MARX, ENGELS, LENIN, TROTSKY - IN THEIR OWN WORDS

                      

 

                     Food For thought

                                             from

                         World Of Books

                      A Book That Will Not End

 

                                          Introduction

     What follows after the end of this introduction  are quotations- sometimes long, sometimes short ,sometimes in verse but most of the time in prose - from world of books which I have been fortunate enough to  read for more than half a century -  for the benefit of  the readers all over the world, wherever they may be, and whether they are a few in numbers or millions,  who  are hungry and thirsty  for food for thought  to broaden their  horizons of knowledge.

     These quotations were originally selected and edited for the sole purpose  of rendering them into  Sinhala- in order to  acquaint  my countrymen whose mother tongue is Sinhala - which  they are unable to read for various reasons. I have accomplished what I wanted when two volumes containing hundreds of such quotations were published in two volumes in 2003 and 2011 respectively. As these two volumes and various other quotations were just lying on my table, it suddenly occurred to me as to why it shouldn't be  published in English also.After all, even if people who are conversant with English may have read most of these books, if not all and many more, they may have not seen any significance I have seen in these passages. They may be correct , yet  I shouldn't allow these quotations to go to oblivion with  my death, which might happen any moment. In fact  I want these  quotations alone with many others to be published   as a book, but considering  the problems , especially financial,  involved in such an endeavour , finally I came to the conclusion that it should be made available as soon as possible to the public through the Internet. If there are people who think that it is worthwhile to  publish these quotations in a book form, they can either send  their financial contributions to  my address which is given below or undertake to publish it .

     Although I am a Marxist  I have taken care to include only a minimum    number of  quotations relating to Marxism for the simple reason  that I have  published a full volume of them in 2018 entitled "Marx-Engels-Lenin -Trotsky  - In Their own words." While  my aim in publishing that book was, not only to enunciate and clarify certain misconceptions regarding Marxism but also to convert  as many readers as possible to real Marxism, in publishing these quotations I have no aim whatsoever to make any of my readers to any point of view , as can be seen from the contrary views expressed by the authors of those books. My aim is to make available to the readers a few of  the passages  of the world renown authors  as well as not-so-renown authors , who  have contributed to dispel the religious, racial, political,social ,sexual and whatever other  prejudices  which retarded, and unfortunately still retard, the development  of  the intellectual  horizons of humanity. It is my view that these passages  are not only interesting but also  are of immense educational value. If there were to be  at least a few readers  who think it worthwhile to go back to the originals  and, in the process   contribute something in their own way to cleanse  the above mentioned prejudices from the human mind , my aim is more than fulfilled.

      In view of the most wide-spread complaint that  the number of  book-readers are dwindling continuously, I shoudn't have undertaken this type of book in the first place. Although there is a truth in that complaint, it is not a new one.Nearly a half a century ago  this how one of the world famous writer made the very same complaint in a devastating way : " At the present many of the young, whom I should particularly like to reach, look upon reading as pointless. So I no longer see writing as a privileged means of communication.........The pupils in the terminal classes of the lycees are more mature than they were in my time; they have watched the television and read the papers for years and they think they know everything- or, which gives the same result, they think there is nothing to be known about anything at all '' These utterly pessimistic words belongs to none other than Simone de Beauvoir! (All said and Done pp.209/10 )  But people still read , notwithstanding all the technological innovations! Therefore I have no reason whatsoever to think twice before resorting to this type of huge book.

     There are hundred s of thousands of books all around the Globe. No one can claim to have read even a tiny fraction of  them. How many treasures are still hidden in the ocean of this world of books, no one knows and no one will ever  know. What I have read is a drop of that huge  ocean.What is here quoted is  not even a  fraction of that drop. What I hope to do in the limited time allotted  to me by Nature is to make that fraction somewhat bigger by adding some more  passages to this book, which by its very nature can have no end, and therefore should not end. In fact , someone can  continue even after my demise from this beautiful world which has been and which is being muddied and made a killing field in one part or the other  by money-bags, power-hungry politicians , religious bigots, racialist masquerading as patriots and various kinds of Mafias which is summed-up in the word - Capitalism. Notwithstanding all these quotations and books written by such great authors around him , the compiler of this book  has to spend the last stages of his life in a such beautiful country which is being daily desecrated by a head of state  who is lunatic enough to believe he can turn around what his countrymen had gained with the help of enlightened ideas  of the great minds of the word as enunciated in  most of these these quotations and return to savagery by not unlearning and practicing   what he has learned as a bigot. 

 T. Andradi,

405 B, 

RubberwaththaRoad, 

Modarawila,

Panadura, 

Sri Lanka.

24 - 2 - 2019

tulsiriandradi79@gmail.com 

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     DANGEROUS ! WHO IS DANGEROUS?

 

     He reads too much;

     He is a great observer,

     and he looks quite through the deeds of men.

