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Becoming Who We Are
Becoming Who We Are
Politics and Practical Philosophy
in the Work of Stanley Cavell

Andrew Norris

1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Norris, Andrew, 1960– author.
Title: Becoming who we are : politics and practical philosophy in the work
of Stanley Cavell / Andrew Norris.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046437 (print) | LCCN 2017009103 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190673949 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190673970 (online course) |
ISBN 9780190673956 (updf) | ISBN 9780190673963 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Cavell, Stanley, 1926–
Classification: LCC B945.C274 N67 2017 (print) |
LCC B945.C274 (ebook) | DDC 191—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046437

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
 For my parents
Mary Cecilia Coupe Norris and Barnard Norris
in loving memory
To know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom
—​​Milton
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
CHAPTER 1 Ordinary Language and Philosophical Conversion 15
CHAPTER 2 Skepticism and Transcendence 49
CHAPTER 3 Community and Voice 95
CHAPTER 4 Walden and the Foundations of True Political
Expression 141
CHAPTER 5 Receiving Autonomy 177

Notes 223
Bibliography 287
Index 305
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M any people have helped me in the long process of writing this book.
I owe a special debt to Stanley Cavell, who took time to read the
bulk of the manuscript, and whose comments on it displayed exemplary
care and generosity. Garrett Baer, Dan Brudney, Fabian Börchers, Tom
Dumm, Richard Eldridge, Jeremy Elkins, Bonnie Honig, Paola Marrati,
Rogers Smith, Barry Stroud, and Eric Wilson also read significant por-
tions of the manuscript and gave me extremely helpful comments. Baer
also helped me in the final preparation of the text, and I truly appreci-
ate his patient and thoughtful work. I should also like to thank William
E. Abraham, Jane Bennett, Kane Bixby, Fred Dolan, Kurt Rudolf Fischer,
Michael Geis, David Hoy, David Macarthur, Christoph Menke, Jan Müller,
Jim Noggle, Dirk Setton, Hans Sluga, Tracy Strong, Jörg Volbers, Stephen
White, my brothers and sisters, and Lucy Randall, my editor at Oxford.
About half of Chapter 4 previously appeared as “Thoreau, Cavell, and
the Foundations of True Political Expression,” in A Political Companion
to Henry David Thoreau, and I thank the University Press of Kentucky
for permission to republish those parts of it. It is a pleasure to acknowl-
edge as well the substantial assistance I have received from the University
of California, the Max-​Planck-​Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte,
and the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften and Exzellenzcluster
“Normative Orders” of Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. My wife
Yasemin often doubted whether this book would ever really be finished,
and I am deeply grateful to her for years of loving patience and support.
My daughters Stephanie and Cecilia have, like true transcendentalists,
helped me again and again to see the possibility and delight of the new
day, and for that I owe them more than I can say.
Becoming Who We Are
 Introduction

The world must be romanticized. In this way one rediscovers its

original meaning. Romanticizing is nothing but a qualitative raising to
a higher power. The lower self becomes identified with a better self.
Insofar as I give the commonplace a higher meaning, the ordinary a
mysterious countenance, the known the dignity of the unknown, the
finite an appearance of infinity, I romanticize it.
—​​Novalis

Work on philosophy is … actually more of a kind of work on oneself.

On one’s own conception. On the way one sees things. (And of what
one demands of them.)
—​Wittgenstein

Stanley Cavell’s place in contemporary philosophy is a unique one.

The author of groundbreaking work in meta-​epistemology and philosophi-
cal aesthetics, Cavell initiated the reappraisal within Anglophone philoso-
phy of Kant’s once-​neglected Critique of Judgment and, in concert with
this, raised what might be termed the existential stakes of Austin’s and
the later Wittgenstein’s philosophical approaches to ordinary language. He
was one of the first philosophers to write in a serious and sustained way
about film, and he has continued to do so with brilliance throughout his
career. He has been a decisive influence in the recovery of transcendental-
ism as the founding moment of a distinctively American philosophy, one
that would be obscured first by the development of pragmatism and then
by the importation of logical positivism after the war. And he has played
a central role in the rapprochement of the “analytic” and “continental”
traditions of philosophy comparable to that of Richard Rorty. In light of
all of this—​not to mention his dazzling discussions of Shakespeare, opera,
Beckett, Ibsen, and sundry other topics—​Cavell has earned the admiration
of a large and diverse group of readers. Because his work is always written
in a deeply personal voice that eschews any claims to method or doctrine,
he has not been imitated as widely as comparable figures such as Quine,
Rorty, or Davidson. But he remains a figure of extraordinary influence and
importance.
That he has something distinctive and important to say about practi-
cal philosophy and public life, however, is not widely acknowledged, and
it is only relatively recently that Cavell’s contribution here has received
what recognition it has. After the publication in the first half of the 1970s
of Hanna Pitkin’s Wittgenstein and Justice and Tracy Strong’s Friedrich
Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, each of which drew signifi-
cantly upon Cavell’s early work, little was written on Cavell and political
theory until Tom Dumm’s A Politics of the Ordinary in 1999.1 In the past
decade, though, interest in the political aspects of Cavell’s work has grown
steadily, and a number of essays and monographs have appeared which
either directly address Cavell’s pertinence to politics and political theory
or work independently in these areas in ways that draw heavily upon him.2
This increasing recognition has in part been a function of the growing
awareness of the political significance of Wittgenstein’s later writings—​a
development in which Cavell’s work has played a central role.3 The ris-
ing fortunes of Emerson’s reputation—​also, as noted, in large part a func-
tion of Cavell’s advocacy—​have similarly heightened interest in Cavell’s
treatment of Emersonian and obviously political questions such as confor-
mity, self-​reliance, and the meaning of America. And the general decline
of Derridean deconstruction, particularly in America, where it was most
popular and influential, has encouraged political theorists concerned with
its characteristic themes of textuality, psychoanalysis, and la démocratie
à venir to turn to Cavell. It is in regard to this last that Cavell has inspired
the greatest interest, offering as he does a way of conceiving democracy
and related notions of community, voice, and friendship that promises to
temper, if not avoid, the rationalism and proceduralism of Rawlsian and
Habermasian approaches to democratic theory.
This book explores and evaluates the main lines of Cavell’s contri-
bution to our thinking about politics and practical philosophy. It does
not purport to be a general introduction to Cavell’s work as a whole.
There are already two of these in English, Stephen Mulhall’s Stanley
Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary and Espen Hammer’s
Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary.4 These are both

2 | Introduction
very good books, and I have learned a great deal from them. But their
discussions of politics are of necessity limited, leaving room—​as they
must—​for analyses of Cavell’s treatments of film, aesthetics, the philoso-
phy of language, Shakespeare, and the myriad other topics he takes up in
his unique body of work. In contrast, I discuss most of these matters only
in so far as it is necessary to appreciate what Cavell has to offer moral
and especially political philosophy.5 My initial aim here is to draw out
an important feature of Cavell’s work that has not yet been adequately
addressed, and to make explicit some of what Cavell leaves implicit. Doing
so will not only bring Cavell’s thinking about public life into clearer focus,
it will also alter our understanding of his work as a whole, showing it to
have more sides and greater depth than is sometimes thought. It would be
wrong to understand my attempt to do this as one that entails translating
Cavell’s words into an idiom more congenial to political theorists. Cavell’s
style is at once concrete and elusive in a way that delights and frustrates
equal numbers of readers. The twists and flights of his prose, so precise
and measured in his presentation, make any recapitulation and summary
difficult if not impossible. For this, however, there is no ready help. Cavell
emphasizes, as no other philosopher has, the importance of voice in phi-
losophy, and early in his career he has sought his own voice. To really
hear what Cavell is saying, one has to hear him saying it. For this reason
I have quoted extensively from his writings throughout. But there is in the
end no substitute for Cavell’s own books and essays. Instead of trying to
provide one, I have endeavored to open up Cavell’s complex positions and
claims, and to help bring them into conversation with thinkers and with
problems and views that Cavell either has not yet addressed or has not yet
addressed in an explicit and systematic enough fashion to have been heard
by the wider community of political theorists and philosophers. I am not,
however, under the illusion that Cavell can easily or comfortably find a
place in that community as it stands. Indeed, I would want to say of Cavell
what he says of Wittgenstein, that “some of the things he says have lost,
or have yet to find, the human circle in which they can usefully be said.”6
This does not mean that Cavell does not speak to contemporary political
theory and contemporary political life, but rather that he does so in ways
that might help to transform that theory and that life.7 Cavell’s point is that
Wittgenstein’s text calls for a “human circle” or community that does not
yet exist, and thus calls for us to bring it into being—​to create “a new pub-
lic,” as Emerson puts it—​by transforming the community we now have or
share.8 Cavell seeks a similar transformation—​that is indeed why he draws
our attention to this aspect of Wittgenstein.

