SOME PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN: JEAN BAPTISTE SAY NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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1 SOME : NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden

2 WALDEN: If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any thing is professed and practised but the art of life; to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month, the boy who had made his own jack-knife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers? To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation! why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. PEOPLE OF WALDEN ADAM SMITH DAVID RICARDO JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY

3 1767 January 5, Monday: Jean-Baptiste Say was born in Lyon, France in the family of a Huguenot, Jean-Étienne Say, that had returned to France after having fled from Nîmes to Geneva upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He would get work experience in England before returning to work in France. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT The People of Walden Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

4 1789 Jean-Baptiste Say was the author of a pamphlet on the liberty of the press. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? NO, THAT S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN S STORIES. LIFE ISN T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden

5 1793 Jean-Baptiste Say got married with Mlle. Deloche, a daughter of a former lawyer.

6 1794 Christian Garve s translation into German of Professor Adam Smith s 1776 AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (its four volumes would be complete by 1796). From this year until 1800, Jean-Baptiste Say would be editing La Decade philosophique, litteraire, et politique, a periodical favoring the doctrines of Professor Smith. WALDEN: If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any thing is professed and practised but the art of life; to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month, the boy who had made his own jack-knife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers? To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation! why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. PEOPLE OF WALDEN ADAM SMITH DAVID RICARDO JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT The People of Walden Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

7 1799 Jean-Baptiste Say was selected as one of the 100 members of the French tribunate, and resigned from La Decade philosophique, litteraire, et politique. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden

8 1800 Jean-Baptiste Say s OLBIE, OU ESSAI SUR LE MOYENS DE RÉFORMER LES MOEURS D UNE NATION. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. The People of Walden Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

9 1803 Jean-Baptiste Say s TRAITÉ D ÉCONOMIE POLITIQUE, OU SIMPLE EXPOSITION DE LA MANIÈRE DONT SE FORMENT, SE DISTRIBUENT, ET SE COMPOSENT LES RICHESSES (English translation: A TREATISE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY, OR THE PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION AND CONSUMPTION OF WEALTH). He has become well known for Say s Law of Markets, which in direct translation from the French of TRAITÉ would be Inherent in supply is the wherewithal for its own consumption but is usually rendered more trenchantly as Aggregate supply creates its own aggregate demand, Supply creates its own demand, Supply constitutes its own demand, or If you build it they will come. 1 JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY 1. Cf. ECCLESIASTES 5:11 As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them?

10 WALDEN: If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any thing is professed and practised but the art of life; to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month, the boy who had made his own jack-knife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers? To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation! why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. PEOPLE OF WALDEN ADAM SMITH DAVID RICARDO JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY

11 1804 Having displayed a certain reluctance to sacrifice convictions to further the schemes of Napoléon, Jean- Baptiste Say found himself removed as tribune. Having acquainted himself with cotton manufacture, he founded at Auchy in the Pas de Calais a spinning-mill would provide gainful employment for some 400 to 500 laborers, mostly of course women and children. wanted what he wanted THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden

12 1814 Professor Sylvestre François Lacroix s ÉLÉMENS DE GÉOMÉTRIE, A L USAGE DE L ÉCOLE CENTRALE DES QUATRE-NATIONS (A Paris: Chez M me veuve Courcier, Imprimeur-Libraire pour les Mathématiques, quai des Augustins, n o 57). A chaire de langue et de littérature chinoise was created at the Collège de France, and was filled by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat. Jean-Baptiste Say availed himself (as he put it) of the sort of liberty arising from the intrusion of the allied powers into France to bring out a 2d edition of his TRAITÉ D ÉCONOMIE POLITIQUE, OU SIMPLE EXPOSITION DE LA MANIÈRE DONT SE FORMENT, SE DISTRIBUENT, ET SE COMPOSENT LES RICHESSES, an edition dedicated to the emperor Alexander I of Russia because that monarch had professed himself to be Say s pupil. In this same year the French government dispatched Say to make a study of economic conditions in the United Kingdom (he would present his conclusions in the following year as DE L ANGLETERRE ET DES ANGLAIS). WHAT I M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF The People of Walden Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

