The word mystery has an unexpected beginning. The Greek verb from which it derives means to close one’s eyes, not to avoid what cannot be explained, but to still oneself to understand. The idea is not unrelated to the derivation of our word school, meaning originally leisure in Greek. As a place of learning and culture, a school conferred freedom for a time from those activities which distract us from things ultimately more important because more meaningful and answering to the larger questions of life.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was a teacher, philosopher, and president of India in the 1960s. He wrote many important works, including a two-volume survey of his culture’s thought entitled Indian Philosophy. Those comprehensive volumes open with this sentence:

For thinking minds to blossom, for arts and sciences to flourish, the first condition necessary is a settled society providing security and leisure.

A few paragraphs later, he connects the way in which Indian philosophy originally pursued wisdom with the Platonic concern for reason:

Helped by natural conditions, and provided with the intellectual scope to think out the implications of things, the Indian escaped the doom which Plato pronounced to be the worst of all, viz. the hatred of reason. “Let us above all things take heed,” says he in the Phaedo, “that one misfortune does not befall us. Let us not become misologues as some people become misanthropes; for no greater evil can befall men than to become haters of reason.”

A misologue is a person who despises knowledge or discussion—a desperate condition both for a human being and for a culture. That plight was thought to be so severe not because we would know less, but because we would know less of what is most important to know. Plato’s dialogue the Phaedo (pronounced fee-do, the name of one of the characters) portrays the last hours of the wise Socrates, his calm self-possession in the hours before his state execution when his friends, most of them anything but self-possessed, come to see him in his cell for the last time. Reason, which the misologue hates, clears the path to self-knowledge, exactly what gave Socrates the equanimity we see he possessed at his end.

The eminent British Platonist A. E. Taylor considered the Phaedo to be among “the group of four great dialogues which exhibit Plato’s dramatic art at its ripest perfection.” Its importance lies in demonstrating, even in the macabre scene before the death of the great Athenian, how reason and knowledge and discussion render our character over a lifetime. It may just be, then, that to both the classical Greek and classical Indian worlds, stillness before a mystery brings the knowledge most worth having. As Taylor says in the stately language of his essential Plato: The Man and His Work (1926):

On the character we bring with us into the unseen world, our company there will depend, and our happiness and misery will depend on our company.

The secondary literature on both Greek and Indian philosophy is immense, but a shorter and more accessible work by Taylor, Socrates (1951), introduces the subject of Plato’s dialogue in masterful English. Radhakrishnan’s An Idealist View of Life will complement Taylor’s commentary.

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At a train station nearby, workers have extended fencing around a battery of new electrical equipment and attached a sign reading Trespassing Not Allowed. The old fencing that guards the adjacent area has its own sign, but that one reads No Trespassing. Why the change? Who could possibly know. But whatever the reason, the two statements give us a great opportunity to review the first fundamentals of critical thinking.

That term critical thinking covers a lot of ground, but we should be aware of two large distinctions to be made when we speak of thinking rationally: logic and dialectic. We often use the term logic as a synonym for critical thinking, but in stricter terms it refers, as Aristotle explained, to the principles special to a particular science. The science of navigation, for example, includes the principles of mapping, the directions of the compass, angles, measurement, and geometric relations. The science of grammar, on the other hand, includes the principles of words, phrases, clauses, etymology, and syntax. Phrases and clauses have little to do with navigation, and the points of the compass have nothing to do with the science of language. Each is special to a particular science, which is defined as an organized body of facts.

Dialectic, however, is something different. It is still a rational endeavor, but its concern is the general principles which all sciences depend upon. Whether the subject is navigating or writing, we are talking about something, and whatever that something is, we can understand it in relation to something else, either similar or different. We know that one thing can be the cause of something else, and that another thing will be the effect of that cause. These general ideas common to all subjects are gathered under a notion called in classical philosophy the topics, and they provide the basic questions we can ask of a subject in order to develop it rationally. For these reasons, the classical understanding of dialectic has been defined as “conversational thinking,” because it raises the general questions that arise in intelligent discussion. (An excellent article entitled “Looking for an Argument” by Manuel Bilsky et al. explains how to use the topics in finding something to say about a subject. You can read that article online by searching for it at jstor.org. It also appears in Edward P. J. Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 1990.)

But both logic and dialectic begin with the idea that the world is made up of things, the rhetorical way of putting which is to ask, what are we talking about? And since one way to lose control of a rational understanding about the world is to change the definition (sometimes knowingly, sometimes not) of the same word or phrase through the conversation, the science of logic requires that any natural statement in words must be converted into what is called a proposition, a statement which connects a subject with a predicate through the verb to be, the primary copula in English. Thus, when that new sign on the fence says trespassing not allowed, logic will transform that for analytic purposes into trespassing is not something allowed. (Logic cares little for style, only rational clarity.) And for our purposes here, what we should note is that the negative appears in the predicate: is not something allowed.