Introduction | 3
 This is not to say that his work addresses all or even most of the major
political issues of our time. Cavell expresses almost no interest in political
institutions such as the state, particularly in the Weberian sense, as the sole
legitimate source of (the threat of) violence. Accordingly, he has written
nothing on, say, international law, and has nothing very striking or origi-
nal to say about constitutional questions, distributive justice, campaign
finance, or similarly pressing issues of the day. And in his few explicit
engagements with political theory, he is quick to say that he writes for
a society in which “good enough” justice prevails.9 This has given some
the impression that his concern with politics is either superficial or sim-
ply too intermittent to be of any real importance. Indeed, a prominent
political theorist who works on a number of Cavell’s favorite texts once
assured me, “Cavell has no real interest in politics.” Cavell, however,
insists throughout his work that he does, and his writing is filled with
political terms, such as alienation, America, authority, autonomy, com-
munity, conformity, consent, contract, crisis, decision, democracy, dissent,
education, equality, freedom, identity, interest, judgment, obligation, own-
ing, the political, privacy, publicity, repression, responsibility, utility, and
voice.10 These terms, however, are not deployed in the service of the sorts
of arguments made by most political theorists and philosophers. Cavell
does not defend theses concerning canonical topics such as freedom or
justice in the manner of Arendt or Rawls, to take representatives of the two
major modes of political theorizing in our time. He does not argue in the
fashion of Arendt that, seen rightly, certain experiences or epochs reveal
themselves as standards by which one might evaluate political phenomena
in general. Nor does he attempt, in the style of Rawls, to first discover
an indubitable or at least widely held starting point and then to develop
a series of valid inferences from that point that will guide future politi-
cal practice. Instead, what Cavell offers are a series of readings. Cavell
has famously sought “to understand philosophy not as a set of problems
but as a set of texts,”11 and the more political texts he takes up include
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics; Emerson’s Essays; Hume’s
“Of the Original Contract”; Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
Morals; Locke’s second Treatise; Marx’s “Towards a Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right”; Mill’s On Liberty and The Subjection of Women;
Nietzsche’s “Schopenhauer as Educator,” Beyond Good and Evil, and Thus
Spoke Zarathustra; Plato’s Euthyphro and Republic; Rawls’s Theory of
Justice; Rousseau’s Social Contract; Shakespeare’s tragedies; Thoreau’s
Walden and “Civil Disobedience”; and the Bible. He has also sought to
bring out the political import of texts—​like Wittgenstein’s Philosophical

4 | Introduction
Investigations, Kant’s Critiques, or Hollywood “Weepies”—​that are not
usually thought of as being very political at all. His reading of all of these
is extremely idiosyncratic, emphasizing etymological play and personal,
sometimes even extravagant, chains of association that make plain his
embrace of Emerson’s view that “there is … creative reading as well as
creative writing”: “One must be an inventor to read well.”12 The result is
a series of texts that themselves ask to be read, rather than a set of argu-
ments that demand our assent. And, if Cavell’s own practice is any guide,
the reading they call for amounts to a personal response from the reader—​
hardly a familiar gesture in the canon of political theory. Arnold Davidson
describes this aspect of Cavell’s work as well as anyone has:

Cavell writes not primarily to produce new theses or conclusions, nor to

produce new arguments to old conclusions, but, as Kierkegaard and the later
Wittgenstein did, to excavate and transform the reader’s sensibility, to undo
his self-​mystifications and redirect his interest. This is a distinctive mode of
philosophizing with its own special rigor, in which the accuracy of descrip-
tion bears an enormous weight. In aiming to transform a sensibility, one
must capture it precisely, and if one’s descriptions are too coarse, too rough
or too smooth, they will hold no direct interest, seeming to have missed the
mark completely. Cavell’s writing places extraordinary pressure on itself to
describe, undistractedly, and specifically, the forces of the mind.13

Far from being apolitical in nature, Cavell’s efforts to help us “undo our
self-​mystifications” place him squarely within two of the most important
streams of political thought in the Western tradition: first, the Rousseauian
conception of authentic action as autonomous action, and second, the
Socratic conception of individual self-​knowledge as the key to the shared
pursuit of the good life that is politics. In the former, freedom is under-
stood as the giving of law to oneself. For this not to be either a meaning-
less redundancy or a form of slavery, the self that gives law must be a
better self, at once identified with and superior to the self that receives
law. To understand oneself as split in this way requires, in Cavell’s words,
“questioning what or who the self is that commands and obeys itself and
what an obedience consists in that is inseparable from mastery.”14 Freedom
requires a complicated knowledge of the self as divided; and it requires
an understanding of the desire of the current self to “obey” and hence
become the superior self. It is precisely this that Cavell seeks to provide
in his account of Emersonian perfectionism. Such self-​knowledge is, for
Cavell, following Socrates, at once a personal and a political matter. Like

Introduction | 5
Socrates, Cavell traverses the public and the private distinction without
simply denying it; and he does so in an attempt to criticize his political cul-
ture from within, showing it to be lacking on its own terms, terms it uses
without understanding. If Cavell is seen by some as apolitical in nature,
this is in part a reflection of the fact that he, like Socrates, elliptically
contests our understanding of what politics really is. In Plato’s Gorgias,
Socrates, who eschewed public office, is presented as claiming that he
nonetheless was “one of the very few among the Athenians, not to say
the only one, engaged in the true political art.”15 To say this in the city
that prided itself as being the most political in the world is to deny that its
citizens knew what politics is or where it could be found. A similar claim
is lodged by Cavell.16 For both Socrates and Cavell, politics, devoted as it
is to the good life of the individuals who make up the polis, is found first
and foremost in individual lives, lives that are all too often characterized
by the “silent melancholy” and “quiet desperation” Emerson and Thoreau
discern in their fellow citizens. “The endlessly repeated idea that Emerson
was only interested in finding the individual should,” Cavell writes, “give
way to or make way for the idea that this quest was his way of founding a
nation, writing its constitution, constituting its citizens.”17
This is not to say, however, that individuals might free themselves of
such “political depression” alone.18 One of Cavell’s central political claims
is the roughly Hegelian one that our individual autonomy and our mem-
bership in a community with others are constitutive of one another. His
own texts enact this in the way they call out for response from the reader.
In politics as Cavell understands it, “the idea is of the expression of a
conviction whose grounding remains subjective—​say myself—​but which
expects or claims justification from the (universal) concurrence of other
subjectivities, on reflection; call this the acknowledgment of matching.”19
If more familiar ways of thinking about politics and political philosophy
aspire to chains of reasoning that compel one toward a conclusion, they
will easily take the form of monologues that one might deliver to oneself.
In contrast, Cavell’s texts, many of which revolve around and end with
questions, consistently seek to enact and elicit a conversation. Although
they are full of precise and nuanced argumentation, these are always situ-
ated within texts that, in line with Cavell’s emphasis upon identity and
desire, open themselves out to the reader, rather than hemming her in.
As Cavell puts it when characterizing his style as in part the expression
of a reluctance to accept the governing standard of philosophical form,
in particular the governing standard for how philosophical ideas should
be derived, “I mean to leave everything I will say, or have, I guess, ever

6 | Introduction
said, as in a sense provisional, the sense that it is to be gone on from.”20 In
accepting that invitation in writing this book, I make no claim to its being
exhaustive: the conversations Cavell’s work calls for will reveal the char-
acter of their participants as much as their subject matter, and that is true
of me and of this book. Other people will find other things in Cavell, and
will develop their ideas about those in their own ways; remaining open to
that is one of the lessons I take him to be teaching us.21 One might say that
for Cavell our political and philosophical culture is profoundly hermeneu-
tic: “Philosophy’s first virtue,” for Cavell, “is responsiveness,” and it is in
reading and responding to the works of those who have come before us,
and doing so together, that we learn who we are and how to become who
we are.22
Cavell is under no illusion that this is an easy task, or that his own work
is always easy to read. While this latter difficulty is widely attributed to the
mannerisms of his writing, which some find off-​putting, there is a deeper
reason for this that needs to be acknowledged at the start of any serious
engagement with that work. More than anything else, Cavell’s thought is
influenced by his embrace of Wittgenstein’s vision of language, one that
Cavell has described as “terrifying” in its conception of human finitude
and its exposure to what we might roughly name “contingency”:

We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected,
and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing
ensures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of
universals nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that
we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we
do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, senses of humor
and of significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is simi-
lar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an
assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation—​all the whirl of organism
Wittgenstein calls “forms of life.” Human speech and activity, sanity and
community, rest on nothing more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as
simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying.23

That I can conceive of those around me as speaking my language or speak-

ing any language at all, of being members of the human circle, of my
circle, of being minded creatures, and that they so conceive of me, and so
engage with me, is a matter of nothing more than what Cavell has termed
our mutual attunement with one another. There is no foundation, such as
our following a certain set of rules, or our status as rational animals or

