Decimalization and the modern project of destroying what is natural to man

Until about 1800 practically every civilization used non-decimal reckonings of time, weight, distance, and currency. In Europe at least it is clear that the divisions people found most natural were based on the number twelve. Vestiges of this still remain today, most of all in the measurement of time, where we still divide our days into two twelve-hour cycles—indeed twelfths have an unfair advantage in the calendar because, through God’s providence, the moon makes twelve cycles a year, no doubt simply to frustrate the modern rationalists.

In currency, the old European system was the one of pounds, shillings, and pennies. What the English called a penny was originally a Roman denarius (French denier, Italian denaro, Arabic dinar), hence the abbreviation d. for pence in England until 1971. Twelve pennies make one shilling (Latin solidus, French sou). Twenty shillings make one pound (Latin libra, French livres, Italian lira). That is, a pound is a score of dozens: £1 = 20s. = 240d. Peter Spufford, preeminant historian of medieval currency, remarks, “the habit of counting coins in dozens and scores of dozens was so ingrained that when a new coin did not coincide neatly with a multiple of the pre-existing coins, a new system of pounds, shillings, and pence was automatically constructed on the basis of the new coin”.

This sytem was abolished first, surprise! during the French Revolution. As the French Revolution became a campaign to stamp out the Christian Church, so it became a campaign to stamp out the European tradition itself. One can read with amusement about the failed attempts to establish a ten-hour day, ten-day week, and so on. But it is less amusing to learn that our metric system and decimal currency both have their origins in the French Revolution. They represent the successful conquest of the old European tradition and feelings and the re-education of man.

The Christian Church never tried to abolish the European past which she inherited—on the contrary she adopted and baptized much of what she found in the Europe in which she was born: Roman law (consider the medieval maxim ecclesia vivit lege romana ‘the Church lives by Roman law’); Greek philosophy (Aquinas, the greatest Christian philosopher, represents the harmonizing of Greek and Christian thought); pagan holidays (as is well known).

No, although one steeped in modern cynicism might look for the new Christian religion to try to wipe out all the impure past, actually the Christians received and lived by as much of it as they could. This seems to me the proof that Christians are not and have never been dualists or world-deniers: the Church really believes grace perfects nature; that is, the nature of man is what we have to work with. We don’t deny the nature of man and try to stamp it out, we baptize it; like the Resurrection led the natural body into a new and fuller life, so the Christian thing leads everything natural to man into that new life.

Hence the Christian centuries were a perpetuation, renewal, and over-flowing into new life of the pagan centuries (Roman and Greek) which went before.

The modern project is wholly different. The modern project is essentially, in its nature, anti-Christian. I have observed before that modernization can be defined as the destruction of the Church. Every stage of ‘development’ in Europe’s last five centuries in the direction we call modern has been an act of destruction of the Church.

The modern project is equally anti-Man. This is obvious after what was said above. If the Church took everything that is natural to man into itself, then to destroy the Church requires destroying what is natural to man. Hence we should look, at every stage of modernization, for the destruction of things natural and spontaneous and delightful to man’s nature.

The system of pounds and shillings, like the one of inches, feet, and miles, was natural and delightful to European man. It had to be destroyed. The favourite word used to destroy it: ‘arbitrary’. In lying, go big or go home. The truths on the side of decimalization are that it is more convenient to write and certain calculations are easier. But the big lie is that the decimal system is more rational and the old system is arbitrary. The old system is what generations of people found most useful and rational for day-to-day exchange! Twelves in fact are much easier to divide up into quarters and thirds than tens, which only go neatly into tenths, fifths, and halves. But the daily experience of centuries of Europeans apparently has no authority whatsoever. ‘Arbitrary.’

