Seminar Paper On Joseph Addison's The Adventures Of A Shilling

Joseph Addison's ,'The adventures of a shilling' allows the reader to imagine what it would be like if you were to follow a single shilling around from the day it was made, until the day it was taken out of circulation. The way that Addison is able to do this in this essay is incredibly smart, as he is able to make the shilling seem life like with human qualities such as feelings, emotions and also the awareness of space and time. Because Addison is able to do this so well, as you are reading this essay it can be easy to forget that you are reading about a shilling and not the life of a human.

The essay starts off by Addison having a conversation with his friend at his house, when his friend says to him. "I defy any of these active persons to produce half the adventures that this twelve pence piece has been engaged in, were it possible for him to give us an account of his life". This was the comment that Addison says left an odd impression on his mind and he says that as if it was a dream but more like a delirium, the shilling that was on the table next to him began to talk to him and started to give him an account of it's life and adventures. The shilling begins to tell him that he was born on the side of a mountain, near a village called Peru. When the shilling says it made a voyage to England in an ingot, it means in an mass of metal, such as a block or bar, because that's what ingot means. The shilling then goes on to say that it was brought to England under the convoy of Sir Francis Drake. Sir Francis Drake was a English sailor who led the fight for England against Spain in the Spanish Armada, he was known to many foreigners as an English pirate (especially to the Spanish). At this point I find it very funny that the shilling has the knowledge to know who Sir Francis Drake is and furthermore it's even more amusing that the shilling knew where it came from and also knew that the country it was brought to was England. If this essay was written today, I could imagine it to be like an episode of American Dad, because the way the shilling is made out to be anthropomorphic, reminds me of  Klaus (the Fish) and Roger (the Alien) in American Dad. American Dad is very good at giving it's characters human characteristics when they shouldn't have, just like Addison does with his shilling.
When the shilling says "taken out of my natural habit, refined, naturalised, and put into British mode, with the queens face on one side, and the arms of the country on the other", I'm not sure if it means it actually came from India because to my knowledge I don't think Sir Francis Drake visited India. However I know that Sir Francis Drake visited the Americas, so the shilling could have meant he came from a native Indian habit.

When the shilling Finally gets put into circulation in England, it says "the people very much favoured my natural disposition and shifted me so fast from hand to hand, that before I was five years old, I had travelled into almost every corner of the nation". From this quote, you can begin to imagine how quickly the shilling travelled around the country. We are then told by the shilling about a time when he was imprisoned in an iron chest by a miserable old fellow, with hundreds more of his kind. To the reader we could imagine this as the old man is either collecting or saving shillings, but to the shilling, it's imprisonment. What I found amusing about this, was that it's funny how Addison makes the shilling out to be very knowledgeable for the most part, but in this situation he makes the shilling seem not so smart because it doesn't realise what is happening to it for the first time in it's life. The shilling then says "we heard somebody knocking at our chest, and breaking it open with a hammer". This would suggest that the money in the chest was being stolen.
Once the shilling had been broken out of the chest it tells us "the apothecary gave me to an herb-woman, the herb-woman to a butcher, the butcher to a brewer, and the brewer to his wife, who made a present of me to a nonconformist preacher. This shows how quickly money can be moved around in one day, and it suggests that the shilling ended up in a collection plate of some sort, because it said it was given to a preacher. The shilling also tells us about another account when it was 'arrested' by a superstitious old lady and put away in a greasy purse. Again, this suggests that whenever the shilling is put away for a long period of time, it thinks that it is being imprisoned. We are then under the impression that the shilling was used to bribe or lure soldiers into fighting for parliament in the English civil war, because the shilling says "I was employed in raising soldiers against the king: for being of a very tempting breadth, a sergeant made use of me to inveigle country fellows, and list them in  service of parliament".