Introduction | 7
products of the same divine workman, to which we can appeal for assur-
ance that we shall continue to go on with one another. The other side of
our openness to one another is a profound exposure on the part of each of
us to the judgments and reactions of others. As Cavell explicitly makes
this vision of language and finitude his own, he thus announces here that
he expects us, his readers, to find his own work not just difficult or irritat-
ing, but deeply disturbing. This is an anticipation of a resistance on the
part of his interlocutor fully on a par with anything found in Nietzsche or
Freud, and it is a necessary resistance, one internal to Cavell’s most basic
claims.24 One might say that if the reader does not regularly experience
this resistance, she is not fully grasping those claims. This is, at the very
least, an unusual state of affairs for work making a significant contribution
to political thought.
I wrote that this book would differ from previous books on Cavell in its
focus on questions of politics and political philosophy. Given the kind of
philosopher Cavell is, however, that focus may still be looser than many
readers would expect or desire. Cavell approaches almost everything he
discusses from the perspective of one trained in ordinary language phi-
losophy. Similarly, his master topic of skepticism provides the terms in
which he discusses almost everything, including, if not especially, political
matters. However, Cavell’s understanding of both ordinary language phi-
losophy and skepticism is far from commonplace, or straightforward, and
I have accordingly devoted the first two of my five chapters to the exposition
and analysis of their meaning for Cavell and to the wider implications they
have for his understanding of human subjectivity, and hence of ethical and
political subjectivity. While many dismiss ordinary language philosophy
as a passé form of armchair sociology and a reactionary defense of “com-
mon sense,” Cavell argues that, properly understood, it is a legitimate and
powerful mode of self-​examination that, like Freudian analysis, uncovers
the uncanny extent to which the self is ordinarily oblivious of its ordinary
life and language. For Cavell the ordinary is precisely not what is obvious,
but rather that which, like Poe’s purloined letter, passes in the normal run
of things unnoticed and untouched, though it sits in plain view before us.
As Wittgenstein puts it, “the aspects of things that are most important for
us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to
notice something—​because it is always before one’s eyes.)”25 Cavell can
describe the goal of his work as “discover[ing] the specific plight of mind
and circumstance within which a human being gives voice to his condi-
tion” only because most of us, most of the time, are unaware of that plight,
and of those circumstances.26 To the extent that we become aware of those

8 | Introduction
circumstances of our lives, we make our lives our own, and transform the
ordinary into what Cavell terms the “eventual ordinary,” the ordinary that
will come out of the shell of our lives as we now live them. This eventual
ordinary will differ from the ordinary as it stands first and foremost in the
recognition that we incline not to be here, in our lives, with one another,
that being here is not native to us.
Cavell’s distinction between two modes of the ordinary is not a wholly
novel one. Mill, for instance, makes a similar distinction in his essay on
the subjection of women when, after noting that existing moralities “are
mainly fitted to a relation of command and obedience” because the histo-
ries that give rise to them are those of inequality and domination, he goes
on to assert that “command and obedience are but unfortunate necessities
of human life: society in equality is its normal state.”27 Here, as in Cavell,
what is normal or ordinary is precisely what is not yet the norm. In Cavell,
however, the eventual ordinary, the ordinary that has become or been seen,
however fleetingly, to be what it is, is one that requires more than his-
torical social progress; it requires a society of individuals committed to
perpetual education and conversion. Hence it requires that those people
initially and repeatedly experience their lives as sites of self-​estrangement.
Here the early Heidegger is the more important predecessor for Cavell,
particularly in his insistence that Eigentlichkeit or authenticity is an “exis-
tentiell modification” of inauthenticity, and not our initial and natural way
of being.28 On Heidegger’s account, “average everydayness” is character-
ized by an “evasive turning away” in which we evade ourselves, and hence
fail to make our own (eigen) what is most properly ours, our lives as we
find them.29 To counter this Abkehr, we must turn back to ourselves, avert
ourselves from life as we live it, or rather fail to live it. This conversion is
not a turning away from the inauthentic everyday toward a transcendent
realm lying beyond the everyday (the sun of Socrates’s Good, Plotinus’s
and Augustine’s unchangeable good) so much as it is a turning within that
everyday, and toward it. Cavell shares this vision, and names Being and
Time along with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as the two
philosophical works of the twentieth century that have meant the most to
him and that helped shape his sense that “some moral claim upon us is
leveled by the act of philosophizing itself, a claim that no separate subject
of ethics would serve to study—​as if what is wrong with us, what needs
attention from philosophy, is our life as a whole.”30
In embracing this Heideggerian understanding of the ordinary as at
once requiring and suppressing our conversion to it, Cavell breaks from
his teacher Austin, a break I emphasize as previous work on Cavell has

Introduction | 9
not. For Cavell, Austin’s “terms of criticism,” unlike those of Wittgenstein,
are inadequate to the uncanny nature of the difficulties Austin’s work
uncovers in philosophy that is inattentive to “what we say when.” Put oth-
erwise, Austin’s terms do not allow for the articulation of Cavell’s distinc-
tion between the actual and the eventual ordinary, and hence do not allow
us to understand moral and political life as, among other things, a struggle
to become who we are. That said, Cavell no more apes Heidegger than
he does Austin, and his emphasis upon skepticism as the counter to the
ordinary is, as I demonstrate, not a Heideggerian one. Here the decisive
influence is that of Wittgenstein, whom Cavell credits with revealing “the
drift towards skepticism [to be] the discovery of the everyday, a discovery
of what it is that skepticism would deny.”31 It is only in a confrontation
with skepticism that the eventual everyday comes into view, because it is
skepticism that resists it, that resists the event of the ordinary. On Cavell’s
account, skepticism is far from being what Rorty and others claim it is:
a peculiar hang-​up picked up by over-​eager undergraduates who have
read too much Descartes and Hume and not enough Dewey.32 Instead, it
is an expression of our deep discomfort with our finitude, our resistance
to accepting the world and acknowledging those with whom we share it.33
And it is a particularly pure example of a more general attempt to speak
without accepting responsibility for the conditions that make speech intel-
ligible—​an attempt to disown the criteria of our language, to speak with-
out speaking to someone, to speak without being someone who needs or
wants to speak, and who wants and needs to be addressed. This avoid-
ance is most prominent in skepticism concerning other minds, the mode
of skepticism upon which Cavell places special emphasis in his practical
thought. Such skepticism asks, with Mill in An Examination of Sir William
Hamilton’s Philosophy, “By what evidence do I know … that the walking
and speaking figures which I see and hear, have sensations and thoughts,
or in other words, possess Minds?”34 It is plain enough that posing this
question requires that one bracket the sentience and humanity of the other,
the walking and speaking figure I see and hear. But Cavell argues that this
gesture has not been properly appreciated, and that the skeptical investi-
gation, whatever its result, responds to a need to so bracket the other, to
hold her off, and make her feelings—​typically, in the Investigations and
the standard mid-​twentieth-​century discussions of the topic, feelings of
pain—​objects of cognition, and not something that demands my acknowl-
edgment and my concern. In the skeptical investigation, knowledge of
the other is sought in some mark or sign from or in the other. Cavell’s
response is to argue that no such mark—​not even a mark that fits all of the

10 | Introduction
skeptic’s criteria—​could in principle satisfy the skeptic, as the search for
it is a deflection from a knowledge that the skeptic denies—​that is, fails to
acknowledge. The mark or sign is one that the skeptic himself must give;
the test is one he himself must pass.
It is on the basis of these first two chapters that I take up the more
obviously political aspects of Cavell’s work. In the third chapter, I con-
sider Cavell’s attempt to develop the political implications of ordinary
language philosophy in his account of the political claim. Just as the ordi-
nary language philosopher speaks for a community of speakers who have
lost sight of what they say when, so on Cavell’s account, political actors
lodge “claims to community” that strive to recall a community of citizens
that has lost sight of who they are and what they share. Cavell empha-
sizes the influence of Rousseau’s conception of political autonomy on his
understanding of the political claim. For some, the appeal to Rousseau
is problematic, as he has been taken by readers like Isaiah Berlin as a
proto-​totalitarian precisely on the grounds that he encourages a “mon-
strous impersonation” in which one person purports to say not just what
is good for the other but what the other himself wills, and on this basis, in
Rousseau’s infamous phrase, “force him to be free.”35 I review this argu-
ment and the aspect of Rousseau’s thought that inspires it, and demonstrate
that the objection rests upon a misunderstanding of both Rousseau’s texts
and the nature of the political claim under consideration. In particular,
such criticisms miss the manner in which political claims are provocative
contributions to situations in which there is conflict over the nature of the
community, over who we are and what we will. Such provocation is not
meant to inspire obedience, but rather debate and reflection. As in ordinary
language philosophy, the use of the first person plural registers a claim that
is at once authoritative and disputable: if, on due consideration, the other
rejects my claim, the claim falls short, but it does not, for all that, lose its
authority. Rather, the other indicates that he is not in community with me,
not a member of the community for whom I speak. I review a number of
examples of political claims in Cavell’s sense of the term so as to bring
out his distinctive understanding of citizenship and of the relation between
“ethical” questions of integrity and self-​knowledge and “political” ques-
tions of community identity and intention. As I show, Cavell’s understand-
ing of the politics of public speech allows for a rich account of the nature
of the political reproach as well as that of the political claim.
In the final two chapters, I turn to Cavell’s most substantial and sustained
contribution to political thought, his understanding of Emersonian perfec-
tionism. Cavell does not advance a definition of Emersonian perfectionism.