     He loves no plays 

     As thou dost, Anthony

     he hears no music 

     Seldom he smiles 

     and smiles in such a sort 

     As if  he mocked himself, and scorn'd his spirit

     That could be moved to smile at anything

     Such men as he be never at heart's each 

     While they behold a greater than themselves 

     And therefore they are very dangerous

     (Julius Caesar- Complete Works of Shakespeare-p.722)

 

               What Nobody Can Confiscate!

 

     While little girl warbled of heavenly joy

     In accents so uplifting,

     The Prussian customs men gave my bags 

     A thorough searching and sifting

 

     They sniffed through everything, rummaged about

     Through shirts and shorts for hidden

     Needle-point laces and undeclared gems

     And for books that were forbidden.

 

     You fools, to search for them in my bags!

     There everything's law-abiding!

     I take contraband along with me

     But it's in my head it's  hiding

 

     I've needle-points finer than Brussel's best

     Enough to  needle-and-pin you,

     And once my points are bared to view

     You'll feel them sticking in you.

 

     I carry diamonds  in my head,

     The future time's crown jewel, 

     The temple hoard of the great Unknown.

     The God of the renewal.

 

     And many books are stowed in my head!

     Let it be clearly stated:

     My head is a twittering nest of books

     Good enough to be confiscated. 

 

     Satan's own library has nothing worse - 

     No need for you to scoff, man:

     More dangerous are they than even 

     The books of poor old Hoffmann 

 

( The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine - translated  by  Hal Draper -pp. 485/86 )

 

 

                               How Socrates  Learned 

     ... Thrasymachus burst out and said,  " What is all this nonsense , Socrates ? Why do you go on in this childish way being so polite about each other's opinion ? If you really want to know what justice is, stop asking questions and then playing to the gallery by refuting anyone who answers you. You know perfectly well that it's easier to ask questions than to answer them. Give us an answer yourself, and tell us what you think justice is...

     " So this is the wisdom of Socrates; He wouldn't  teach anyone anything, but goes round learning from others and is not even grateful."

 To which Socrates replied: "It's quite true, Thrasymachus, to say I learn from others, but it's not true to say I learn from others, but it's not true to say I show no gratitude. I am generous with my praise - the only return I can give, as I have no money.. 

                         (The Republic - Plato -pp.75 & 77 )

 

                                            Books

     Books changed all that. Purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy:to tap the wisdom of our species;to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power ; to contemplate - with the best teachers- the insights painfully extracted from nature,of greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads.Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses.Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society..

     If you grow up in a household where there are books , where you are read to,where parents, siblings, aunts,uncles and cousins read for their own pleasure, naturally you learn to read. If no one close to you takes you in reading, where is the evidence that it's  worth the effort? If the quality of education available to you is inadequate, if you are taught rote memorization rather than how to think, if the content of what you're first given to read comes from a near alien culture, literacy can  be a rocky road.

     ( The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan-pp.357/58) 

 

                         Bookseller on the Value of Books

     "A dirty book like this must be cheap" , Lao Er said, looking at the spots of grease and black.

     " So it might have been a few days ago, " the bookseller said, " but in the past few days many of the students have come to buy this book who never read it before. Ask me why and I have no answer. I do not know why they do anything, those young ones.They are like drunk men, and as for women - " He spat on the stone on which he stood and rubbed it with his foot.

     " What is the price?" Lao Er asked.

     "Three silver small pieces," the bookseller replied.

      Lao Er stared in horror.

     "For a book?"  he shouted. 

     "Why not a book? the old man retorted. " You spend as much on a piece of pig's-meat and you eat it and it is gone, what is left is waste. But a book you put into tour mind and there it lies and you can read it over when you forget it and think of it longer , and out of it who knows you will think? You might think yourself to fortune."

                   (Dragon Seed - Pearl S. Buck - p.36)

 

                               The Act of Reading

       ...he reads everything with equal attention:hand him a a manual of Chemistry and he would not demur. He enjoyed  not so much what he reads as the act of reading, or to be more precise, the very process of reading, the remarkable way of those letters combined to produce some word or other, a word which sometimes meant the devil  only notes what 

                  ( Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol - p.32 ) 

 

                                        Garbage Argot

       "She was in high spirits" they said, " and spoke in English, so we did not understand."  

     Not only in English. Because it was only me. she could prattle on in  Bombay's garbage argot, Mumbai ki kachrapathi baath-cheeth, in which a sentence  could begin in one language, swoop through second and even a third and then swing back around to the first. Our acronymic name for it was Hug-me. Hindi Urdu Gujarati Marathi English. Bombayites like me were people who spoke five languages badly and no language well.