Now the old sign on the fence said no trespassing, which in the propositional form of logic might be stated as no trespassing is an allowable thing. Here, the negative appears attached to the subject, and if we had to find some meaningful difference between the two statements, perhaps it’s this. To trespass (according to the estimable Black’s Law Dictionary) is “to gain or intrude unlawfully upon another’s land, property, or authority,” which makes it clear that, in the present context in which the sign appears, there is no such thing as lawful trespass. And so when the first sign negates the predicate, and not the subject, it leaves in the air the unspoken suggestion, the implication, that somewhere or sometime else, trespass might be allowable. The older sign, though, in negating the very thing which is the subject of the statement, no trespassing, is telling the reader that no such unlawful action is allowed there. The adjective no, together with the absence of the predicate adjective allowed, precludes any wavering about it: trespassing, which you know is illegal, is never allowed anywhere, so don’t do it here.

The critical thinking we call logic is meant to transform temporarily our natural thoughts into a special form which its science can then examine efficiently. If we learn how to do that, even if no further than the elementary stages of converting our natural sentences into logical propositions, then we will be able to give ourselves a way to see into the bony structure, so to speak, of our thinking. That skeleton, analogous to the anatomical one, must be strong to successfully support the conclusions we wish to draw. If our own thinking, and the thinking of others who wish to convince us that what they are telling us is true, can pass that rational stress test, then we can gain a measure of confidence in both ourselves and others. Both those signs at the train station are imperatives in purpose and force, and so properly they lie beyond logical treatment. But behind every command is a presumption, and if we can find and logically understand that, with the help of logic, we can gain a more comprehensive insight into what we are being asked to understand. And that is never time wasted.

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We use the word tragedy commonly and rather loosely to mean a disaster of some sort, an accident that has befallen someone inexplicably, a calamity, a misfortune. The word, though, has a more precise meaning in the study of literature. At the turn of the twentieth century, the renowned British scholar A. C. Bradley gave a series of lectures on four major plays of Shakespeare, which were later published together as Shakespearean Tragedy. In his first chapter, he wrote this beautiful passage which is not only instructive about the literary meaning of tragedy, but illuminating as a piece of masterfully constructed writing as well:

A Shakespearean tragedy…may be called a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side. No amount of calamity which merely befell a man, descending from the clouds like lightning, or stealing from the darkness like pestilence, could alone provide the substance of its story. Job was the greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions were well-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them wearing him to death, that would not make his story tragic. Nor yet would it become so, in the Shakespearean sense, if the fire, and the great wind from the wilderness, and the torments of his flesh were conceived as sent by a supernatural power, whether just or malignant. The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men.

It is best to read that passage aloud a few times and try to sense the weight of the sentences; they are heavy, but not ponderous, serious, but not severe. They have a balance in their construction, and that seems to be what it is that produces the measured, meaningful rhythm we perceive in it. And if that is the case, the question we should have as close readers is, how? How has the writer configured his sentences such that this impression of thoughtful cadence holds our attention as the meaning unfolds?

What typifies the construction of this passage more than anything else, I think, is what we could call its control of complexity. Beginning with the third sentence, we enter a conceptual world involved enough to require subordinated sentence structures, antitheses, and multiplicities to pronounce the point being made. One way to establish control is to place grammatical elements in parallel. The design of the third sentence here is named convoluted, where subordinate structures are rolled up (which is what convoluted means) between the main subject and the predicate. These elements are themselves parallel, with the preposition like building a phrase at the end of each: like lightning, like pestilence. The fourth sentence, a balanced design, hinges its two parts (almost equal in word number) with a strong semicolon. And the fifth sentence repeats the conjunction and in joining fire and the wind and the torments in order to lay out in grand array the dramatic conditions which would still not be enough to meet the definition of Shakespearean tragedy.

Now read the passage aloud again, this time trying to conform your voice to the sonorous rhythm created by these compositional structures. We cannot read this passage quickly if we wish to read it thoughtfully. And that might be a very good exercise for us to practice every now and then as our culture relies more and more on the visual. Words create mental images which the eye cannot see, and far from that being an inferior quality, it might very well be our strength, for the effort it takes to conjure and then hold the picture a sentence is framing is intellectual, where emotional effect can be tempered, if need be, by reason. And thoughtful reason just might help us forestall a tragedy of Shakespearean proportion.

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A gentleman named Brabantio was once a senator in the Republic of Venice. His daughter, Desdemona, was, as fate would have it, quite beautiful, and he, of course, was quite protecting of her. One young suitor by the name of Roderigo the father had already parried away, but the desperate man called yet again on the senator at home one night, banged on his door, and yelled up to his window, asking the father whether all his family was at home. The senator lost his patience at the curious, insinuating question and yelled back from his balcony, “Why, wherefore ask you this?”

So says Shakespeare in his tragedy Othello. And that senator’s angry reply, in addition to its position in the unfolding drama, happens to stand as a gem for grammar teachers, for in the space of one brief sentence, it illustrates the difference between two logical questions in a way modern English no longer does so concisely. Both why and wherefore are adverbs, but they once had distinct purposes: to ask why means to seek the purpose of something; it looks forward, to the intended effect of an action. To ask wherefore, however, is to look back, to seek the cause of the action having transpired. The two words mark the difference between the logical notions of effect and cause. We, however, no longer use the word wherefore, and so in modern idiom, Brabantio’s retort might be phrased, What has made you ask this and what could you be after in asking me?