Introduction | 11
Instead, he develops his account of it through his engagement with a series
of exemplars, first and foremost the American Romantics Emerson and
Thoreau. These are at once widely cherished and widely dismissed authors,
writers with whom American philosophy begins, and whom that very phi-
losophy chronically disavows. Why this is so and what it means is a central
puzzle in Cavell’s later work, one that he argues is decisive for our politi-
cal culture. If the Emersonians in general have faced standing neglect from
contemporary philosophers, Thoreau has faced a particular neglect at the
hands of most of Cavell’s commentators. Though it was Thoreau’s prose
that initially inspired Cavell’s attempt to use American transcendentalism
to “underwrite” ordinary language philosophy, Cavell’s later, more pro-
grammatic embrace of Emerson has led many to disregard his early book,
The Senses of Walden, and treat it as a dry run for later, more important
work.36 This tendency is understandable, given that the book is dedicated
in part to the idea that there is a philosophical way other than argument
of “accepting full responsibility for one’s discourse.”37 Such a book defies
translation into the analytic, argumentative terms familiar to philosophy.
Accordingly, in my fourth and most impressionistic chapter I try to show
that and how Cavell’s study of Thoreau’s Socratic effort to wake us to our
own lives remains important for our understanding of the political sig-
nificance of the Cavellian engagement with skepticism and skepticism’s
aversion to ordinary life.38 Cavell’s reading of Thoreau both brings out and
draws upon hitherto unnoticed resemblances between Walden and Being
and Time, and I conclude the chapter by considering the manner in which
a proper understanding of these works throws into high relief the profound
differences between their authors’ respective understandings of politics
and of the place of philosophy in public life.
In the fifth and final chapter of the book, I turn to the details of Cavell’s
late, more systematic conception of Emersonian perfectionism, a concep-
tion in which the various themes of the book come together. My interpre-
tation of that perfectionism focuses on an aspect of it that Cavell scholars
have not yet sufficiently explored: its relation to Kant. The importance of
this relation is of course plain, given Emerson’s acknowledgment that the
term transcendentalism comes from Kant’s use of the term transcenden-
tal.39 But what the precise relation between the two might be is not wholly
clear, particularly when transcendentalism is understood in Cavell’s sense.
I demonstrate that, for Cavell, receptivity is the key to Emerson’s inheri-
tance of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, as partiality is the key to his inheri-
tance of Kant’s practical philosophy. Both receptivity and partiality are
characterized by a refusal to categorically distinguish between passivity

12 | Introduction
and activity. In my discussion I emphasize the question of partiality, argu-
ing that this should be understood as a paradoxical but deeply significant
rethinking of Kantian autonomy. Cavell hints as much when he writes that
Emerson “composed ‘Self-​Reliance’ with [Kant’s] Groundwork as if open
at his elbow,” but such hints have not yet been taken as seriously as I take
them.40 Partiality for Emerson names both the individual agent’s inherent
lack and its want for change and growth. Such desire is directed not at
objects but at other subjects with whom the self as partial is necessarily
in relation. The shameful experience of lack is, on Cavell’s account, the
necessary precondition for growth and for the transformative encounter
with an exemplary other who enables the self’s conversion of the nihilistic
conformity of everyday life as it is now lived. Emerson’s and Cavell’s
almost Hegelian emphases upon this necessary moment of negativity are
easily overlooked, but are, as I demonstrate, absolutely central to their
“rethinking” of the Kantian conception of autonomy, in which the role
played by law in Kant is taken by the agent’s attraction to the other and
what she exemplifies. I conclude the chapter by clarifying Cavell’s related
insistence that Emersonian perfectionism “specifically sets itself against
any idea of ultimate perfection,” arguing, first, that this does not condemn
Cavell’s agents to an endless and hence nihilistic pursuit of an unrealizable
telos, as it might seem; and, second, that the grounds of this refusal must
be understood if we would appreciate Cavell’s important conception of
democratic hope.41 For Cavell, the political problem of hope is not a matter
of what will or is likely to happen, but that of becoming who we are. In our
dark times, characterized as they are by political and environmental prob-
lems that seem to dwarf our apparent collective capacities, this problem is
a very real one for democrats.
For some, the thought of a book on Cavell and public life might seem
mildly absurd, given his insistence upon the first person, on the one hand,
and the kind of person he is or is perceived to be, on the other. How could
someone as brilliant, self-​involved, educated, eccentric, and cloistered
make a contribution to our understanding of democratic or ordinary life
by examining himself and his reading of texts such as Emerson’s Essays?
Whatever he might find in any such an examination surely has nothing to
do with the rest of us. Cavell addresses this suspicion late in The Claim of
Reason: “Human beings,” he writes,

do not naturally desire isolation and incomprehension, but union or reunion,

call it community. It is in faithfulness to that desire that one declares one-
self unknown… . The wish to be extraordinary, exceptional, unique, thus

Introduction | 13
 reveals the wish to be ordinary, everyday. (One does not, after all, wish to
become a monster, even though the realization of one’s wish for unique-
ness would make one a monster.) So both the wish for the exceptional and
for the everyday are foci of romanticism. One can think of romanticism as
the discovery that the everyday is an exceptional achievement. Call it the
achievement of the human.42

Anticipating the impatience such claims might provoke, Cavell adds, “I

would not waste my spirit preaching hardness to a stone.” If a democratic
everyday were as present as the hardness of a stone, there would be no
need to invoke it, nor any sense in doing so. And one invokes it—​Cavell
invokes it—​for those with whom one wishes to share a human community,
with whom one wishes to be human and free. This is a life that cannot
be seized, but must be received, as it is not the object of our will alone.
As Cavell puts it, “if it is to become nearer, it must come nearer, draw
closer. But what can this mean? With respect to approaching America,
it means: I cannot approach it alone; the eventual human community is
between us, or nowhere.”43

14 | Introduction
 CHAPTER 1 Ordinary Language and
Philosophical Conversion

Education is not what the professions of certain men assert it to be.

They presumably assert that they put into the soul knowledge that
isn’t in it, as though they were putting sight into blind eyes… . But
the present argument … indicates that the power is in the soul of
each, and that the instrument with which each learns—​just as an eye
is not able to turn toward the light from the dark without the whole
body—​must be turned around.
—​​Plato

A curious, indeed uncanny thing, that we must first leap onto the soil
on which we really stand.
—​​Heidegger

There is no more central or enduring theme in Cavell’s work than that of

the ordinary. Cavell appeals to this notion in enormously varied contexts,
each of which brings out a different aspect of it. But if this multifaceted
notion has evolved and grown in complexity over the course of the last
half-​century, it has not broken loose from its origins in Cavell’s early work
in ordinary language philosophy. As a name, “ordinary language philoso-
phy” lumps together the work of a variety of disparate figures: on the one
hand, the later Wittgenstein and his followers, a number of whom were
with him at Cambridge, such as G. E. M. Anscombe and John Wisdom;
and on the other, J. L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle, P. F. Strawson, Anthony Flew,
and other Oxford philosophers who, though influenced by Wittgenstein,
took their own approach to the philosophical analysis of ordinary linguis-
tic practice and use.1 Very roughly, one might distinguish the two by noting
that while the Wittgensteinian approach emphasizes the need to break with
metaphysics and philosophy as currently practiced, the so-​called Oxford
School was more interested in reforming philosophy and pursuing it in
new, more constructive ways, rendering what was once metaphysics into
something like a science. Philosophy in their view was not (analogous
to) a mental or cultural sickness, and if it stops, it is not in a successful
therapy or cure, however provisional, but in the development of alternative
techniques and approaches—​much as, say, Helmholtz and Wundt in the
nineteenth century stopped doing philosophy and began doing experimen-
tal psychology. 2 This divergence of the Oxford School from Wittgenstein
was a function of training as much as temperament, Oxford Philosophy
being practiced by scholars with a strong classical background—​and an
enduring commitment to Aristotle in particular—​that lent itself readily to
the development of an ongoing research program that might supplement if
not rival that initiated by Descartes.3
While Wittgenstein today remains an influential figure in Anglo-​
American philosophy, albeit one who is read quite differently than he was
fifty years ago, the Oxford School has largely been left behind.4 Though
philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and John Searle, and literary and
social theorists like Judith Butler, Stanley Fish, and Paul de Man have
made extensive use of some of Austin’s terms and ideas, Austin’s own dis-
tinctive approach to philosophy is not emulated today.5 Cavell, however,
remains deeply committed to those aspects of ordinary language philoso-
phy celebrated in his early essays from the late 1950s and the early 1960s.
Now as then his gaze is fixed steadily upon Austin and Wittgenstein, with
figures like Strawson being mentioned only in passing, if at all.6 Of the
two, Cavell was exposed first to Austin, when Austin taught for a term at
Harvard in 1955, leading a seminar and presenting the material which later
went into “A Plea for Excuses” and How to Do Things with Words; it was
only after he had written the first of the essays upon which he still draws
today and the first he wrote alone, 1958’s “Must We Mean What We Say?,”
that Cavell began to seriously work through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations.
Though accounts of Cavell’s reception of ordinary language philoso-
phy tend to present Austin and Wittgenstein as two moments in a more or
less continuous whole, Cavell’s encounter with Austin was distinctive and
decisive enough in its influence upon him and his later work that it needs to
be considered in its own terms. Indeed, that initial encounter sets the stage
for all that comes after it—​not simply because, as Mulhall and Hammer
have observed in their fine books on Cavell, it is an Austinian idea that our

