Herman Melville Quotes
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.
Melville, Herman. Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne. [1 June?] 1851. The Letters of Herman Melville, edited by Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman, Yale University Press, 1960.
This is a very interesting quotation for it is a stark illustration of a difference between science and many religions that exists, albeit to a lesser extent. The Church fathers had decided that astrologers and alchemists were in league with the Devil and therefore were to be avoided and not heeded. But Augustine clearly tells us that this is so, even of the astrologers / alchemists were right and had the truth. To the scientist the truth trumps all else. To Augustine, avoiding contamination with the Devil—heresy—is more important than learning the truth. The same sort of logic has been a part of much political culture. When the Communists would decry American Racial discrimination, much of the society claimed that, their ideas should not be considered. Communists were evil and to be shunned—even if they were right about a particular area. To the Tea Party of the early 21st century, elite liberals were to be shunned and discounted even if they sometimes had the truth on their side. The origin of the thinking is with Saint Augustine.
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851), Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia, and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the centennial of his birth in 1919 was the starting point of a Melville revival and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.
