspect which breathes life and impetus into a man, who sees past a cold and dull world, and brightens it for all mankind.
 
*…these can aspects can be devotedly cultivated in ourselves.
 
There are more pieces to the puzzle – Longinus advocates intense study and devotion to the mechanics of craft, not as the first touch, but as the finishing touch; Carlyle says, and Wittgenstein seems to agree, that lived philosophy  –action  – is the root of a truly-lived life.
 
Can we gaze backwards upon those who came before us, who did sublime and great works, and gather into ourselves at least some glimpse  of what animated them?
 
Can we nurture and cultivate this spirit in ourselves, hammer out the defects through practiced skill and craftsmanship, and elevate our own works – however slightly – as a result?
 
I have my thoughts on the matter – and you must form your own.
 
***
 
CURTAIN FALL
 
And, with that, we draw to the close of our exploration of Uncommon Virtues .
 
It has been my companion since November 2015, when I started writing it in Shanghai. It was with me in Japan, in Arabia, in Greece. The writing is finished today on 7 May 2016, in Skopje, Macedonia.
 
And thus the certain falls on our investigation into Uncommon Virtues .

And still, I feel like we’ve only begun to scratch the surface – as I pour through Longinus’s work, handed down and translated across the centuries… as I page through Wittgenstein’s war diaries…
 
… something stirs inside me; strange feelings that I haven’t been able to entirely  capture on the page.
 
I feel like there is so much – we’ve only touched briefly and fleetingly upon it – but as the past shapes our memories, our reference points, our ideas of what’s possible  – perhaps this is, for each of us, too personal of a feeling to completely convey.
 
I have said what I could – and of what I couldn’t?
 
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
 
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
 
For joining me on this very personal journey  –

Thank you.