The fact that the terms active life and contemplative life have now fallen out of use is important. For Miller’s interest in appropriating a distinction that has long ceased to flourish in our explicit discourse might suggest that his philosophical project is an exercise in antiquitarianism.
Talk about yer doods, said a Texas stockman, on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy train last night, but a leetle the doodest dood I ever seen wuz a feller that come down from Boston into our kentry a year ago las' September.
But I like it when Stella calls me Genevieve, because though I'm Jenny to everyone else, always have been since I was born, I was christened Genevieve. My dad called me after a vintage car in a film, if you can credit it, and to most people it's a bit embarrassing, but the way Stella says it it's got a pretty sound.
Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notable circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminently characteristic of modern painting. For instance, Keats, describing a wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it
Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.