13 1815 Jean-Baptiste Say s DE L ANGLETERRE ET DES ANGLAIS. His CATECHISM OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

14 1817 Jean-Baptiste Say s PETIT VOLUME CONTENANT QUELQUES APERÇUS DES HOMMES ET DE LA SOCIÉTÉ. In addition, a 3d edition of the TRAITÉ D ÉCONOMIE POLITIQUE, OU SIMPLE EXPOSITION DE LA MANIÈRE DONT SE FORMENT, SE DISTRIBUENT, ET SE COMPOSENT LES RICHESSES. JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY

15 1818 Jean-Baptiste Say s DES CANAUX DE NAVIGATION DANS L ÉTAT ACTUEL DE LA FRANCE. His DE L IMPORTANCE DU PORT DE LA VILETTE. Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat became an editor of the Journal des savants. Francis Hall s (anonymous) TRAVELS IN FRANCE, IN 1818 (Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoodie, Printers- Street, London). Académie française: election of Cuvier Desbordes-Valmore Creation of Conservateur de Chateaubriand and of La Minerve française Leconte de Lisle.

16 1819 Jean-Baptiste Say s COURS À L ATHÉNÉE DE PARIS. A chair of industrial economy was founded for his benefit at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers.

17 1820 The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus s PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO THEIR PRACTICAL APPLICATION demonstrated that unlimited savings would destroy the motive to production and that therefore it was quite all right, if you could afford it, for you to buy your wife a nice new fur coat and a diamond pendant. Meanwhile, he suggested, we should have sense enough to keep the common people actively working at public projects. Jean-Baptiste Say s LETTRES À M. MALTHUS SUR DIFFÉRENT SUJETS D ÉCONOMIE POLITIQUE, NOTAMMENT SUR LES CAUSES DE LA STAGNATION GÉNÉRALE DU COMMERCE.

18 1821 Jean-Baptiste Say s Letters to Thomas Robert Malthus on Political Economy and Stagnation of Commerce, The Pamphleteer.

19 1824 Jean-Baptiste Say s Sur la balance des consommations avec les productions, Revue Encyclopédique.

20 1825 Jean-Baptiste Say s Examen Critique du discours de M. MacCulloch sur l économie politique, Revue Encyclopédique.

21 1826 Jean-Baptiste Say s De l économie politique moderne, esquisse générale de cette science, de sa nomenclature, de son histoire et de sa bibliographie and De la crise commerciale, Encylopédie progressive.

22 1827 Jean-Baptiste Say s Compte rendu de Malthus DEFINITIONS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Revue Encyclopédique.

23 1828 Jean-Baptiste Say s DISCOURS D OUVERTURE AU COURS D ÉCONOMIE INDUSTRIELLE. From this year into 1830, his COURS COMPLET D ÉCONOMIE POLITIQUE PRATIQUE.

24 1830 January: The wife of Jean-Baptiste Say died. He would be subject to more and more frequent attacks of nervous apoplexy. Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was elected by the town of Lisieux to the Chamber of Deputies (he would retain this seat for the remainder of his public career).

25 1831 The study of paradigms of bridge failure by Louis Joseph Vicat, RAPPORT SUR LES PONTS EN FIL DU FER SUR LE RHONE, was necessitated by the collapse of a number of France s suspension bridges. The French removed one of the massive obelisks of red granite still surviving at Luxor in Egypt (after its temples had been plundered by the Persians in 520BCE), and this would be set up in the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1836 (what s the point? Oh, you know). The phrenologist Dr. George Combe s OBSERVATIONS ON MENTAL DERANGEMENT. The Phrenological Society of Paris was established. Heinrich Heine went to Paris as a journalist, and there would write newspaper articles about the development of democracy and capitalism in France. Jean-Baptiste Say became Professor of Political Economy at the College de France. A chair of Egyptian antiquities was created there, especially for Jean-François Champollion.

26 1832 November 15, Thursday: Jean-Baptiste Say died in Paris. Symphony no.5 Reformation by Felix Mendelssohn, originally intended for the 400th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, was performed for the initial time, in Berlin.

