THE EARLIEST MENAGERIES

PHILOSOPHY

Early in his career, the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner formulated an enviably ambitious plan: he would spend the rest of his life tracking down and describing every animal on the planet, from the armadillo to the green chameleon, the Egyptian mongoose to the rhinoceros. His labours resulted in one of the first and most beautiful works of zoology, 'Historia Animalium', published in Zurich between 1551 and 1558. Gessner got a lot of things wrong. He was muddled about names and numbers of legs. Many of his colours were off. He was confused about the numbers of stripes on the tiger and spots on the leopard. But it is Gessner’s boldness that continues to impress. He didn’t worry about the odd mistake, and nor did he limit his aspirations for fear of treading on other experts’ toes. He did have one enormous advantage, however: he was early on in the game. He did not have to suffer from the dispiriting sense — which too often subsumes us today — that everything must surely already be known; that there is nothing at all we might think that hasn’t already been better expressed somewhere else by someone else. The existence of so many books — 130 million — doesn’t so much inspire us as crush us: what more could we possibly add? What thought worth having could ever germinate in our naive minds? The virgin snow across which Conrad Gessner once drove his intellectual sledge is now criss-crossed with others’ tracks. Increased knowledge has decimated our intellectual self-confidence. But this cannot, in truth, be fair, for we still don’t understand so much: how to have good marriages, run countries, educate children, create beautiful architecture or overcome loneliness — just to start the list. We have mapped less than one billionth of the real map of knowledge. We are almost as much at the beginning as Gessner was. Nothing should legitimately stop us from imagining that we couldn’t right now head out and, with a fair wind and a few years of toil, discover a menagerie of things at once unknown, colourful and essential.

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CLASSICISM

At present, our culture is dominated by a Romantic outlook; its predecessor, and in many ways its more deserving alternative, is a Classical view of life. Classicism is founded upon an intense, pessimistic awareness of the frailties of human nature and on a suspicion of unexamined instinct. The Classical attitude knows that our emotions can frequently over-power our better insights, that we repeatedly misunderstand ourselves and others, and that we are never far from folly, harm and error. In response, Classicism seeks via culture to correct the failings of our minds. Classicism is wary of our instinctive longing for perfection. In love, it counsels a gracious acceptance of the ‘madness’ inside each partner. It knows that ecstasy cannot last, and that the basis of all good relationships must be tolerance and mutual sympathy. Classicism has a high regard for domestic life; it sees apparently minor practical details as deeply worthy of care and effort; it doesn’t think it would be degrad...

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AGAINST SKIING HOLIDAYS

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a normal person in search of a holiday will enjoy skiing; they will delight in bracing mountain air, thrill at going down mogul dotted slopes and feel pleasantly exhausted after a day of parallel turns. This assumption about pleasure joins a host of others proposed by the modern world. Normal people will equally enjoy white wine, the Amalfi coast, the novels of Margaret Atwood, dogs, high heels, small children, Miami beach, oral sex, Banksy, marriage, Netflix and vegetarianism. We may legitimately delight in all of these elements; the issue lies in the immense pressure we are under to do so. The truth about ourselves may, in reality, be a great deal more mysterious than the official narrative allows. Whatever our commitments to decorum and good order, we may in our depths be far more distinctive than we’re supposed to be. We may — once we become sensitive to our faint tremors of authentic delight and boredom — hate the idea of jogging, the the...

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FAME

Fame seems to offer very significant benefits. The fantasies go like this: when you are famous, wherever you go, your good reputation will precede you. People will think well of you, because your merits have been impressively explained in advance. You will get warm smiles from admiring strangers. You won’t need to make your own case laboriously on each occasion. When you are famous, you will be safe from rejection. You won’t have to win over every new person. Fame will mean that other people will be flattered and delighted even if you are only slightly interested in them. They will be amazed to see you in the flesh. They will ask to take a photo with you. They will sometimes laugh nervously with excitement. Furthermore, no one will be able to afford to upset you. When you’re not pleased with something, it will become a big problem for others. If you say your hotel room isn’t up to scratch, the management will panic. Your complaints will be taken very seriously. Your happiness will beco...

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