YOUR LOGGING SOFTWARE SUCKS. It did not let me put footnotes in my comment on Gabriel's web-log. Here is the comment I would have posted on his log:
Fortunately, I think most modern readers1 will read The Ladder quickly, pick up a couple good moral lessons in each chapter, and end up with something interesting to say2. All things considered, a profitable read. Maybe not the best use of the book, but not the worst use of their time3. Then again, I can definitely see that there are some pathological sorts who aren't terminally shallow but rather terminally emo for whom the prohibition would do some good, lest they fall into despair4. I'll never understand them, I suppose, so I guess I'll just have to call them interesting and leave it at that.
1: Myself included. I'm pretty shallow.
2: This is crypto-Protestantism, perhaps not in spirit, but labelled as such because it's what Protestants do whenever they sniff around the boutique.
3: Unless they write a log about the interesting tidbits and post it to the internets.
4: Or, worse, one of those schismatic groups that can only be found 1000 miles away from their present location, so they become too pious to go to church.
