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The Alembick



Vol. XIV

I. All Saint’s Day 2019
II. Christmas 2019
III. Shrovetide 2020
IV. Quarantine 2020
  1. Editor’s Note
  2. Letters
  3. Reader’s Doubts Resolved
  4. To His Coy Mistress
  5. Cavalier Lyric
  6. A Shropshire Pig
  7. Elegiacs
  8. The Year
  9. Inkblots
  10. The Man Who Made His Exit
  11. Splitting the Atom
  12. Self-Control
  13. Antique Fragment
  14. Canzonetta
  15. Zen Poem 

Vol. XV

I. Michaelmas 2020

Submissions     ︎

Reader’s Doubts Resolved


    Whether the turtle is logically necessary?

    Clearly the turtle is logically necessary, as is easily proven by application of the reductio ad impossibile:
    Posit no turtles. Now, the world contains turtles, and turtles are in the world. In fact we have no evidence that turtles and the world are separable. This being so, to posit no turtles means to conclude no world. Quod est absurdum, because the world is.
    Intelligent observers may see how the principles of the above proof are extensible to various real phenomena.

    Whether Lizzie Bennet showed herself deficient in charity when she lost respect for Charlotte Lucas upon the latter's marriage to Mr. Collins?

    In this case, we must distinguish between the demands of Charity and the operation of Friendly Respect.
    Certainly Lizzie owes a continuing duty of Charity to Charlotte Lucas, not as a friend only but as a fellow-human. Given Charlotte's lack of money and of looks, her desire to establish a household apart from the parental abode, and her general paucity of present and future options for matrimony, it seems if not inevitable, if not commendable, at least reasonable and pardonable that she should act as she did in accepting Mr. Collins. Lizzie is bound to accept and to the extent necessary to forgive Charlotte's actions.
    Friendly Respect, however, is unlike Charity, in that it is a gratuitous operation of liking between two particular individuals rather than an absolute requisite between all individuals in common. If Lizzie feels, as she does, that Charlotte has failed morally by purchasing material security at the cost of marriage to a fool, then Lizzie is perfectly entitled to withdraw her Friendly Respect. Friendly Respect is non-negotiable: it exists or it doesn't, and no moral imperative can compel it where it is lacking.
    It seems to us that Lizzie does understand the various pressures motivating Charlotte's choice, and it seems therefore that she loses Friendly Respect for Charlotte without failing in Charity. Lizzie's Friendly Respect for Charlotte might have been salvaged had the latter been willing to reject one of her premises: a lesser desire for an independent household, for instance, would remove the motive to accept Mr. Collins in purchase of it. Lizzie, for her part, has Mr. Darcy to thank that her choice in Charlotte's position remains untried.

    Whether the magisterial tone of this column is warranted, given its anonymous nature and altogether dubious authority?

    We remind the questioner of this column's title, which is not "Readers' Doubts Entertained" but "Readers' Doubts Resolved."
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