16 | Becoming Who We Are

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 They asked, “And will you tell him?”
I said, “I must tell him the truth; if he asks, I will tell him.”
They then cried out, “Oh, Missi, tell him not! Everything shall be
brought back to you at once, and no one will be allowed again to steal
from you.”
Then said I, “Be quick! Everything must be returned before he
comes. Away, away! and let me get ready to meet the great Chief on
the Man-of-war.”
Hitherto, no thief could ever be found, and no Chief had power to
cause anything to be restored to me; but now, in an incredibly brief
space of time, one came running to the Mission House with a pot,
another with a pan, another with a blanket, others with knives, forks,
plates, and all sorts of stolen property. The Chiefs called me to
receive these things, but I replied,—
“Lay them all down at the door, bring everything together quickly;
I have no time to speak with you!”
I delayed my toilet, enjoying mischievously the magical effect of an
approaching vessel that might bring penalty to thieves. At last the
Chiefs, running in breathless haste, called out to me,—
“Missi, Missi, do tell us, is the stolen property all here?”
Of course I could not tell, but, running out, I looked on the
promiscuous heap of my belongings, and said,—
“I don’t see the lid of the kettle there yet!”
One Chief said, “No, Missi, for it is on the other side of the island;
but tell him not, I have sent for it, and it will be here to-morrow.”
I answered, “I am glad you have brought back so much; and now, if
you three Chiefs, Nauka, Miaki, and Nowar, do not run away when
he comes, he will not likely punish you; but, if you and your people
run away, he will ask me why you are afraid and I will be forced to
tell him! Keep near me and you are all safe; only there must be no
more stealing from me.”
They said, “We are in black fear, but we will keep near you, and
our bad conduct to you is done.”
The charm and joy of that morning are fresh to me still, when
H.M.S. Cordelia, Captain Vernon, steamed into our lovely Harbour.
The Commander, having heard rumour of my dangers on Tanna,
kindly came on shore as soon as the ship cast anchor, with two boats,
and a number of his officers and men, so far armed. He was dressed
in splendid uniform, being a tall and handsome man, and he and his
attendants made a grand and imposing show. On seeing Captain
Vernon’s boat nearing the shore, and the men glittering in gold lace
and arms, Miaki the Chief left my side on the beach and rushed
towards his village. I concluded that he had run for it through terror,
but he had other and more civilized intentions in his heathen head!
Having obtained, from some trader or visitor in previous days, a
soldier’s old red coat, he had resolved to rise to the occasion and
appear in his best before the Captain and his men. As I was shaking
hands with them and welcoming them to Tanna, Miaki returned with
the short red coat on, buttoned tightly round his otherwise naked
body; and, surmounted by his ugly painted face and long whipcords
of twisted hair, it completely spoiled any appearance that he might
otherwise have had of savage freedom, and made him look a dirty
and insignificant creature.
The Captain was talking to me, his men stood in order near by,—to
my eyes, oh how charming a glimpse of Home life!—when Miaki
marched up and took his place most consequentially at my side. He
felt himself the most important personage in the scene, and with an
attempt at haughty dignity he began to survey the visitors. All eyes
were fixed on the impudent little man, and the Captain asked,—
“What sort of character is this?”
I replied, “This is Miaki, our great war Chief;” and whispered to
the Captain to be on his guard, as this man knew a little English, and
might understand or misunderstand just enough to make it
afterwards dangerous to me.
The Captain only muttered, “The contemptible creature!”
But such words were far enough beyond Miaki’s vocabulary, so he
looked on and grinned complacently.
At last he said, “Missi, this great Chief whom Queen Victoria has
sent to visit you in her Man-of-war, cannot go over the whole of this
island so as to be seen by all our people; and I wish you to ask him if
he will stand by a tree, and allow me to put a spear on the ground at
his heel, and we will make a nick in it at the top of his head, and the
spear will be sent round the island to let all the people see how tall
this great man is!”
They were delighted at the good Captain agreeing to their simple
request; and that spear was exhibited to thousands, as the vessel, her
Commander, officers, and men, were afterwards talked of round and
round the island.
Captain Vernon was extremely kind, and offered to do anything in
his power for me, thus left alone on the island amongst such savages;
but, as my main difficulties were connected with my spiritual work
amongst them rousing up their cruel prejudices, I did not see how his
kindness could effectually interpose. At his suggestion, however, I
sent a general invitation to all the Chiefs within reach, to meet the
Captain next morning at my house. True to their instincts of
suspicion and fear, they despatched all their women and children to
the beach on the opposite side of the island beyond reach of danger,
and next morning my house was crowded with armed men,
manifestly much afraid. Punctually at the hour appointed, 10 a.m.,
the Captain came on shore; and soon thereafter twenty Chiefs were
seated with him in my house. He very kindly spent about an hour,
giving them wise counsels and warning them against outrages on
strangers, all calculated to secure our safety and advance the
interests of our Mission work. He then invited all the Chiefs to go on
board and see his vessel. They were taken to see the Armoury, and
the sight of the big guns running so easily on rails vastly astonished
them. He then placed them round us on deck and showed them two
shells discharged towards the Ocean, at which, as they burst and fell
far off, splash—splashing into the water, the terror of the Natives
visibly increased. But, when he sent a large ball crashing through a
cocoa-nut grove, breaking the trees like straws and cutting its way
clear and swift, they were quite dumb-foundered and pled to be
again set safely on shore. After receiving each some small gift,
however, they were reconciled to the situation, and returned
immensely interested in all that they had seen. Doubtless many a
wild romance was spun by these savage heads, in trying to describe
and hand down to others the wonders of the fire-god of the sea, and
the Captain of the great white Queen. How easily it all lends itself to
the service of poetry and myth!
 About this time also, the London Missionary Society’s ship, the
John Williams, visited me, having on board the Rev. Messrs. Turner,
Inglis, Baker, and Macfarlan. They urged me to go with them on a
three weeks’ trip round the Islands, as I had lately suffered much
from fever and ague, and was greatly reduced by it. But a party of
Bush natives had killed one of our Harbour people the week before,
and sadly bruised several others with their clubs, and I feared a
general war of revenge if I left—for my presence amongst them at
least helped to keep the peace. I also was afraid that, if I left, they
might not allow me to return to the island,—so I declined once more
the pleasure of much-needed change and rest. Further, as the John
Williams brought me the wood for building a Church which I had
bought on Aneityum, the Tannese now plainly saw that, though their
conduct had been very bad, and I had suffered much on their island,
I had no intention of leaving them or of giving up the work of
Jehovah.
Too much, perhaps, had I hoped for from the closely succeeding
visits of the good Bishop Selwyn, the gallant Captain Vernon, and the
Mission ship John Williams. The impressions were undoubtedly
good, but evanescent; and things soon went on as they had done
before among our benighted Tannese, led by Satan at his will, and
impelled to the grossest deeds of heathen darkness. The change by
Divine grace, however, we knew to be possible; and for this we
laboured and prayed incessantly, fainting not, or if fainting, only to
rise again and tackle every duty in the name of the Lord who had
placed us there.
Fever and ague had attacked me fourteen times severely with
slighter recurring attacks almost continuously after my first three
months on the island, and I now felt the necessity of taking the hint
of the Tannese Chief before referred to,—“Sleep on the higher
ground.” Having also received medical counsel to the same effect,
though indeed experience was painfully sufficient testimony, I
resolved to remove my house, and began to look about for a suitable
site. There rose behind my present site, a hill about three hundred
feet high or rather more, surrounded on all sides by a valley, and
swept by the breezes of the trade winds, being only separated from
the Ocean by a narrow neck of land. On this I had set my heart; there
was room for a Mission House and a Church, for which indeed
Nature seemed to have adapted it. I proceeded to buy up every claim
by the Natives to any portion of the hill, paying each publicly and in
turn, so that there might be no trouble afterwards. I then purchased
from a Trader the deck planks of a shipwrecked vessel, with which to
construct a house of two apartments, a bedroom and a small store-
room adjoining it, to which I purposed to transfer and add the old
house as soon as I was able.
Just at this juncture, the fever smote me again more severely than
ever; my weakness after this attack was so great, that I felt as if I
never could rally again. With the help of my faithful Aneityumese
Teacher, Abraham, and his wife, however, I made what appeared my
last effort to creep, I could not climb, up the hill to get a breath of
wholesome air. When about two-thirds up the hill, I became so faint
that I concluded I was dying. Lying down on the ground, sloped
against the root of a tree to keep me from rolling to the bottom, I
took farewell of old Abraham, of my Mission work, and of everything
around! In this weak state I lay, watched over by my faithful
companion, and fell into a quiet sleep. When consciousness returned,
I felt a little stronger, and a faint gleam of hope and life came back to
my soul.
Abraham and his devoted wife, Nafatu, lifted me and carried me to
the top of the hill. There they laid me on cocoa-nut leaves on the
ground, and erected over me a shade or screen of the same; and
there the two faithful souls, inspired surely by something diviner
even than mere human pity, gave me the cocoa-nut juice to drink and
fed me with native food and kept me living—I know not for how long.
Consciousness did, however, fully return. The trade wind refreshed
me day by day. The Tannese seemed to have given me up for dead;
and providentially none of them looked near us for many days.
Amazingly my strength returned, and I began planning about my
new house on the hill. Afraid again to sleep at the old site, I slept
under the tree, and sheltered by the cocoa-nut leaf screen, while
preparing my new bedroom.
 “THERE THEY LAID ME ON COCOA-NUT LEAVES ON THE
GROUND.”