    (The Ground Beneath Her Feet- Salman Rushdie - p.7)

 

                                A King of Translation

      One of my own particular absorption was a most unusual man named Lin Shu. He knew not a word of English, but he happened one day by chance upon a Western novel, and moved by curiosity, he engaged a friend to read it to him, translating it as he read.Lin Shu was charmed by the story. I wish I knew what moved it was  that he first heard. i think, although my memory is not sure, that it was one of the novels of Sir Walter Scott.Whichever it was, he demanded that it be read to him again, and while he listened to the rough translation of the reader, he re-wrote it in his own beautiful  Chinese style. In this fashion he translated the novels of Scott and Dickens, of Connon Doyle and Victor Hugo and R.L. Stevenson, Tolstoy Cervantes and others, until he had translated 93 English books, 19 American ones,25 French and 6 Russians.Rider Haggard was perhaps his favourite western writer... In the end  he became wealthy by his innocent piracy.

     Years later when I began to write, I found myself subjected  to the same honour, or annoyance, depending upon how one wishes to think of it, and my books, too were cheerfully pirated over and over again. I remember that  I saw seven different translations, some in full and in short versions, of The Good Earth and on two of them my name did not appear at all and the translator's name was given as that of the author.Young writers lifted certain incidents and characters out of the book  and wove amplified stories about them and sold them as original works. The same fate befell  others among my books but nothing could be done about it. And there was no copyright laws to which to appeal...International altruism may move one to accept a certain amount of the inevitable, but not, I think, the assumption of authorship by a translator.

            ( My Several Worlds - Pearl S. Buck - p.148 )

 

                                                  Writers

       Writers can be divided into meteors, planets and fixed stars. The first produces a momentary  effects;you gaze up, cry "Look"- and then they vanish for ever. The second, the moving stars, endure for much longer. By virtue of their proximity  they often shine more brightly than the fixed stars, which the ignorant mistakes them for. But they too must soon vacate their place, they shine moreover only with a borrowed light, and their influence is limited to their own fellow-travelers 9 their contemporaries). The third alone are unchanging, stand  firm in the firmament,shine by their own light and influence all ages equally, in that their aspect does not alter when our point of view alter since they have no parralax. Unlike the others, they do not belong to one system (nation) alone; they belong to the universe. But it is precisely because they are so high that their light usually takes so many years to reach the eyes of the dwellers on earth.

     There are above all two kinds of writers:those who write for the sake of what they have to say and those who write for the sake of writing.The former have had ideas or experience which seem to them worth communicating:the latter need money and that is why they write- for money.They think for the purpose of writing.You can recognize them by the fact that they spin out their ideas to the greatest possible extent, that their ideas are half-true, obscure, forced and vacillating, and that they usually prefer the twilight so as to appear what they are not, which is why their writings lack definiteness and clarity.You can see they are writing simply in order to cover paper;and as soon as you do see it you should throw the book down, for time is precious. Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money:every writer writes badly as soon as he writes for gain.The greatest works of the greatest men all belong to a time when they had to write them for nothing or for very small payment.

    A multitude of bad writers lives exclusively on the stupid desire of the public to read nothing but what has just been printed:the journalists.Well named! In English the word means "day-labourers"

     Even among the the small numbers of writers who actually think seriously before they start writing, they are extremely few who think about the subject itself:the rest merely think about books, about what others have said about the subject.

  ( Essays and Aphorisms- Arthur Schopenhauer - pp.198/99) 

   

                                 Women Writers

     Women were not to expose themselves to public view as authors, and in her (Jane Austen's) life time her name never appeared on the title page of her works. Only after her death was her authorship publicly noted. Other women authors, such as Charlotte and Anne Bronte , sought the cover of a male pseudonym to avoid the condescension reserved for the female authors. And Mary Ann Evans adopted the male nom de plume  of George Elliot. The Young Bronte sisters took refuge in the fairy-tale kingdoms of Angria and Gondal. Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho and Mrs. Shelly's Frankekstein and other Githic novels sought escape from faminine confinements in tales of fear and fantasy... 

Ironically, English women writers of the early nineteenth century who were still conventionally confined by female proprieties became pioneers of realism in the modern novel.

                   ( The creators -Daniel Boorstin -p.716 )

   

                                             Critics

      To tell you the truth, though, I still haven't made up my mind whether I shall publish it all. Tastes differ so widely, and some people are so humourless, so uncharitable and so absurdly wrong-headed, that one would probably do  far better to relax and enjoy life than worry oneself to death trying to instruct or entertain a public which will only despise one's efforts or at least feel no gratitude for them. Most readers know nothing about literature -many regard it with contempt. Low brows find everything heavy going that isn't completely low-brow. high-brows reject everything as vulgar that isn't a mass of archaisms. Some only like the classics, others only their own works. some are so grimly serious that they disapprove  of all humour,  others so half-witted that they can't stand wit. Some are so literal-minded that the slightest hint of irony affects them as water affects a sufferer from hydrophobia. others come to different conclusions every time they stand-up or sit down. Then there is the alcoholic school of critics, who sit in public houses,pronouncing ex-cathedra  verdicts of condemnations, just as they think fit. They seize upon your publications, as a wrestler seizes upon his opponent's hair, and use them to drag you  down, while they themselves remain quite invulnerable, because their barren pates are completely bald- So thre is nothing for you to get hold of.