The shilling was then lost again for some years as it tells the story of a young man gaining possession of it, due to his deceased father leaving him money instead of leaving him his Estate. So for that reason, the son got really mad and threw the shilling at a wall where it got stuck for a few years until a cavalier discovered it again.
The shilling finally retired, being made into a counter with more of it's kind. I could imagine, at this point the coin was so old that it had probably been taken out of circulation as was probably more seen as a collectors item. Lastly the shilling says " when I fell into the hands of an artist, who conveyed me underground, and with an unmerciful pair of shears, cut off my titles, clipped my brims, retrenched my shape, rubbed me to my inmost ring, and, in short, so spoiled and pillaged me, that he did not leave me worth a groat. This suggests that the shilling had been changed into something else, I'm not sure what exactly, but my guess is that it was made into a new coin, although I'm not sure.
Overall I think that this essay by Addison was great fun to read and was very smartly written. It made me start to think where my money had been before I had it and im sure it made a lot of people think the same. I think that if this was to be written today, it would still be as an effective and interesting peice to read as it was in the time it was first published. I think it would probably be even more interesting now, because people do more with their money now then they ever have done before, so therefore the coin would have more stories to tell. I also thought it was extremley clever how through the adventures of the shilling, Addison gave us examples of all the different ways money could be used, not just the standard way which would be just using it to buy things. This essay also allows  you to use your imagination to think about what could have been the outcome in the different adventures that the shilling had throughout the essay, I came to my own conclusions, as you can tell from reading this but i wonder if anyone else had different ones than I did?

Lecture notes on Liberal empiricism

• Sextus Empiricus said that thinking was pointless, he thought that everything you can think of has a counter argument or question. E.g. ' I think therefore I am' could counter into 'I am therefore I think'.
• Puritans lost the civil war and fled to America. They are very messianic and believe that the world is going to end. In fact when they were losing the civil war, many thought that it was part of the book of revelations and that it was the beginning of the apocalypse and that the world was going to end. They currently have influence over the U.S government. most live in Massachusetts and they also believe that the devil runs the world.
• The first Europeans to settle in the Americas were the Spanish. They went to south America and brought back gold to Europe. That's why most countries in the central Americas speak Spanish. E.g. Columbia, Ecuador and Costa Rica.
• The Dutch allowed anyone to publish anything they wanted in Holland. That's why most philosophers spent time in Holland because they were allowed to publish their books there. E.g. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz.
• New York used to be called New Amsterdam because the Dutch founded New York. But eventually England became a more dominant nation than Holland and changed It's name to the New York as we know it as today.
• Adam Smith and the hidden hand of the market. He believed that the reason why one country would be richer than another was because the richer country traded with other countries whereas poorer countries didn't. Which effectively didn't allow their economies to grow. This is why China used to be a poor country, because they refused to trade with other countries.
• Hume quote ' ought from an is'
• Hume on causation- If you see a red ball hit a white ball, then the white ball moves, we think that the red ball caused the white ball to move. But Hume thinks that there is no proof that the red ball caused the white ball to move. It is only our mind that makes the assumption that it was the red ball that caused the white ball to move.
• Hume was an empiricist who believed in synthetic and analytic distinction. Synthetic distinction is when you build up an idea or ideas of something from something you have already seen. E.g. we see a bird and a human , then we put them together to make an angel. Another example would be to think of a fish then think of a human, which would make a Mermaid. Analytic distinction is when you strip an idea or a thought down instead of building it up like you would do with synthetic distinction.
• Hume also believed in induction, which basically means when you keep on adding more to the knowledge and ideas you already have.
• The triangle trade was when ships from the docks of cities such as Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow, would travel to Africa to collect slaves. They would then bring them to north America in exchange fro Tobacco and Cotton, then bring the Tobacco and Cotton back to Britain. Then just continually preform this triangle. This was also known as the transatlantic trade.
• The funny thing about the dutch was that when they allowed anything to be published in their country, the only rule was that it couldn't be published in Dutch. So the books could be read in any other language, apart from the language of the country that it was published in.
• The Dutch and the British fought against the Spanish for control over the waters. The British had no British flag on their ships so they couldn't be accused for fighting for their country. The only flag they had on their ships were ones with a skull with two bones made in a cross on it. this was known as a form of English Piracy.