Here again, but for these faithful souls, the Aneityumese Teacher
and his wife, I must have been baffled, and would have died in the
effort. The planks of the wreck, and all other articles required they
fetched and carried, and it taxed my utmost strength to get them in
some way planted together. But life depended on it. It was at length
accomplished; and after that time I suffered comparatively little from
anything like continuous attacks of fever and ague. That noble old
soul, Abraham, stood by me as an angel of God in sickness and in
danger; he went at my side wherever I had to go; he helped me
willingly to the last inch of strength in all that I had to do; and it was
perfectly manifest that he was doing all this not from mere human
love, but for the sake of Jesus. That man had been a Cannibal in his
heathen days, but by the grace of God there he stood verily a new
creature in Christ Jesus. Any trust, however sacred or valuable, could
be absolutely reposed in him; and in trial or danger, I was often
refreshed by that old Teacher’s prayers, as I used to be by the prayers
of my saintly father in my childhood’s home. No white man could
have been a more valuable helper to me in my perilous
circumstances, and no person, white or black, could have shown
more fearless and chivalrous devotion.
When I have read or heard the shallow objections of irreligious
scribblers and talkers, hinting that there was no reality in
conversions, and that Mission effort was but waste, oh, how my heart
has yearned to plant them just one week on Tanna, with the “natural”
man all around in the person of Cannibal and Heathen, and only the
one “spiritual” man in the person of the converted Abraham, nursing
them, feeding them, saving them “for the love of Jesus,”—that I
might just learn how many hours it took to convince them that Christ
in man was a reality after all! All the scepticism of Europe would hide
its head in foolish shame; and all its doubts would dissolve under one
glance of the new light that Jesus, and Jesus alone, pours from the
converted Cannibal’s eye.
Perhaps it may surprise some unsophisticated reader to learn,
though others who know more will be quite prepared for it, that this
removal of our house, as also Mr. Mathieson’s for a similar reason,
was severely criticised by the people who try to evangelize the world
while sitting in easy chairs at home. Precious nonsense appeared, for
instance, in the Nova Scotian Church Magazine, about my house
being planted on the fighting ground of the Natives, and thereby
courting and provoking hostilities. As matter of fact, the hill-top was
too narrow to accommodate both the Church and my house, and had
to be levelled out for that purpose, and it was besides surrounded by
a deep valley on three sides; but the arm-chair critics, unwilling to
believe in the heathen hatred of the Gospel, had to invent some
reason out of their own brains to account for my being so persecuted
and plundered. In truth, we were learning by suffering for the benefit
of those who should follow us to these Islands,—that health could be
found only on the higher levels, swept by the breath of the trade
winds, and that fever and ague lay in wait near the shore, and
especially on the leeward side. Even Mr. Inglis had his house on
Aneityum removed also to the higher ground; and no Missionary
since has been located in the fever-beds by the swamp or shore. Life
is God’s great gift, to be preserved for Him, not thrown away.
 CHAPTER VIII.
MORE MISSION LEAVES FROM TANNA.

The Blood-Fiend Unleashed.—In the Camp of the Enemy.—A

Typical South Sea Trader.—Young Rarip’s Death.—The
Trader’s Retribution.—Worship and War.—Saved from
Strangling.—Wrath Restrained.—Under the Axe.—The
Clubbing of Namuri.—Native Saint and Martyr.—Bribes
Refused.—Widows Saved from Strangling.—The Sinking of the
Well.—Church-Building on Tanna.—Ancient Stone God.—
Printing First Tannese Book.—A Christian Captain.—Levelled
Muskets.—A French Refugee.—A Villainous Captain.—Like
Master Like Men.—Wrecked on Purpose.—The Kanaka Traffic.
—A Heathen Festival.—Sacrifices to Idols.—Heathen Dances
and Sham Fights.—Six Native Teachers.—A Homeric Episode.
—Victims for a Cannibal Feast.—The Jaws of Death.—Nahak or
Sorcery.—Killing Me by Nahak.—Nahak Defied.—Protected by
Jehovah.—Almost Persuaded.—Escorted to the Battlefield.—
Praying for Enemies.—Our Canoe on the Reef.—A Perilous
Pilgrimage.—Rocks and Waters.

