The occasion for this blog post is peculiar. I was on Facebook, commenting on a comment I had previously made about a picture of Daniel's. I got going, and in the relation of a story within the comment, I have taken by an overwhelming desire to quote at length O.W. Holmes (one of my favorite American authors). I thought it would be funny to quote him within the Facebook comment, but decided that I ought to opine after quoting, and thought that my blog was the best forum for that. (Also, apparently there is a word limit for Facebook comments, the likes of which cannot hold the hefty weight of prose there is here to be shed.) Hence, I have referred any reader of the aforementioned comment to this blog post via a link, in the event that he or she desires to read both the quotation as well as, perhaps, attendant commentary provided by myself.
Quotation from O.W. Holmes' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
He must be a poor creature who does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, "Know thyself," never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools; and do you think a carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech twice over, and yet be held blameless. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of note, was invited to meet her and others over the social teacup. She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his new occupation. "Yes," he replied, "I am like the Huma, the bird that never lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on the wing."--Years elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once more for the same purpose. Another social cup after the lecture, and a second meeting with the distinguished lady. "You are constantly going from place to place," she said.--"Yes," he answered, "I am like the Huma,"--and finished the sentence as before.
What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine speech, word for word, twice over! Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversation with the Huma daily during that whole interval of years. On the contrary, he had never once thought of the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely the same circumstances brought up precisely the same idea. He ought to have been proud of the accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain factors, and a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed product with the certainty of Babbage's calculating machine.
Explanatory, Parenthetical Side Comment.
(Babbage's machine, incidentally, was called the Analytic Engine, and was invented in the early 1800s as a means of mechanically calculating mathematical tables---essentially, an early computer.)
Half-hearted Commentary.
I love Holmes and am here convinced by him. I apply his conceptual framework to my situation concerning Daniel's picture.
It is said that great minds think alike, and I think myself that great senses of humor joke alike. Many a time have I gone to make what I thought was the circumstantially appropriate joke, just as my friend Max, or Daniel, or Louis, went to make that same joke. In reaction to this phenomenon we sometimes say disparagingly of ourselves "yeah, I saw that joke", as if the joke were poor for being easily made or easily thought up--but I think more often such mutually conceived jokes might just simply be right. Given certain factors, certain jokes will be the correct ones to make, and it is a compliment to two any individuals who happen upon the joke at the same time, rather than being any grounds for indictment. Sometimes, maybe oftentimes, a given ironic comment might circumstantially be the precisely best thing to say, just as objectively right as a given number is the accurate output of an algebraic function.
And of course, given that two distinct individuals can be spot on in their humor, sharing together in the glory of isomorphic cognitive make-up, identical and beautiful comic timing, so must one person be capable of sharing that with himself. My sense of humor, beautifully so, is identical in structure to my sense of humor. May God be praised!
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