Topical Guide 487

Mark Dorset

Marketing: Packaging

Reservations Recommended, Chapter 4:

Liz and Belinda and Matthew pass their Perrier-Jouët around, like prosperous bums in a doorway.
     “God, this is good stuff,” says Matthew.
     “We bought it for the bottle,” says Belinda. She and Liz dissolve in giggles again, like kids drinking illicitly before a dance.

Ideas: Half-Baked, Borrowed, Stolen, French

Reservations Recommended, Chapter 4:

     “But you have to ask yourself,” the big man continues, “if there isn’t an underlying grammar of motives in all gesture.”
     “All human endeavor,” suggests a small woman beside him. […]
     “Of course,” says the big man. “It’s politics as poetry — poetry as politics. There really is no distinction, none at all, if you accept the premise of a pan-human substructure for all thought.” […]
     “A genealogy for all thought,” says the gleeful man, “starting from some primordial construct and arriving at the present, when madness is the first cousin of reason.” […]
     “When you look at the intersubjective schema, you see that we make sense, when we make sense, because there is only one way to make sense, is that it?” says a tall man whose head is a bald dome with long, thin gray hair around the rim.
     “But what is that way?” asks an attractive matron, […] “I mean, is it because our brains are all alike? But they’re not, are they? Wouldn’t we all think alike if they were?”
     “Well, that’s the point, really,” says the big man. […] “That in the most fundamental ways we do all think alike, that the mediation of structural regularity produces consensus, so — ”

George Gissing, Our Friend the Charlatan:

     Later, Dyce and his father went into the study to smoke. The young man brought with him a large paperbacked volume which he had taken out of his travelling bag.
     “Here’s a book I’m reading. […] It would please you, father.”
     “I’ve no time for reading nowadays,” sighed the vicar. “What is it?”
     He took the volume, a philosophical work by a French writer, bearing recent date. […]
     “It’s uncommonly suggestive,” said Dyce, between puffs. “The best social theory I know. He calls his system Bio-sociology; a theory of society founded on the facts of biology—thoroughly scientific and convincing. Smashing socialism in the common sense—that is, social democracy; but establishing a true socialism in harmony with the aristocratic principle. I’m sure you’d enjoy it. I fancy it’s just your view.”
     “Yes—perhaps so—”
     “Here’s the central idea. No true sociology could be established before the facts of biology were known, as the one results from the other. In both, the ruling principle is that of association, with the evolution of a directing power. An animal is an association of cells. Every association implies division of labour. Now, progress in organic development means the slow constitution of an organ—the brain—which shall direct the body. So in society—an association of individuals, with slow constitution of a directing organ, called the Government. The problem of civilisation is to establish government on scientific principles—to pick out the fit for rule—to distinguish between the Multitude and the Select, and at the same time to balance their working. It is nonsense to talk about Equality. Evolution is engaged in cephalising the political aggregate—as it did the aggregate of cells in the animal organism. It makes for the differentiation of the Select and of the Crowd—that is to say, towards Inequality.”
     “Very interesting,” murmured the vicar, who listened with an effort whilst mechanically loading his pipe. […] “These questions are very difficult—[…]”