The Peace-party, my band of twenty Chiefs already spoken of, kept

all the tribes around the Harbour acting only on the defensive for a
season. But the Inland people murdered eight Chiefs from a distance
who, after paying a friendly visit to the Harbour people, were
returning to their homes. At the same time, one of the Inland Chiefs,
who had pled with his people to give up war and live at peace with
surrounding tribes, was overthrown and murdered by his own men,
as also his brother and four wives and two children, and was
supplanted by another leader more akin to their wishes and tastes.
They proceeded, according to their custom of declaring war, to shoot
one of the Harbour men and to break down their fences and
plantations. So once again, the blood-fiend was unleashed,—the
young men of Tanna being as eager to get up a battle, as young men
of the world at home seem eager to get up a concert or a ball.
The Harbour people advised me to remove a mile further away
from these warriors; but the Inland tribes sent me word not to desert
my house, lest it might be burned and plundered, for that they
themselves had no quarrel against me. Early next morning, I,
accompanied by Abraham and another Aneityumese, started off to
visit the Bush party, and if possible avert the impending war, but
without informing my Harbour people. About four miles from our
Station, we met the Chief of our farthest inland friendly tribe with all
his fighting men under arms. Forcing me to disclose our errand, he
reluctantly allowed us to pass. Praying to Jesus for guidance and
protection, we pressed along the path through the thick bush four
miles further still. My two attendants, sinking into silence, betrayed
growing fear; and I, after trying to cheer them, had at their most
earnest appeal to walk on also in silence, my heart and theirs going
up to Jesus in prayer. We passed many deserted villages and
plantations, but saw no living person. At last, unexpectedly, we
stumbled upon the whole host assembled on the Village Common at
a great feast; and at sight of us every man rushed for his weapons of
war. Keeping my Teachers close beside me, I walked straight into the
midst of them, unarmed of course, and cried as loud as I possibly
could in their own tongue,—
“My love to all you men of Tanna! Fear not; I am your friend; I
love you every one, and am come to tell you about Jehovah God and
good conduct such as pleases Him!”
An old Chief thereon came and took me by the hand, and, after
leading me about among the people, said,—
“Sit down beside me here and talk with me; by-and-by the people
will not be afraid.”
A few ran off to the bush in terror. Others appeared to be beside
themselves with delight. They danced round us frantically, striking
the ground and beating a canoe with their clubs, while shouting to
each other, “Missi is come! Missi is come!” The confusion grew every
moment wilder, and there was a fiendish look about the whole scene.
Men and boys rushed thronging around from every quarter, all
painted in varied and savage devices, and some with their hair stuck
full of fantastic feathers. Women and children peered through the
bush, and instantaneously disappeared. Even in that anxious
moment, it struck me that they had many more children amongst
them than the people around the shores, where women and children
are destroyed by the cruelty and vices of “civilized” visitors! After
spending about an hour, conversing and answering all questions,
they apparently agreed to give up the war, and allowed me to conduct
the Worship amongst them. They then made me a present of cocoa-
nuts and sugar-cane and two fowls, which my attendants received
from them; and I, in return, presented a red shirt to the principal
Chief, and distributed a quantity of fish-hooks and pieces of red
calico amongst the rest. The leading men shook hands graciously,
and invited us often to come and see them, for after that visit they
would harm no person connected with our Mission. Meantime, the
Harbour people having learned where we had gone, had concluded
that we would all be killed and feasted upon. When we returned, with
a present of food, and informed them what we had heard and seen,
their astonishment was beyond measure; it had never been so seen
after this manner on Tanna! The peace continued for more than four
weeks, an uncommonly prolonged truce. All hands were busy at
work. Many yam plantations were completed, and all fences were got
into excellent condition for a year.
The prejudices and persecutions of Heathens were a sore enough
trial, but sorer and more hopeless was the wicked and contaminating
influence of, alas, my fellow-countrymen. One, for instance, a
Captain Winchester, living with a native woman at the head of the
bay as a trader, a dissipated wretch, though a well-educated man,
was angry forsooth at this state of peace! Apparently there was not
the usual demand for barter for the fowls, pigs, etc., in which he
traded. He developed at once a wonderful interest in their affairs,
presented all the Chiefs around with powder, caps, and balls, and
lent among them a number of flash-muskets. He urged them not to
be afraid of war, as he would supply any amount of ammunition. I
remonstrated, but he flatly told me that peace did not suit his
purposes! Incited and encouraged thus, these poor Heathen people
were goaded into a most unjust war on neighbouring tribes. The
Trader immediately demanded a high price for the weapons he had
lent; the price of powder, caps, and balls rose exorbitantly with every
fresh demand; his yards were crowded with poultry and pigs, which
he readily disposed of to passing vessels; and he might have amassed
great sums of money but for his vile dissipations. Captain
Winchester, now glorying in the war, charged a large hog for a wine-
glass full of powder, or three or four balls, or ten gun-caps; he was
boastful of his “good luck” in getting rid of all his old muskets and
filling his yards with pigs and fowls. Such is the infernal depth, when
the misery and ruin of many are thought to be more than atoned for
by the wealth and prosperity of a few who trade in their doom!
Miaki the war Chief had a young brother, Rarip by name, about
eighteen years of age. When this war began, he came to live with me
at the Mission House. After it had raged some time, Miaki forced him
to join the fighting men; but he escaped through the bush, and
returned to me, saying,—
“Missi, I hate this fighting; it is not good to kill men; I will live with
you!”
Again the War Chief came, and forced my dear young Rarip to join
the hosts. Of course, I could only plead; I could not prevent him. This
time, he placed him at his own side in the midst of his warriors. On
coming in sight of the enemy, and hearing their first yells as they
rushed from the bush, a bullet pierced young Rarip’s breast and he
fell dead into the arms of Miaki. The body was carried home to his
brother’s village, with much wailing, and a messenger ran to tell me
that Rarip was dead. On hasting thither, I found him quite dead, and
the centre of a tragic ceremonial. Around him, some sitting, others
lying on the ground, were assembled all the women and girls, tearing
their hair, wounding themselves with split bamboos and broken
bottles, dashing themselves headlong to the earth, painting all black
their faces, breasts, and arms, and wailing with loud lamentations!
Men were also there, knocking their heads against the trees, gashing
their bodies with knives till they ran with streaks of blood, and
indulging in every kind of savage symbol of grief and anguish. My
heart broke to see them, and to think that they knew not to look to
our dear Lord Jesus for consolation.
I returned to the Mission House, and brought a white sheet and
some tape, in which the body of dear young Rarip was wrapped and
prepared for the grave. The Natives appeared to be gratified at this
mark of respect; and all agreed that Rarip should have under my
direction a Christian burial. The men prepared the grave in a spot
selected near to his own house; I read the Word of God, and offered
prayer to Jehovah, with a psalm of praise, amidst a scene of weeping
and lamentation never to be forgotten; and the thought burned
through my very soul—oh, when, when will the Tannese realize what
I am now thinking and praying about, the life and immortality
brought to light through Jesus?
As the war still raged on, and many more were killed, vengeance
threatened the miserable Trader. Miaki attacked him thus,—
“You led us into this war. You deceived us, and we began it. Rarip
is dead, and many others. Your life shall yet go for his.”
Captain Winchester, heartless as a dog so long as pigs and fowls
came to the yard at whatever cost to others’ lives, now trembled like
a coward for himself. He implored me to let him and his Marè wife
sleep at my house for safety; but I refused to allow my Mission to be
in any way identified with his crimes. The Natives from other islands,
whom he kept and wrought like slaves, he now armed with muskets
for his defence; but, having no faith in them protecting or even
warning him, he implored me to send one of my Teachers, to assist
his wife in watching till he snatched a few hours of sleep every day,
and, if awake, he would sell his life as dearly as he could by aid of
musket and revolver. The Teachers were both afraid and disinclined
to go; and I could not honestly ask them to do so. His peril and terror
became so real that by night he slept in his boat anchored out in the
centre of the bay, with his arms beside him, and a crew ready to start
off at the approach of danger and lose everything; while by day he
kept watch on shore, armed, and also ready to fly. Thus his miserable
existence dragged on, keeping watch alternatively with his wife, till a
trading vessel called and carried him off with all that he had rescued
—for which deliverance we were unfeignedly thankful! The war,
which he had wickedly instigated, lingered on for three months; and
then, by a present given secretly to two leading Chiefs, I managed to
bring it to a close. But feelings of revenge for the slain, burned
fiercely in many breasts; and young men had old feuds handed on to
them by the recital of their fathers’ deeds of blood.
All through this war, I went to the fighting ground every Sabbath,
and held worship amongst our Harbour people. Hundreds assembled
around me, and listened respectfully, but they refused to give up the
war. One day, I determined to go through the bush that lay between
and speak and pray with the enemies also. Our Harbour folks
opposed me, and one leading man said,—
“Missi, pray only for us, and your God will be strong to help us and
we will not be afraid! You must not pray with the enemy, lest He may
help them too.”
After this episode, I made it my duty always to visit both Camps,
when I went to the fighting ground, and to have worship with both,—
teaching them that Jehovah my God was angry at all such scenes and
would not fight for either, that He commanded them to live at peace.
About this time, our Sabbath audiences at the Mission numbered
forty or so. Nowar and three or four more, and only they, seemed to
love and serve Jesus. They were, however, changeable and doubtful,
though they exerted a good influence on their villages, and were
generally friendly to us and to the Worship. Events sometimes for a
season greatly increased our usefulness. For instance, one of the
Sacred Men when fishing on the coral reef was bitten by a poisonous
fish. After great agony, he died, and his relatives were preparing to
strangle his two wives that their spirits might accompany and serve
him in the other world. Usually such tragedies were completed
before I ever heard of them. On this occasion, I had called at the
village that very day, and succeeded in persuading them to bury him
alone—his wives being saved alive at my appeal. Thus the idea got to
be talked of, and the horrible custom was being undermined—the
strangling of widows!
In connection with such poisonings, I may mention that some of
these fishes were deadly poisonous; others were unwholesome, and
even poisonous, only at certain seasons; and still others were always
nutritious and good. For our own part, we used fish sparingly and
cautiously; and the doubtful ones we boiled with a piece of silver in
the water. If the silver became discoloured, we regarded the fish as
unwholesome; if the silver remained pure, we could risk it.
One morning at daybreak I found my house surrounded by armed
men, and a Chief intimated that they had assembled to take my life.
Seeing that I was entirely in their hands, I knelt down and gave
myself away body and soul to the Lord Jesus, for what seemed the
last time on earth. Rising, I went out to them, and began calmly
talking about their unkind treatment of me and contrasting it with all
my conduct towards them. I also plainly showed them what would be
the sad consequences, if they carried out their cruel purpose. At last
some of the Chiefs, who had attended the Worship, rose and said,—
“Our conduct has been bad; but now we will fight for you, and kill
all those who hate you.”

“AT DAYBREAK I FOUND MY HOUSE SURROUNDED.”