    Besides, some readers are so ungrateful that, even if they enjoy a book immensely, they don't feel any affection for the author. They are like rude guests who after a splendid dinner-party go home stuffed with food, without saying a word of thanks to their host. So much for the wisdom of preparing a feast at one's own expense for a public with such fastidious and unpredictable tastes, and with such a profound sense of gratitude.

                   (Utopia- Thomas More - pp.31/32 )

 

                                              Language 

     Language is the most important instrument of human communication, and consequently of industry. It becomes national together with the triumph of commodity exchange which integrates nations. Upon this foundation the national state is erected as the most convenient, profitable and normal arena for the formation of bourgeois nation, if you leave the struggle of Netherlands for independence and the fate of the island country.

( History of the Russian Revolution - Leon Trotsky- Vol.3- p.39)

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     If our images of reality are changing more rapidly. and the machinery of image transmission being speeded up , a parallel change is altering the very codes we use. For language, too , is convulsing. According to lexicographer Stuart Berg Flexner, senior editor of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language , ' the words we use are changing faster today and not merely on the slang level, but on every level. The rapidity with which words come and go is vastly accelerated. This seems to be true not only of English language, but of French, Russian and Japanese as well." 

     Flexner illustrated this with the arresting suggestion  that, of the estimated 450,000 'usable' words in the English language today , only perhaps 250,000 would be comprehensible to William Shakespeare. Were Shakespeare suddenly to materialize in London or New York, he would be unable to understand, on the average , only five out of every nine words in our vocabulary. The Bard would be semi-literate.   

     This implies that if the language has the same number of words in Shakespeare's time as it does today, at least 200,000 words - perhaps several times that many - have dropped out had been replaced in the intervening four centuries. Moreover, Flexner conjectures that a full third of this turn-over has occured within the last fifty years alone. This, if correct, would mean that the words are now dropping out of the language and been replaced at a rate at least three times faster than during the base period 1564 to 1914...

    At the level of slang, the turn over rate is so rapid that it has forced dictionary makers to change their criteria for word inclusion. 'In 1954 , says Flexner  ' when I started started  work on the Dictionary of American Slang I would not consider a word for inclusion unless I could find three uses of the word  over a five-year period. Today such a criterion would be impossible. Language, like art , is increasingly becoming a fad proposition. The slang terms 'fab' and 'gear', for example, didn't last a single year. They entered the teenage vocabulary in about 1966; by 1967 they were out. You cannot use a time criterion for slang anymore,'

              ( Future Shock- Alvin Toffler - pp.159/60 ) 

                          Number of Words Necessary

     'Yes, I speak  five of the modern tongues - that is to say, German,French, Italian,English and Spanish; by the aid of Greek I learned modern Greek - I don't speak it so well as I could wish, but I am still trying to improve myself.''

     ''Improve yourself! repeated Dantes, why, how can you manage to do so?''

     "Why, I made a vocabulary of the words I knew; turned, returned  and arranged them, so as to enable me to express my thought through their medium . I know nearly one thousand words, which is all that is absolutely necessary, although I believe there are nearly one hundred thousand in the dictionaries. I cannot hope to be very fluent, but I certainly should have no difficulty in explaining my wants and wishes; and that would be quite as much as I should ever require."

  ( Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas -p. 108)

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     It is these technical, scientific , foreign , and slang terms which swell our dictionaries to such an enormous size. We are told that the new Oxford Dictionary will contain a quarter of a million words. Does anyone of us know 250,000 English words? I doubt it. It is extraordinary hoe many words this small brain of ours will hold, but there are limits to everything. In China a young man receives his first or second class in examination , according to the number of words he can read or write. But in order to obtain the place of an imperial historian, a candidate is not required to know more than 9000. We do more than this.Most of us can read Shakespeare's plays, and in order to do that , we must know about 15,000 words. But though we understand most of these words  (there are about 500 to 600 words in Shakespeare which may justly be called obsolete ) , there are many we should never think of using ourselves. Most of us, I believe , never use more than 3,00- to 4,000 words, and we are assured that there are peasants who never use more than 300  or400. This does not mean that they would not understand more than that umber, for the Bible which they hear in church contains about 6,000 words; these they would understand more or less accurately, though they would never think of using them. 

