Lost Blogging: from before there were blogs

Going through some old papers today I found this quotation written out on a scrap. I'm certain, from my weak recollection and from the strata in which I found it, that the paper well predates our journal here, so we understand from the first the title 'Lost Blogging' in a metaphorical or, even, existential sense. I was sure the quotation (which was unattributed) is from Aristotle, according to my recollection and to the style of writing, and, behold, I found it in the Ethics, at the place designated X.9.12, under the editorial heading "From Ethics to Politics: Moral Education." Aristotle is talking about how to ensure that people are "finely brought up and habituated" in order to be "someone who is good," and his thesis is that one must study politics to this end.

A father's instructions lack this power to prevail and compel; and so in general do the instructions of an individual man, unless he is a king or something like that. Law, however, has the power that compels; and law is reason that proceeds from a sort of prudence and understanding. Besides, people become hostile to an individual human being who opposes their impulses, even if he is correct in opposing them, whereas a law's prescription of what is decent is not burdensome.

Presumably one understands the first sentence to be speaking of the case when the child is not a prince or something like that.


And, under the same title, a maybe-related addition to our pantheon of plush or graven idols, icons, and hangers-on, a Hawaiian war deity:

Kū-ka-ili-moku, "Kū the seizer of land."