“If nature enclose within the bounds of her ordinary progress the beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men, as well as all other things; if they have their revolution, their season, their birth and death, like cabbage plants; if the heavens agitate and rule them at their pleasure, what magisterial and permanent authority do we attribute to them?”
—MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, Essays, Book II Chapter XII, “Apology for Raimond Sebond“
“I would always have a man to be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to extend and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my gardens not being finished. I saw one die, who, at his last gasp, complained of nothing so much as that destiny was about to cut the thread of a chronicle he was then compiling, when he was gone no farther than the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings”.
—MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, Essays, Book I Chapter XIX, “That to study philosophy is to learn to die“
A few days ago I placed this Welcome sign near the entrance to the Cabbage Farm.
It seems fitting to insert this announcement in the blog roll to commemorate the occasion. Perhaps on some future occasion, if I replace that sign with a new one, I’ll return to this spot in the log to paste the copy.
“For how could something count as a language that organized only experiences, sensations, surface irritations or sense data? Surely knives and forks, railroads and mountains, cabbages and kingdoms also need organizing.”
—DONALD DAVIDSON, “On the very idea of a conceptual scheme”
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.'”
—LEWIS CARROLL, “The Walrus and the Carpenter“
The Cabbage Farm 