( Three Lectures on the Science of Language -Max Muller -pp.10/11 )

                                Russian Language 

      It would seem that a word normally associated with the street has escaped the lips of our hero. But what can one do? Such is the lot of the writer in Russia! Furthermore if a word from the street occurs in a book it is not the writer who is guilty, but the readers, and primarily the reader from the upper classes: it is from them, above all, that you will not hear a single decent Russian word;their speech is so abundantly stuffed with every manner of French, German and English word that you would not even want to hear it, and these words are employed furthermore, with the retention of every possible type of pronunciation:the French spoken through the nose and the "r" gargled, the English spoken as befits a bird, with the adoption even of an avian physiognomy, and they would even make fun of those who cannot assume this bird-like expression:while only Russian is lacking, though they may perhaps out of patriotism build themselves a cottage in the Russian style at their Summer residence, Such are the readers from high society, and they are followed by all those who would assign themselves to high society..And yet they are so exacting! They absolutely insist that everything should be written in the strictest language - purified and noble, in a word, they want the Russian language to descend suddenly from the clouds of its own accord, properly processed, and to alight right on their tongues,so that they need no more than open their mouths to utter it.

                 (Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol - p.183 )

 

                                   Japanese Language 

      The Japanese language is so complex that it had been called'' the devil's language.'' Since the Japanese as a people distrust and shun a straightforward  verbal communication, this suits them just fine.

      The logical place to begin any analysis of the Japanese mind is with the language in which  Japanese think. They themselves sometimes refer to it as ''the devil's language'' - a phrase apparently coined by  Saint Francis Xavier the great sixteenth century Jesuit missionary to Japan - and few who have ever tried to learn Japanese will quarrel with the description. 

     To begin with, Japanese doesn't have the kind of close kinship with any other language that English has with German or Spanish with French. Philologists generally believe that Japanese belongs to the Altaic family of languages - a group that includes Korean,Mongolian, Turkish and, in a more remote fashion, probably Hungarian and Finnish as well. But even with these somewhat esoteric tongues, Japanese does not have a relationship close enough to be of much practical value to the ordinary Turk, Finn or Japanese. When a foreigner sets out to learn Japanese, there is little useful carry-over from his own language, whatever it may be. And the same is true in reverse for the Japanese.

     More troublesome yet, present day Japanese is essentially the offspring of a highly unsuitable marriage between the original unwritten Japanese language of fifteen centuries ago and archaic Chinese. What made this marriage so unfortunate is that  grammatically and in other important respects, Chinese and Japanese are utterly dissimilar...

     All in all,  then, spoken Japanese is not an unduly complex or difficult language. But written Japanese is an entirely different kettle of fish. It is, in fact, quite certainly the most difficult system of written communication in general use in the contemporary world... 

   ( The Japanese Mind - Robert C. Christopher -pp.35/36)

 

                                     Arabic Language

     No people in the world, perhaps, manifest such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and are so moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs. Hardly any language seems capable of exercising  over the minds of its users such irresistible influence as Arabic. Modern audiences in Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo can be stirred to the highest degree by the recital of poems, only vaguely comprehended , and by the delivery of orations in the classical tongue, though it be only partially understood. The rhythm , the rhyme, the music, produce on them the effects of what they call "lawful magic.''( Sihr halal )

      Typical Semites, the Arabians created or developed no great art of their own. Their artistic nature found expression through one medium: speech.... The beauty of man ' declares an Arabic adage, '' lies in the eloquence of his tongue.'' '' Wisdom ''  in a late saying, ''has alighted on three things: the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese and the tongue of the Arabs''... By virtue of its peculiar structure Arabic lent itself admirably to a terse, trenchant,epigramatic mannerof speech. Islam made full use of this feature of the language and of this psychological peculiarity of its people. Hence the '' miraculous character'' of the style and composition of the Koran, adduced by Muslims as the strangest argument in favour of the genuineness  of their faith. The triumph of  Islam was to a certain extent the triumph of a language, more particularly of a book.

      (History of the Arabs - Philip K . Hitti - pp.90/91 ) 

 

                              Religion : Above Criticism

     The strongest language to be found in The God Delusion is tame and measured by comparison. If it sounds intemperate, it is only because of weird convention, almost universally accepted, that religious faith is uniquely privileged: above and beyond criticism. Insulting a restaurant might seem trivial compared to insulting God. But  restaurateurs and chefs really exist and they have feelings to be hurt, whereas blasphemy, as the witty bumper sticker puts it, is a victimless crime.....

     Book critics or theatre  critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant wit of their review. but in criticism of religion even clarity ceases to be a  virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound mere direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'. Polite society will purse its lips and shakes his head; even secular polite society, and especially that part of secular society that loves to announce. "I'm an atheist BUT... "

     ... Fundamentalist Christians are passionately opposed to evolution and I am passionately in favour of it. Passion for passion, we are evenly matched. And that, according to some, means we are equally fundamentalist. But, to borrow an aphorism whose source I am unable to pin down, when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. And that justifies passion on the other side....

     .... The fundamentalist Kurt Wise proclaims that all the evidence in the universe would not change his mind. The true scientist, however passionately he may believe in evolution, knows exactly what it would take to change his mind: Evidence.  As J.B.S. Haldane said when asked what evidence might contradict evolution, Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian."  Let me coin my own opposite version of Kurt  Wise's manifesto: " if all the evidence in the universe turned in favour of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence 9and there is a vast amount of it ) favours evolution. It is for this reason and this reason alone that I argue for evolution with a passion that matches the passion of those who argue against it . My passion is based on evidence. Theirs, flying in the face of evidence as it does, it is truly fundamentalist.