Grasping hold of their leader, I held him fast till he promised never
to kill any one on my account, for Jesus taught us to love our
enemies and always to return good for evil! During this scene, many
of the armed men slunk away into the bush, and those who remained
entered into a bond to be friendly and to protect us. But again their
Public Assembly resolved that we should be killed, because, as they
said, they hated Jehovah and the Worship; for it made them afraid to
do as they had always done. If I would give up visiting the villages,
and praying and talking with them about Jehovah, they intimated
that they would like me to stay and trade with them, as they liked the
Traders but hated the Missionaries! I told them that the hope of
being able to teach them the Worship of Jehovah alone kept me
living amongst them; that I was there, not for gain or pleasure, but
because I loved them, and pitied their estate, and sought their good
continually by leading them to know and serve the only true God.
One of the Chiefs, who had lived in Sydney and spoke English,
replied for all the rest,—
“Missi, our fathers loved and worshipped whom you call the Devil,
the Evil Spirit; and we are determined to do the same, for we love the
conduct of our fathers. Missi Turner came here and tried to break
down our worship, but our fathers fought him and he left us. They
fought also Peta, the Samoan Teacher, and he fled. They fought and
killed some of the Samoan Teachers placed on the other side of the
Harbour, and their companions left. We killed the last foreigner that
lived in Tanna before you came here. We murdered the Aneityumese
Teachers, and burned down their houses. After each of these acts,
Tanna was good; we all lived like our fathers, and sickness and death
left us. Now, our people are determined to kill you, if you do not
leave this island; for you are changing our customs and destroying
our worship, and we hate the Jehovah Worship.”
Then, surrounded by a number of men, who had spent some years
in the Colonies, he continued in a bitter strain to this effect,—
“The people of Sydney belong to your Britain; they know what is
right and wrong as well as you; and we have ourselves seen them
fishing, feasting, cooking, working, and seeking pleasure on the
Sabbath as on any other day. You say, we do not here need to cook
any food on Sabbaths or to toil at our ovens, but you yourself cook,
for you boil your kettle on that day! We have seen the people do all
the conduct at Sydney which you call bad, but which we love. You are
but one, they are many; they are right, and you must be wrong; you
are teaching lies for Worship.”
After many such speeches, I answered all the questions of the
people fully, and besides I cross-questioned my assailants on several
subjects, regarding which they grossly contradicted each other, till
the majority of voices cried out,—
“They are lying! Their words are crooked! Missi knows all the truth
about the people of Sydney!”
 Alas, I had to admit that what they reported was too true regarding
the godless multitudes at home who made the Sabbath a day of
pleasure, but not regarding Jehovah’s servants. By this time, they
were willing to remain quiet, and allowed me to talk of spiritual
things and of the blessings that the Sabbath and the Bible brought to
all other lands, and to conduct in their presence and hearing the
Worship of Jehovah.
But my enemies seldom slackened their hateful designs against my
life, however calmed or baffled for the moment. Within a few days of
the above events, when Natives in large numbers were assembled at
my house, a man furiously rushed on me with his axe; but a
Kaserumini Chief snatched a spade with which I had been working,
and dexterously defended me from instant death. Life in such
circumstances led me to cling very near to the Lord Jesus; I knew
not, for one brief hour, when or how attack might be made; and yet,
with my trembling hand clasped in the hand once nailed on Calvary,
and now swaying the sceptre of the Universe, calmness and peace
and resignation abode in my soul.
Next day, a wild Chief followed me about for four hours with his
loaded musket, and, though often directed towards me, God
restrained his hand. I spoke kindly to him, and attended to my work
as if he had not been there, fully persuaded that my God had placed
me there, and would protect me till my allotted task was finished.
Looking up in unceasing prayer to our dear Lord Jesus, I left all in
His hands, and felt immortal till my work was done. Trials and
hairbreadth escapes strengthened my faith, and seemed only to
nerve me for more to follow; and they did tread swiftly upon each
other’s heels. Without that abiding consciousness of the presence
and power of my dear Lord and Saviour, nothing else in all the world
could have preserved me from losing my reason and perishing
miserably. His words, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of
the world,” became to me so real that it would not have startled me
to behold Him, as Stephen did, gazing down upon the scene. I felt
His supporting power, as did St. Paul, when he cried, “I can do all
things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” It is the sober truth,
and it comes back to me sweetly after twenty years, that I had my
nearest and dearest glimpses of the face and smile of my blessed
Lord in those dread moments when musket, club, or spear was being
levelled at my life. Oh the bliss of living and enduring, as seeing
“Him who is invisible!”
One evening, I awoke three times to hear a Chief and his men
trying to force the door of my house. Though armed with muskets,
they had some sense of doing wrong, and were wholesomely afraid of
a little retriever dog which had often stood betwixt me and death.
God restrained them again; and next morning the report went all
round the Harbour, that those who tried to shoot me were “smitten
weak with fear,” and that shooting would not do. A plan was
therefore deliberately set on foot to fire the premises, and club us if
we attempted to escape. But our Aneityumese Teacher heard of it,
and God helped us to frustrate their designs. When they knew that
their plots were revealed to us, they seemed to lose faith in
themselves, and cast about to circumvent us in some more secret
way. Their evil was overruled for good.
Namuri, one of my Aneityumese Teachers, was placed at our
nearest village. There he had built a house for himself and his wife,
and there he led amongst the Heathen a pure and humble Christian
life. Almost every morning, he came and reported on the state of
affairs to me. Without books or a school, he yet instructed the
Natives in Divine things, conducted the Worship, and taught them
much by his good example. His influence was increasing, when one
morning a Sacred Man threw at him the kawas, or killing stone, a
deadly weapon, like a scythe stone in shape and thickness, usually
round but sometimes angular, and from eighteen to twenty inches
long. They throw it from a great distance and with fatal precision.
The Teacher, with great agility, warded his head and received the
deep cut from it in his left hand, reserving his right hand to guard
against the club that was certain to follow swiftly. The Priest sprang
upon him with his club and with savage yells. He evaded, yet also
received, many blows; and, rushing out of their hands, actually
reached the Mission House, bleeding, fainting, and pursued by
howling murderers. I had been anxiously expecting him, and hearing
the noise I ran out with all possible speed.
On seeing me, he sank down by a tree, and cried,—
“Missi, Missi, quick! and escape for your life! They are coming to
kill you; they say, they must kill us all to-day, and they have begun
with me; for they hate Jehovah and the Worship!”
 I hastened to the good Teacher where he lay; I bound up, washed,
and dressed his wounds; and God, by the mystery of His own
working, kept the infuriated Tannese watching at bay. Gradually they
began to disappear into the bush, and we conveyed the dear Teacher
to the Mission House. In three or four weeks, he so far recovered by
careful nursing that he was able to walk about again. Some
petitioned for him to return to the village; but I insisted, as a
preliminary, that the Harbour Chiefs should unitedly punish him
who had abused the Teacher; and this to test them, for he had only
carried out their own wishes,—Nowar excepted, and perhaps one or
two others. They made a pretence of atoning by presenting the
Teacher with a pig and some yams as a peace-offering; but I said,—
“No! such bad conduct must be punished, or we would leave their
island by the first opportunity.”
Now that Sacred Man, a Chief too, had gone on fighting with other
tribes, till his followers had all died or been slain; and, after three
weeks’ palaver, the other Chiefs seized him, tied him with a rope, and
sent me word to come and see him punished, as they did not want us
after all to leave the island. I had to go, for fear of more bloody work,
and after talk with them, followed by many fair promises, he was
loosed.
All appearing friendly for some time, and willing to listen and
learn, the Teacher earnestly desired to return to his post. I pled with
him to remain at the Mission House till we felt more assured, but he
replied,—
“Missi, when I see them thirsting for my blood, I just see myself
when the Missionary first came to my island. I desired to murder
him, as they now desire to kill me. Had he stayed away for such
danger, I would have remained Heathen; but he came, and continued
coming to teach us, till, by the grace of God, I was changed to what I
am. Now the same God that changed me to this, can change these
poor Tannese to love and serve Him. I cannot stay away from them;
but I will sleep at the Mission House, and do all I can by day to bring
them to Jesus.”
It was not in me to keep such a man, under such motives, from
what he felt to be his post of duty. He returned to his village work,
and for several weeks things appeared most encouraging. The
inhabitants showed growing interest in us and our work, and less
fear of the pretensions of their heathen Priest, which, alas! fed his
jealousy and anger. One morning during worship, when the good
Teacher knelt in prayer, the same savage Priest sprang upon him
with his great club and left him for dead, wounded and bleeding and
unconscious. The people fled and left him in his blood, afraid of
being mixed up with the murder. The Teacher, recovering a little,
crawled to the Mission House, and reached it about mid-day in a
dying condition. On seeing him, I ran to meet him, but he fell near
the Teacher’s house, saying,—
“Missi, I am dying. They will kill you also. Escape for your life.”
Trying to console him, I sat down beside him, dressing his wounds
and nursing him. He was quite resigned; he was looking up to Jesus,
and rejoicing that he would soon be with Him in Glory. His pain and
suffering were great, but he bore all very quietly, as he said and kept
saying, “For the sake of Jesus! For Jesu’s sake!” He was constantly
praying for his persecutors,—
“O Lord Jesus, forgive them, for they know not what they are
doing. Oh, take not away all Thy servants from Tanna! Take not away
Thy Worship from this dark island! O God, bring all the Tannese to
love and follow Jesus!”
To him, Jesus was all and in all; and there were no bands in his
death. He passed from us, in the assured hope of entering into the
Glory of his Lord. Humble though he may appear in the world’s
esteem, I knew that a great man had fallen there in the service of
Christ, and that he would take rank in the glorious Army of the
Martyrs. I made for him a coffin, and dug his grave near the Mission
House. With prayers, and many tears, we consigned his remains to
the dust in the certainty of a happy resurrection. Even one such
convert was surely a triumphant reward for Dr. and Mrs. Geddie,
whom God had honoured in bringing him to Jesus. May they have
many like him for their crown of joy and rejoicing in the great day!
Immediately after this, a number of Chiefs and followers called on
me at the Mission House, professing great friendliness, and said,—
“Mr. Turner gave our fathers great quantities of calico, axes, and
knives, and they became his friends. If you would give the people
some just now they would be pleased. They would stop fighting
against the Worship.”
 I retorted, “How was it then, if they were pleased, that they
persecuted Messrs. Turner and Nisbet till they had to leave the
island? Your conduct is deceitful and bad. I never will reward you for
bad actions and for murder! No present will be given by me.”
They withdrew sullenly, and seemed deeply disappointed and
offended.
On one occasion, when a Chief had died, the Harbour people were
all being assembled to strangle his widow. One of my Aneityumese
Teachers, hearing of it, hastened to tell me. I ran to the village, and
with much persuasion, saved her life. A few weeks thereafter she
gave birth to a young chieftain, who prospered well. If our Harbour
people told the truth, the widows of all who fell in war were saved by
our pleading. Immediately after the foregoing incident, a Sacred Man
was dying, and a crowd of people were assembled awaiting the event
in order to strangle his three wives. I spoke to them of the horrid
wickedness of such conduct. I further reasoned with them, that God
had made us male and female, the sexes so balanced, that for every
man that had three or a dozen wives, as many men generally had
none, and that this caused great jealousy and quarrelling. I showed
them further, that these widows being spared would make happy and
useful wives for other kind and loving husbands. After the Worship, I
appealed to the Chief and he replied,—
“Missi, it was a practice introduced to Tanna from the island of
Aneityum. It was not the custom of our fathers here to strangle
widows. And, as the Aneityumese have given it up since they became
worshippers of Jehovah, it is good that we now should give it up on
Tanna too.”
Thus these three widows were saved; and we had great hope in
Christ that the ghastly practice would soon disappear from Tanna.
An incident of this time created great wonder amongst the Natives;
namely, the Sinking of a Well. We had, heretofore, a boiling spring to
drink from, the water of which literally required in that climate days
to cool down; we had also a stagnant pool at the lower end of a
swamp in which the Natives habitually bathed, the only available
fresh water bath! Beyond that, no drinking water could be had for six
or seven miles. I managed to sink a well, near the Mission House,
and got about twelve feet deep a good supply of excellent fresh water,
though, strange to say, the surface of the well rose and fell regularly