27 1833 Jean-Baptiste Say s MÉLANGE ET CORRESPONDENCE D ECONOMIE POLITIQUE.

28 1834 Jean-Baptiste Say s A TREATISE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY: OR THE PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, AND CONSUMPTION OF WEALTH was published in Philadelphia by Grigg and Elliot as translated from the 4th edition of the French by C.R. Prinsep, with notes by the translator. This was the 6th American edition, containing a translation of the introduction, and additional notes by Clement C. Biddle. (In one copy of this appears the ownership signature D H Thoreau. H 23 at the top of the blank page following the front free endpaper. Manuscript notations on pages 89, 114, 123, 323, 426, and 483 seem to indicate sections which were to be read for Henry Thoreau s class assignments. An entry from an unknown auction or book dealer s catalog is attached to the verso of the back free endpaper of this volume, indicating that it had been Thoreau s copy, being the Economics text-book used by him while a student at Harvard College. ) 2 JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY 2. What Google Books has to offer in regard to this edition is a copy printed in 1836 rather than 1834.

29 WALDEN: If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any thing is professed and practised but the art of life; to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month, the boy who had made his own jack-knife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers? To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation! why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. PEOPLE OF WALDEN ADAM SMITH DAVID RICARDO JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY

30 1848 OEUVRES DIVERSES DE J.-B. SAY.

31 1943 March: Edgeley Woodman Todd s Philosophical Ideas at Harvard College, (The New England Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp ). EDGELY WOODMAN TODD ABERCROMBIE JOHN LOCKE DUG. STEWART THOS. BROWN

32 1945 March: Joseph J. Kwiat s Thoreau s Philosophical Apprenticeship (The New England Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp ). JOSEPH J. KWIAT ABERCROMBIE JOHN LOCKE DUG. STEWART THOS. BROWN Professor Ernest Erwin Leisy s Thoreau and Ossian (The New England Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1 (March 1945), pp ), points out that rather than using James Macpherson s version of the Ossianic poems, Thoreau relied instead on Patrick MacGregor s 1841 blank verse retranslation of the material, THE GENUINE REMAINS OF OSSIAN. Professor Leisy comments gratuitously, however, that Thoreau in his quotations from Ossian exercised his well-known perversity for selections which suited his particular needs. 3 Henry Thoreau did not ever make use of Macpherson s fraudulent materials. The quote in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, that expresses the kinship of the wild to his nature, is traceable to MacGregor s version of Croma, 193. The quote that appears in Thoreau s Night and Moonlight is traceable to Ossian s address to the sun from page 519 of MacGregor s version of Trathal, beginning Where has darkness its dwelling, to illustrate how the light of day reflects an inward dawn. The quotes in Friday of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS also are traceable to the Macgregor version: Ca-Lodin, I, 125: Thou glidest away Ca-Lodin, II, 132: With murmurs loud Ca-Lodin, II, 134: His soul departed Ca-Lodin, II, 137: Whence have sprung Ca-Lodin, III, 138: The wrathful kings Carric, 167: Strangers build a tower Garon, 176: A thousand orators inclined Garon, 176: How beauteous... Oinamoru, I, 182: I straightway seize Croma, 195: My eyes have failed Fingal, III, 252: dragging his spear Fingal, V, 280: The weak will find Fingal, VI, 292: Thy mother shall find Timora, III, 343: He strode away Timora, VI, 391: Mounds will appear 3. Uh, selecting quotations that suit your particular needs is perverse? Well, yes, cherry-picking the quotations that support your point while disregarding quotations that would refute your point, that would be properly describable as tendentious but I don t consider that Thoreau in quoting from Ossian had any particular agenda to prove any particular point. His use of these materials was merely evocative. However, this 3-page article was published in 1945, back in the day when it was considered seemly for academics to mention Thoreau with a subtle sneer so we may be able to put down this remark about Thoreau s well-known perversity as merely Professor Leisy s obeisance to the popular trend.

33 MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this read-only computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace resulting in navigation problems allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: July 26, 2014 Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project The People of Walden

34 ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

35 Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary writerly process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.

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