      ( The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins - pp.17/19)

                                      Nehru on Religion 

      " I would totally abolish the caste system, remove the feudal princes, curtail or end landlordism, and industrialize  and rebuild India's economy from the groun up', Nehru told me in our first interview at Bombay. " As for Hinduism , its evil far outweigh its good points. I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming true MAN, master of his fate and captain of his soul. To attain this I wouldlike priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools. The sooner people are given education and knowledge in place of superstition and memeaningless

    

                                         Libraries 

     Shut not your doors to me proud libraries

     For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd yet

                   needed most,  I bring

     Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,

     The word of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,

     A book separate, not link'd with the rest not felt by the 

                                                                            intellect,

     But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.  

                ( Leaves of  Grass -Walt Whitman - p.10 )     

 

                            The Art  of Not Reading 

      The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public.A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

       (Essays and Aphorisms - Arthur Schopenhauer )

 

                                 Artists and Poverty

      I wish someone would one day attempt a tragic history of literature, showing how the various nations which now take their highest pride in great writers and artists they can show treated them while they were alive.In such a history the author would bring visibly before us that endless struggle which the good and genuine of all ages  and all lands has to endure against the always dominant bad and wrong-headed:depict the martyrdom of almost every genuine Enlightner  of mankind, almost every great master of every art:show us how, with a few exceptions, they lived tormented lives in poverty and wretchedness, without recognition, without sympathy, without disciples, while fame, honour and riches went to the unworthy;... How in spite of all, love of their cause sustained them, until the hard struggle of such an educator of all human race was at last consummated, the never fading laurel wreath beckoned and the hour struck in which for him too:

     The heavy armour becomes the light dressed  of childhood

     the pain is brief, the joy unending

 (Essays and Aphorisms- Arthur Schopenhauer - pp.210/11)

 

                                    Foreign Words

       It would be appropriate to remark here that a great number of foreign words were inserted into both ladies' conversation, and sometimes entire long sentences in French. But, however great the author's veneration for the statutory benefits brought by the French tongue to Russia, however great his veneration for this praiseworthy custom of our high society which choose to express itself in this language at all hours of the day, motivated undoubtedly, by love  for their mother country, yet for all this he cannot bring himself to insert a sentence of any alien tongue whatsoever into this his Russian poem.

                     (Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol -p.201) 

                           Language with a Difference

      We should also remark that the ladies of the town of N., like many ladies of St.Petersburg, were noteworthyly  circumspect and decorous in their choice of words and expressions. They would never say: " I blow my nose", I got sweaty" or "I spat", but would say: " I relieved  my nose  ", " I had need of my handkerchief". Under no circumstance could a lady say: "This glass or that plate stinks", or even anything which might hint at this, but instead they said: " This glass is behaving badly", or something on those lines. In order still further to ennoble the Russian language, almost half of the vocabulary was simply jettisoned from the conversation, and they were frequently compelled to have recourse to the French language, because there , in French, words that were far more scandalous than those already mentioned were permitted.

                   ( Dead Souls- Nikolai  Gogol -p. 176 )

                                Literary Periodicals

      Literary periodicals  ought to be the dam against the ever-rising flood of bad and unprofitable books produced by the unprincipled scribbling of of our age. With the incorruptibility, judiciousness and severity of their judgements, they should scourge without mercy all patchwork put together by incompetents , all the page-filling through which empty heads seek to fill their empty pockets, which is to say nine-tenths of all books, and thus against triviality and imposture as their duty dictates; instead of which they promote these things: and their abject tolerance allies itself with author and publisher to rob the public of its time and money.Their writers are as a rule professors or literati who, because of low salaries or poor payments, write from need of money: so, since they all have a common aim, their interests are in common they keep together, mutually sustain one another and speak in favour of one another:this is the origin of all the laudatory reviews of bad books which constitute the content of literary periodicals. Their motto ought to be: Live  and Let live.

  ( Essays and Aphorisms- Arthur Schopenhauer- pp.201/02)

 

                          Indiscriminate Reading

      ...when too much constraint made  my work repulsive too, I grew weary of everything.In that state I re-acquired my love of reading, which I had long ago lost. The time for books I stole from my work, and that brought me fresh punishments. But, spurred on by opposition, this state soon became a furious passion. Madame La Tribu's famous lending library provided  reading of all sorts. Good or bad was alike to me. I did not choose.I read everything with equal avidity. I read at my bench, i read on errands. i read in the lavatory, and was oblivious of myself for hours on end. I read till my head spun. I did nothing  but read. My master spied on me, caught me, beat me, and took away my books. how many volumes were ton up , burnt and thrown out of the window! How many works returned to Madame La Thibu's shelves with volumes missing! When  i had no money to pay her, I gave her my shirts, my ties, my clothes; my weekly pocket money of three Sous was carried to her regularly every Sunday.