Even after the French Revolution led the way in stomping on human nature, the British, always tenacious in their contrariness to Continental ways, held onto their pounds and shillings until 1971. The economist E.J. Mishan wrote in 1980:

The case for it in terms of economic efficiency alone is doubtful. Indeed it is more than doubtful, since the changeover to a decimal currency (in which one new penny was equal to 2 2/5 old pennies) had the predictable effect of giving a perceptible fillip to the upward drift of prices. Yet economic efficiency is but one consideration. There are others, seemingly less tangible but no less potent, of sentiment, pride, and custom. Pounds, shillings, and pence are not merely convenient units of account and currency. They are also an essential part of John Bull’s accoutrements, an extension of Britain’s personality. Our national system of weights and measures, our pints and yards, our acres and fathoms, which are now to be thrown into limbo as so much jetsam, are also part of our Anglo-Saxon heritage. They ring familiar to our ears as church bells. They are resonant with centuries of British history. They are part of our language and our literature. ... But on yet another isue of deep national concern, the government made no pretence even of consulting the feelings of the British people.

The modern world is trying to re-educate us all from the bottom up. It must wipe out the Christian Church and it is using scorched earth tactics to do it. Give them nothing to live on, deny them all supplies and food, and do this by burning our own fields and slaying our own cattle. Hence the modern European state, born in the French Revolution, proceeds by destroying everything pleasing and sustaining for the natural life of man, lest it nourish the new life in Christ. The most deadly assault is on the family; but even such a seemingly trivial matter as the way we count coins does not escape attention. Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc. Everything old and traditional must be extirminated, everything must be reframed. Everyone is in need of re-education. 

Powers of sight in The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings

In The Hobbit, when the travellers are in Mirkwood and come to cross the magic river (which puts Bombur to sleep when he falls in), the dwarves ask Bilbo to tell them what he can see on the other side of the river. It seems there that Bilbo can see farther and more clearly than the dwarves.

But when the Fellowship is traversing Moria in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf has Gimli go in front with him to lead the party—he is at home in the mines and not likely to get lost—but also, because he has the best eyes in the dark.

Therefore hobbits can see farther and more clearly than dwarves, but dwarves can see better at night. Since hobbits are essentially a race of men, it is likely that men have eyes about as good as hobbits.

It is the elves who have the best eyes. In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn and Gandalf frequently ask Legolas to tell them what he sees. He sees a bird flying so high that the other cannot even see it as a speck, yet he can tell that it is an eagle. When Aragorn sees the riders of Rohan approaching in the distance, several miles off, Legolas can tell their number and the colour of their hair.

Legolas’s power of sight is a virtue of his physical nature. He has literally better eyes than any of the others, even Gandalf, who though he has many powers is still in his body a man.

Can all the elves see as well as Legolas? I expect not. Most of the elves of Mirkwood are Silvan Elves, descendants of the Nandor who never crossed the Misty Mountains. Legolas comes from Mirkwood, yet he is the son of King Thranduil, and it is known that the kings and leaders of the Silvan elves are often descended from Eldar who had crossed the Misty Mountains and lived in Beleriand in the First Age. I cannot say what precisely is Legolas’s heritage save that he is of a higher, more noble race than most of the elves in Eriador at the time of The Lord of the Rings.

However, there are also elves about who could probably see better than Legolas; though few, there are far nobler elves still in Middle Earth. There are the Calaquendi, the Elves of the Light, very ancient elves who lived in Aman with the gods in the age of the Two Trees of Light. Glorfindel and Galadriel are two of these. They are of nobler race, being less mixed with the Silvan Elves of Middle Earth. But the Elves of the Light also have greater virtue from their time living with the gods, being nourished by the Light of the Trees, so much stronger and more vital than the dim light of sun and moon. Some of this original Light still remains with them and gives their bodies strength unknown to the Elves of the Darkness. No doubt Glorfindel or Galadriel would have even greater power of sight in their eyes than Legolas.

Gandalf also, at times, can see things far off—he even says once that this power is given to him—but his power of sight is of a different nature than elf-sight. Though Gandalf as a wizard is in fact an angelic spirit of a higher order than the elves, he is incarnate in the body of a man. How limited he is to a man’s capabilities is not clear. He is much stronger and more enduring than he appears. As for his eyes, at times he asks Legolas to tell him what he sees, as when they arrive at Edoras in Rohan. But from the citadel of Minas Tirith, Gandalf is able to see Eowyn and Merry wounded on the battlefield far below. It is not easy to tell how much of Gandalf’s power of sight resides in his eyes and how much is a gift of his angelic nature.

