The World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain Sickness and oppression

However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart an natures of Man- of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain Sickness and oppression - whereby this Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open - but all dark - leading to dark passages - We see not the ballance of good and evil. We are in a Mist. We are now in that state - We feel the "burden of the Mystery."

To JH Reynolds, 3 May 1818

Get wisdom, get understanding

I mean to follow Solomon's directions of "get Wisdom - get understanding" - I find cavalier days are gone by. I find that I can have no enjoyment in the World but continual drinking of Knowledge - I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world - some do it with their society - some with their wit - some with their benevolence - some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good humour on all they meet and in a thousand ways all equally dutiful to the command of Great Nature - there is but one way for me - the road lies through application study and thought. 

To John Taylor, 24 April 1818

the most unhappy hours in our lives are those in which we recollect times past to our own blushing

To JH Reynolds, 27 April 1818

The innumerable compositions and decompositions which take place between the intellect and its thousand materials before it arrives at that trembling delicate and snail-horn perception of Beauty

To BR Haydon, 8 April 1818

I never wrote one single Line of Poetry with the least Shadow of public thought 

To JH Reynolds, 9 April 1818

Young Men for some time have an idea that such a thing as happiness is to be had and therefore are extremely impatient under any unpleasant restraining. 

To John Taylor, 24 April 1818

It is impossible to know how far knowledge will console us for the death of a friend and the ill that flesh is heir to

To JH Reynolds, 3 May 1818

 

The evolution of religion

An interesting article by Pascal Boyer in Nature, on the evolution of religion. Or, perhaps more accurately, the evolution of religious sensibility.

The author writes that many aspects of human behaviour leave us predisposed to religious belief. It is easier for us to believe in religion than not to believe. Atheists, it seems, have a harder time of it.

My favourite bit is where he says that

Religious concepts and activities hijack our cognitive resources, as do music, visual art, cuisine, politics, economic institutions and fashion.

I'm not sure "hijack" is quite the word I would have chosen, particularly if it's fundamentalist religion that's doing the hijacking. But it did occur to me that Keats would have enjoyed the sentiment.

O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

So did this facility provide some kind of competitive advantage?

Perhaps one day we will find compelling evidence that a capacity for religious thoughts, rather than 'religion' in the modern form of socio-political institutions, contributed to fitness in ancestral times. For the time being, the data support a more modest conclusion: religious thoughts seem to be an emergent property of our standard cognitive capacities.