     There, it may be said, is a case where money became necessary. That is true, but it was a moment when reading had cut down every activity. given over entirely to my new craze, I did nothing but read; I gave up stealing.This is another of my characteristic contradictions. When I am in a certain mood a trifle distracts me, changes me, and becomes a passion. Then I forget everything, and think only of the new subject of interest. My heart throbbed with impatience to turn over the pages of the new book  I had in my pocket I took it as I was alone, and had no longer thought of ransacking my master's private workshop. I cannot even imagine that I should have stolen even if I had a more expensive craze.

        (The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau - p.47)

                             ***********************

     My illusions about the world cause me to think that in order to benefit by my reading I ought to possess all the knowledge the book presupposed. I was very far indeed from imagining that often the author did not possess it himself, but extracted it from other books, as and when he needed it. This foolish conviction forced me to stop every moment, and to rush incessantly from one book to another; sometimes before coming to the tenth of the one I was trying to read I should, by this extravagant method, have had to run through whole libraries, Nevertheless U stuck to it so persistently that I wasted infinite times, and my head became so confused that I could hardly see or take in anything. Luckily I saw that I was on a false track which was leading me into an immense labyrinth. and abandoned it before getting quite lost... whether lived or died I had no time to lose. To know nothing at nearly twenty five, and wish to to know everything, entail making the very best you use of my age. Not knowing at what point fate or death might put an end to my endeavours, I decided, come what might, to get some idea about every subject, for the purpose not only of discovering my natural abilities but of deciding which was the best brand of knowledge to pursue... I cannot  have been born to study, for continuous application so wearies me that I am utterly unable to devote half an hour on end to a single subject, especially when following someone else's train of thought; though sometimes I have been able to attend longer to my own, and even with a fair measure of success.... but, as my eagerness grew, i  soon found means of contriving more time reading, and of doing two things at once, without noticing that both were done worse as a result.

    ( The Confessions- Jean Jacques Rousseau - pp.223/24 )

 

            Differences between French and English Authors 

      ... In England, I think, men of letters bother but little with one another. They do not in one another's pockets as  French authors do; they meet, indeed , infrequently  and then as likely as  as not by chance. I remember one author saying  to me years ago:  I prefer to live with my raw material ."They do not even read one another very much.On one occasion, an American critic came to England to interview a number of distinguished writers on the state of English literature, and gave up  his project when he discovered that a very eminent  novelist, the first one he saw , had never read a single book of Kipling's. English writers judge their fellow craftsmen; one they will tell you is pretty good, another they will say is no great shakes, but their enthusiasm  for the former seldom reaches fever-heat and their detestation for the latter is manifested rather by indifference than by detraction. They do not particularly envy someone else's success, and when it is obviously unmerited, it moves them to laughter rather than to wrath. I think English authors are self-centered. they are , perhaps, as vain as any others, but their vanity is satisfied by the appreciation of private circle.They are not inordinately affected by adverse criticism, and with one  or two exceptions do not go out of their way to ingratiate  themselves with the reviewers. They live and let live.

     Things are very different in France. There the literary life is a merciless conflict in which one gives violent battle to another, in which one clique attacks another clique, in which you must always be on your guard against the gins and snares of your enemies and in which, indeed, you can never be quite sure that a friend will not knife you in the back. It is all against all,  and,as in some forms of wrestling,anything is allowed. It is a life of bitterness,envy and treachery, of malice and hatred. I think there are reasons for this. One,of course, is that they take literature much more seriously than we do, a book matters to them as it never matters to us, and they are prepared to wrangle over general principles with a vehemence that leaves us amazed - and tickled,  for we cannot get it out of our heads that there is something comic in taking art so seriously. Then,political and religious matters have a way of getting themselves entangled with literature in France, and an author will see his book furiously assailed, not because it is a bad book, but because he is Protestant, a nationalist, a Communist or what not. Much of this is praiseworthy. It is well that a writer should think not only that the book he himself is writing is important, but that the books other people are writing are important too. It is well that the authors, at least, should think that books really mean something, and that their influence is salutary,  in which case they must be defended, or harmful, in which case they must be attacked. Books can't matter much if their authors themselves don't think they matter...

     There is one practice common to French authors that has always caused me astonishment, and that is their practice of reading their works to one another, either when they are in process of writing them, or when they have finished them.In England writers sometimes send their unpublished works to fellow craftsmen for criticism, by which mean praise, for rash is the author who makes any serious objections to another's manuscript; he will only offend , and his criticism will not be listened to: but I cannot believe that any English author would submit himself to the excruciating boredom of sitting hours while fellow novelist read him his latest work. In France it seems to be an understood thing that he should, and what is stranger, even eminent writers will often rewrite much of their work on the strength of the criticism they may have thus received. No less a person than Flaubert remarks. and you can gather from Andre Gide's Journal that he has often profited in the same way...

