Thou Shalt

thou (pron.)

2nd nominative singular personal pronoun, Old English þu, from Proto-Germanic *thu (source also of Old Frisian thu, Middle Dutch and Middle Low German du, Old High German and German du, Old Norse þu, Gothic þu), from PIE *tu-, second person singular pronoun (source also of Latin tu, Irish tu, Welsh ti, Greek su, Lithuanian tu, Old Church Slavonic ty, Sanskrit twa-m).

 

Superseded in Middle English by plural form you (from a different root), but retained in certain dialects (e.g. early Quakers). The plural at first was used in addressing superior individuals, later also (to err on the side of propriety) strangers, and ultimately all equals. By c. 1450 the use of thou to address inferiors gave it a tinge of insult unless addressed by parents to children, or intimates to one another. Hence the verb meaning "to use 'thou' to a person" (mid-15c.).

Avaunt, caitiff, dost thou thou me! I am come of good kin, I tell thee!

["Hickscorner," c. 1530]

A brief history of the second person pronoun in English can be found here.

thee (pron.)

Old English þe (accusative and dative singular of þu "thou"), from Proto-Germanic *theke (source also of Old Frisian thi, Middle Dutch di, Old High German dih, German dich, Old Norse þik, Norwegian deg, Gothic þuk), from PIE *tege-, accusative of root *tu-, second person singular pronoun (see thou). The verb meaning "to use the pronoun 'thee' to someone" is recorded from 1662, in connection with the rise of Quakerism.

 

In Middle English, people began to use plural forms in all cases, at first as a sign of respect to superiors, then as a courtesy to equals. By the 1600s, the singular forms had come to represent familiarity and lack of status, and fell from use except in the case of a few dialects, notably in the north of England. People in Lancashire north of the Rossendale Forest and Yorkshire formerly were noted for use of the singular second person pronouns tha (nom.) and thee (acc.). For religious reasons (Christian equality of persons, but also justified as grammatically correct), the Quakers also retained the familiar forms.

Thou and Thee was a sore cut to proud flesh and them that sought self-honour, who, though they would say it to God and Christ, could not endure to have it said to themselves. So that we were often beaten and abused, and sometimes in danger of our lives, for using those words to some proud men, who would say, "What! you ill-bred clown, do you Thou me?" as though Christian breeding consisted in saying You to one; which is contrary to all their grammar and teaching books, by which they instructed their youth. [George Fox's journal, 1661]

While the Quakers originally adopted "thee" and "thou" on account of their grammatical correctness, they soon fell into the careless habit of using "thee," the objective, instead of "thou," the nominative. Common illustrations are: "How does thee do?" or "Will thee," etc. [George Fox Tucker, "A Quaker Home," Boston, 1891]

thine (pron.)

Old English þin, possessive pronoun (originally genitive of þu "thou"), from Proto-Germanic *thinaz (source also of Old Frisian, Old Saxon thin, Middle Dutch dijn, Old High German din, German dein, Old Norse þin), from PIE *t(w)eino-, suffixed form of second person singular pronominal base *tu-. A brief history of the second person pronoun in English can be found here; see also thou

thy (pron.)

possessive pronoun of 2nd person singular, late 12c., reduced form of þin (see thine), until 15c. used only before consonants except -h-. Compare my/mine, a/an.

BILL MOYERS: 

What is that story about and I forget where it comes from about the camel and then the lion, and along the way you lose the burden of youth?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The three transformations of the spirit. That’s Nietzsche. 

That’s the prologue to 

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

BILL MOYERS: 

Tell me that story.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

When you are a child, when you are young and a young person, you are a camel. 

The camel gets down on its knees and says, 

“Put a load on me.” 

This is obedience. 

This is receiving the instruction, information that your society knows you must have in order to live a competent life. 

When the camel is well loaded, he gets up on his feet, struggles to his feet, and runs out into the desert, where he becomes transformed into a lion. 

The heavier the load, the more powerful the lion. 

The function of the lion is to kill a dragon, and the name of the dragon is 

“Thou Shalt.” 

And on every scale of the dragon there is a “Thou Shalt” imprinted. 

Some of it comes from 2,000 years, 4,000 years ago. 

Some of it comes from yesterday morning’s newspaper headline. 

When the dragon is killed, the lion is transformed into a child, an innocent child living out of its own dynamic. 

And Nietzsche uses the term, ein aus sich rollendes Rad, a wheel rolling out of its own center. That’s what you become. That is the mature individual.

The “Thou Shalt” is the civilizing force, it turns a human animal into a civilized human being. But the one who has thrown off the “Thou Shalts” is still a civilized human being. Do you see? He has been humanized, you might say, by the “Thou Shalt” system, so his performance now as a child is not simply childlike at all. He has assimilated the culture and thrown it off as a “Thou Shalt.” But this is the way in any art work. You go to work and study an art. You study the techniques, you study all the rules, and the rules are put upon you by a teacher. Then there comes a time of using the rules, not being used by them. Do you understand what I’m saying? And one way is to follow…and I always tell my students, follow your bliss.