Socrates

• Socrates seems to be one of the earliest Philosophers of importance. He was tried, sentenced to death & executed in 399 B.C in Athens. He was about 70 years old.
• Two of his main pupils who he taught where Xenophon and Plato. we only know what we know about Socrates because of these two pupils. Although most of the time, they both had completely different things to say about him. Plato especially wrote volumes about Socrates, as he had a big influence over Plato. Some people say the Plato could of even invented Socrates because Plato made him out to be an extraordinarily interesting character. It is thought that Socrates taught his findings to others, but he never asked for money, so he was never paid through teaching. 
• The reason why Socrates was prosecuted was because he was thought to be 'an evil-doer and a curious person, searching into things under the earth and above the heavens; and making the worse appear a better cause, teaching all this to others'. He was mainly accused of corrupting the youths of Athens.
• At his trial Socrates was found guilty by the majority and because of Athenian law, it was open to him to propose a lesser penalty than death, then the judge was choose which one was fairer between the one that was going to be given to him or the one that he had proposed. The penalty that Socrates suggested was to pay a fine of thirty Minae, for which some of his friends (including Plato) were willing to help pay. But the Judge was so offended & annoyed by the penalty that Socrates offered,  that he was sentenced to death. Socrates accused his prosecutors of making him out to be Eloquence (Persuasive or forcible), but he said that the only Eloquence of which he is capable, he says, is that of truth. Towards the end of his trial Socrates points out that good men are better to live among than bad men, therefore he cannot be so foolish as to corrupt his fellow citizens intentionally; but if unintentionally, then Meletus (who was one of or the judge) should instruct him, not prosecute him. To me that sounds like a fair point, because he is already seen as a bad man who did what he did intentionally, his point would have probably been dismissed. He was also accused by Meletus as being an atheist, because he thought Socrates introduced Gods of his own.
• It is thought that Socrates believed that the best way to gain knowledge was to do so by gaining it through asking others questions. So he often spent his days talking to a lot of people and asking them questions. It seems to me that many people found Socrates very annoying because he often asked questions that the person he was talking to could not answer, which often made them look stupid. In Russell's book he quotes ' He then went to the poets, and asked them to explain passages in their writings, but they were unable to do so. 'Then i knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration.' To me this is an example of him making other people look stupid. Because if I was asked a question about my profession & I didn't know the answer, I know i would feel embarrassed and stupid.  

Socrates

• Socrates believed that God only is wise, and by his answer he intends to prove that the wisdom that man holds means little to nothing. He also believes that the reason why he is wiser than everyone else is because he thinks that people think they know things, when really they don't, which doesn't make them wise. But the difference between them and him is that he knows he knows nothing, which makes him wiser and smarter than most.
• Socrates says that young men of the richer class have nothing better to do so they spend time watching him expose people, which make him a lot of enemies. But he says that they themselves do not like to admit that their pretence of knowledge has been detected.
• Before Socrates became a Philosopher, he was a soldier. he believed that God had instructed him to leave his old post as a soldier and take up his new post as a philosopher to go on a mission of searching into himself and other men. No one knew if Socrates actually believed that he was literally hearing voices from a divine being or if he just thought that God would want him to do these things.
• He thought that in Politics, no honest man could live long. He thought this because, at the time, politics were so corrupt that it would be impossible to be a politician and tell the truth all of the time.
• He was also known to be a strange man, some even thought that he was crazy, because whenever he couldn't figure something out, he would get lost in thought and just stop and stand where ever it was that he had got lost in thought, until he had figured out whatever it was that he was thinking about. In Russell's book he mentioned a time when two men made up a bed outside and watched him stand in the same place all night, in deep thought, until the next morning, without even moving or anything. There was also another time when he was attending a dinner party with one of his friends, when he stopped in the corridor and just stood there until the dinner party was almost over. When his friend realised that he was gone, he sent a slave to go and find him, once the slave had found him, Socrates was in such deep thought that he didn't even acknowledge the existence of the slave.
• Socrates was known to be a really ugly man with a snub nose (which you can tell from my picture). It was said that his endurance was fantastic and that one time when he was a soldier, he was seen with his fellow service men in the winter, with very few clothes on, on the ice and with barefoot, whilst his couterparts were wrapped up in many layers of clothes. It was said that he had a complete mastery of soul over body, because he had control over all bodily passion. It was said that when he drank wine no one could out drink him, but no one had ever seen him drunk and in love, he would never give in, even to the strongest of temptations.
• It is thought that Socrates believed in life after death. Just before he was executed, he said that in the next world he could go on and ask question forever, and could not be put to death, as then he would be immortal.