This distinct meaning of wherefore has collapsed into why in modern English, and so if you consult a good dictionary, you will find that the adverb why is defined now as for what cause, reason, or purpose. The cause of something points backwards, the reason for it looks either backwards and forward, and its purpose looks forward. These directions of cause and effect, once differentiated, have now been subsumed under the one word why. We will encounter the antiquated wherefore now most often in literature of a certain date. Still, it shows up sometimes where it’s not invited, inflating the prose unnecessarily. The writer Bryan Garner, who has published important reference works on English usage, particularly legal writing, advises lawyers (and by implication the rest of us) in his The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2002) to watch out for wherefore (and some thirty other words and phrases) which “drift along in legal writing like so much deadwood in a stream.” When we do see wherefore, we usually find it as a noun, meaning the explanation or answer for something, especially in the phrase the whys and wherefores, as in, for example, what could have been the whys and wherefores of his erratic behavior?

If there is anything to lament here, it is not that the language has changed; that is inevitable and a good measure better than an unbending strictness that might very well be a sign of life retreating. What is something to worry about, though, is whether we will still perceive in the one word why the two very different logical relations of cause and effect. Brabantio is not simply repeating himself for emphasis when he asks why and wherefore; that is not a dramatic intensification, as if he were asking reiteratively, why, why? Instead, the senator wants to know both the cause that has brought Roderigo to ominously interrupt him at home and the purpose the young man intends by that insolent action—an important distinction we are the poorer for not appreciating.

And poorer still if we miss it when Juliet, elsewhere, laments from her window, O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo! The beautiful and stricken Juliet is not asking where Romeo might be; she is not looking out from her balcony calling his name in an exclamation to find him (notice that there is no comma after thou to isolate his name and indicate direct address). Instead, she wants to know what it is that has caused him to be in her life. Our modern idiom might say, O Romeo, Romeo! What has made you what you are?, but we can hear that this does not capture the intricacies of his presence which she longs to live out her life with. And that is what we have to be careful about, that we retain the delicate conceptions of our awareness as the language changes. For if language loses its cognitive color, so will much of our life, whose subtleties lie hidden for us to find.

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An instructor of mine in college once admonished his class of graduate students that they all read too much. It was spring, the term almost over, and he threw down the challenge that we all should enroll in a drawing class over the summer. His judgment surprised everyone, because both the scholarship and writing of this particular teacher were of the first degree, and that achievement, we knew, had entailed a lot of reading. Wordless drawing?

There is, unquestionably, wisdom in that scholar’s advice, but there is a median way to freshen our mental habits: read about an unfamiliar subject. The point of such a diversion is not only to think about things never conceived before, but to observe closely how another author expresses those new ideas. Here, for example, is a passage from one such subject unfamiliar to many (certainly to me): sailing. Percy Blandford, in his The Art of Sailing (1972), prefaces his subject to the general reader like this:

One of the fascinating things about sailing is that you can never finish learning. It is always possible to improve your ability and technique. You cannot learn all about sailing from a book, but it is certainly possible to learn the rudiments of sailing technique and get out on a quiet piece of water and teach yourself to sail.

That passage, and the author’s style generally, has a downright quality: a simple sentence structure that carries a common diction. If not exhortative, it is encouraging, and the first three lines about what is practically possible are raised to a new level with the beautiful little phrase on a quiet piece of water. We might very well learn from that brief piece of poetry something of the writer’s relationship to his subject—a valuable insight for readers to have into the authors they are reading closely. Blandford apparently relishes all that knowledge one can never finish learning, but not at the price of doing.

Indeed, he says as much in another passage worth considering. Here we see a writer on the art of sailing saying things any serious student of the art of language has wondered about: just what is the balance between theory and practice:

It is possible to get very scientific about sailing and there are books devoted to the theoretical problems involved…, but this is a practical book and we are only concerned with how to sail, without bothering too much about the reasons behind it…. In any case the actual practice of sailing is art as much as science. The man with a feel for the wind and its actions may get better results than the man who sees every movement as a scientific problem.

Blandford has decided here not to sail directly into the wind. There are reasons behind the techniques of sailing, he acknowledges, but the emphasis of what he has to teach will be on the practice, not the study, of being on the water. Considering that passage closely, we learn how the devotee of another art has decided to negotiate the balance of theory and practice. He defines his territory (“this is a practical book”), and justifies that position by asserting the equality of acting and learning (“the actual practice of sailing is art as much as science”). And he finally tacks around the problem by rhetorically stretching necessary reasons into scientific problems.

And where would the idea of saying that Blandford decided not to sail directly into the wind come from? From my reading Blandford, of course: “No boat can sail directly towards the wind.” And maybe there’s another lesson to learn right there: that taking the difficulty of any study head-on might just blunt our efforts. Better to tack, and enrich our work by discovering fresh metaphors and new ideas from an unfamiliar world.

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