BILL MOYERS: Follow your bliss?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Your bliss, where the deep of sense of being in form and going where your body and soul want to go, when you have that feeling, then stay with it and don’t let anyone throw you off. Have you ever read Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt?

BILL MOYERS: Not in a long time.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Do you remember the last line? “I’ve never done a thing I wanted to in all my life.”

BILL MOYERS: Quite an admission.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s the man who never followed his bliss. Well, I heard that line. I was living in Bronxville when I was teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Before I was married, I used to be eating out in the restaurants of the town for my lunch and dinners. And Thursday night was the maid’s night off in Bronxville, so that all the families were out in the restaurants. And one fine evening, I was in my favorite restaurant there. It was a Greek restaurant. And at a table was sitting a father, a mother, and a scrawny little boy here, about 12 years old. And the father says to the boy, “Drink your orange drink your tomato juice.” And the boy says, “I don’t want to.” And the father with a louder voice says, “Drink your tomato juice.” And the mother says, “Don’t make him do what he doesn’t want to do.” The father looks at her, and he says, “He can’t go through life doing what he wants to do.” Said, “If he does only what he wants to do, he’ll be dead. Look at me, I’ve never done a thing I wanted to in all my life.” I said, My God, Babbitt incarnate. And that’s the man who never followed his bliss.

Well, you may have a success in life, but then just think of it, what kind of life was it, what good is it? You’ve never done a thing you wanted to in all your life.

BILL MOYERS: What happens when you follow your bliss?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: You come to bliss. This should be it in marriage. I mean, that’s the sense of the marriage ceremony. In the Middle Ages, a favorite image that occurs in many, many contexts is the wheel of fortune. There’s the hub of the wheel, and there’s the revolving rim of the wheel. And if you attached to the rim of the wheel, let’s say fortune, you will be either above, going down, at the bottom, or coming up. But if you are at the hub, you’re in the same place all the time. And that’s the sense of the marriage vow, you know. I take you in health or sickness, you know, in wealth or poverty, but I take you and you are my bliss, riot the wealth that you might bring me, nor the social prestige, but you. And that’s following your bliss.

I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit which is the great spiritual language of the world, and they know all about it and have known about it for a long time, the transcendent is transcendent. But there are three terms that bring you to the brink, you might say the jumping off place to the ocean. And the three terms are sat, chit, ananda. And sat, the word sat means “being.” Chit means “full consciousness.” And ananda means “rapture.” So I thought, I don’t know whether my consciousness is full consciousness or not, I don’t know whether my being is proper being or not, but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture and that’ll bring me both being and full consciousness, and it worked.

BILL MOYERS: What was your rapture?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it started with Indians, and then it went on into more and more mythological matters and the realm of the arts, music, and when I met Jean, then the dance came in, and this is it, just stay with that.

BILL MOYERS: And one doesn’t have to be a poet to do this, carpenters do it, farmers do it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: A poet is simply one who’s made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with that. Most people have to be concerned with other things. They get themselves involved in economic and other activities, or you’re drafted into a war that isn’t the one you’re interested in, and how to hold to this umbilical, you might say, under those circumstances? That’s a technique each one has to work out for himself somehow. But most people living in that realm of what might be called occasional concerns, they all have the capacity that’s waiting to be awakened, to move to this other place. I know it, I’ve seen it happen in students. A wonderful way of teaching we have at Sarah Lawrence, where I taught for 38 years, I’d have an individual conference with every one of my students at least once a fortnight for half an hour or so. And there you’re talking on about the things that students ought to be reading, and suddenly you hit on something that the student really responds to. You could see the eyes open, the complexion changes, a life possibility has opened there. And all you can say to yourself is, I hope this child hangs onto that, you know. They may or may not, but when they do, they’ve found a life right there in the room with you.

BILL MOYERS: How would you advise somebody to tap that spring of eternal life, that joy, that is right there?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, we’re having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your joy is. Grab it; no one can tell you what it’s going to be. I mean, you’ve got to learn to recognize your own depths.

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have this sense, when you’re following your bliss, as I have at moments, of being helped by hidden hands?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

All the time. It’s miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time. Namely, that if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you’re living somehow. 

And well, you can see it. 

You begin to deal with people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors to you. 

I say, follow your bliss, and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

BILL MOYERS: 

Do you ever have sympathy for the man who has no invisible means of support?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Who has no invisible means yes, he’s the one that evokes compassion, you know, the poor chap. 

And to see him stumbling around, when the water of immortal life is right there, is really evokes one’s pity.

BILL MOYERS: 

Right there? 

Right there? 

You believe that?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes, yes.

BILL MOYERS: The waters of eternal life?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Right there.

BILL MOYERS: 

Where?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Wherever you are if you’re following your bliss. 

I mean, you’re having that joy, that refreshment, that life, all the time.