But the Elves of the Light have also been raised up almost to the order of angelic spirits. This gives them powers not limited to their bodies; what the hobbits might call ‘magic’, not unlike Gandalf himself, though lesser. Two of the elves have this to an even greater degree: Galadriel and Elrond. Each of them has a power of seeing things far off which is different in kind than Legolas’s keen eyes.

Elrond has some power of seeing, or sensing, things from afar or even before they happen. thus he advises Gandalf not to send Pippin with the Fellowship because of the harm he will do; and he sees truly—it is probably Pippin who stirs up the Balrog and the orcs in Moria by dropping a stone down a well (causing Gandalf’s death); and Pippin also looks into the Palantír, almost disastrously. Gandalf, who has the deeper sense of Providence, is right to allow Pippin to come, because all these events work out to the good: but the point is that Elrond could discern somehow that they would be. He also can tell that there is an evil at work in the Shire long before it comes out in the open.

Elrond’s power of vision has many sources. Through his father Eärendil he is descended from the royal house of Fingolfin, kings of the Noldor—the last declared king was Gil-Galad, but after he was killed by Sauron on the slopes of Mount Doom, it could be supposed that if there is any King of the Noldor it is Elrond. Through his mother Elwing he is descended from Elwë, king of the Telerin elves in Beleriand. Thus he has in him the blood of two races of Elves of the Light, though he himself was never in Aman. But he also has the blood of Melian the Maya, wife of Elwë, through whom true ‘magic’ entered the races of Elves and Men, since she was of the angelic order herself. The blood of Melian has given all the descendants of Eärendel and Elwing seemingly supernatural virtues of spirit and body. Most of the nobility in Men comes from Melian’s blood, through Elrond’s brother Elros, who was King of Númenor: Denethor, Boromor, Faramir, and Imrahil of Dol Amroth all are distantly related to this line, but Aragorn is the greatest of these. Both Aragorn and Elrond have powers of healing, and perhaps some power of perceiving things far off in space and time. But Elrond’s power is enhanced perhaps by his Ring, one of the three great Elven rings.

Galadriel has the greatest power of seeing. She, like Elrond and Gandalf, can somehow sense things far off. But she also has her Mirror in which she shows Sam and Frodo a vision of things far away. She herself is of very great race, probably the oldest Elf in all of Middle Earth, daughter of Finarfin of the house of the Noldorin kings. And she has a Ring, possibly the greatest of the Elven rings. Galadriel is, after Gandalf, the most ‘magical’ of all the good characters in The Lord of the Rings, and it is probably from the combination of her native nobility as a very high Elf of the Light with her wielding of the Ring of Adamant. These together give her a power of seeing not unlike that of the Palantiri.

The Palantiri, the seeing-stones, seem to work like eyes and not like the more intuitive vision which Gandalf and Elrond sometimes reveal. Aragorn uses the Orthanc-stone to see the Black Fleet sailing to Pelargir, many hundreds of miles away, and it seems that Denethor was shown many sights but he did not discern their true meaning. The Palantír thus grant sight but not understanding. They are unique in that they work independent of the user’s nature, high or low, good or evil. One has to contend with other wills who are using the stones; but it seems that if Sauron had not seized upon him even Pippin might have been able to use the stone to see things far off. These stones, created by Féanor, operate more like our technology, and can be used for good or evil. Two of them fall into the wrong hands, Sauron and Saruman, and are used to accomplish great mischief.

***

We can thus rank the powers of purely visual sight (not counting the Palantiri) in Middle Earth:

1. Elves.

Elves of the Light (Glorfindel and Galadriel).
Grey-Elves of the race of Beleriand (Legolas and Thranduil).
Silvan Elves (the elves of Mirkwood).

2. Men and hobbits.

3. Dwarves (but they can see better in the dark than elves, men, or hobbits).

However, some characters have greater powers of sight not strictly connected to their eyes. These are Galadriel, Gandalf, and Elrond. The greaetst of these is Galadriel.