      ( A Writer's Notebook - Somerset Maugham - pp.viii-x )

 

                             Bad Way of Comparing Novels 

     It is obviously easy to pass withering judgement on the novel What Is To Be Done? by comparing it with, say, Anna Karenina. But the critic who compares two entirely incommensurable literary work is a bad one. It would be more appropriate to compare the novel What Is To Be Done? with, for example, this or that philosophical novel by Voltaire.

( George Plekhanov - Selected Philosophical Works - Vol.iv-p.209)

                                         Biographies

      Famous men have from time immemorial had their life stories told, even our generation, with all its stupid indifference to the present, has not quite abandoned the practice. The outstanding personality has still won an occasional triumph to merit that poisons all states , small and great alike. But mark two points of difference. In the past, the road to memorable achievement was not so uphill or so beset with obstacles, and the task of recording it never failed to attract the man of genius. There was no question of currying favour or grinding one's own axe. The consciousness of an honourable aim was reward enough. Men even felt that to tell their own life story showed self-confidence rather than conceit.  Ratilius and Scaurus told theirs, and were neither disbelieved nor criticised. How true it is that noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop. But today, as I set out to crave an indulgence which I should not have asked for an invective. So savage and hostile to virtue are our times.

              ( On Britain and Germany - Tacitus -p.51 )

 

                                         Grammarians

      I know one 'jack-of-all-trades' ,scholar of Greel an Latin , mathematical, philosopher, doctor, 'allin pricely style', a man already in his sixties, who has thrown up everything else, and spent twenty years vexing and tormenting himself over grammar. He supposes de'd be perfectly happy if he were allowed to live long enough to  define precisely how the eight sections of a speech should be distinguished,something in which no one writing in Greek or Latin has ever manged to be entirely successful. And then if anyone treats a conjunction as a word with the force of an adverb, it's a thing to go to war about. To this end, though there are as many grammars and grammarians , or rather, more, since my friend aldus alone has brought out more than five, there is not one, however ignorantly or tediously written, which our man will pass over without scrutinizing it from cover to cover. Nor  is there anyone he won't envy for his bungling efforts in this field, for he is pitiably afraid that someone will win the prize, and all labours of so many years will be wasted. Would you rather call this madness or folly?

                (Praise of Folly- Erasmus - pp.146/47)

                                               Writers

     Of the same kidney are those who court immortal fame by writing books. They allow a great deal to me, especially any who blot their pages with unadulterated rubbish. But people who use their erudition to write for a learned minority and are anxious to have either Persius or Laelius pass judgements don't seem to me favoured by fortune but rather to be pitied for their continued self-torture. They add, change, remove, lay aside, take up, rephrase, show to their friends, keep for nine years and are never satisfied, and their futile reward, a word of phrase from a handful of people, they win at such a cost - so many late nights, such loss of sleep, sweetest of all things, and so much sweat and anguish.. Then  their health deteriorates, their looks are destroyed, they suffer partial or total blindness, poverty, ill-will, denial of pleasure, premature old age and early death, and whatever remaining disasters there may be. Yet the wise man believes he is compensated for everything if he wins the approval of one or another purblind scholar.

 The writer who belongs to me is far happier in his crazy fashion. He never loses sleep as he sets down at once whatever takes his fancy and comes to his pen, even his dreams and costs him little beyond the price of his paper. He knows well enough that the more trivial that trifles he writes about the wider audience which will appreciate them, made up as it is of all the ignoramuses and fools. What does it matter if three scholars can be found to damn his efforts, always supposing they've read them? How can the estimation of a mere handful of savants prevail against such a crowd of admirers ? Even better sense is shown by those who publish other men's work as their own, with a few verbal changes in order to transfer to themselves the fame someone else has worked hard to acquire. They buoy themselves up with the thought that even if they are convicted of plagiarism they will have profited meanwhile by whatever time is gained. their self-satisfaction is a sight worth seeing whenever they are praised in public and pointed out in a crowd ( That's him, the great man himself! ), or when they're on show in the bookshops, every title-page displaying their three names, which are mostly foreign and evidently intended to be spellbinding, though heavens know these are nothing more than names.

                      (Praise of Folly- Erasmus -p.148 ) 

 

                          Youth and Elderly - Generation Gap

     Young men have strong desires, and whatever they desire they are prone to do. Of the bodily desires the one they let govern them most is the sexual; here they lack self-control. They are shifting and unsteady in their desires, which are vehement for a time , but soon relinquished; for the longings of youth are keen rather than deep - are like sick people's fit of hunger and thirst. The young are passionate, quick to anger, and apt to give way to it. And their angry passions get the better of them; for, since wish to be honoured, young men cannot put up with a slight; they are resentful if they only imagine that they are unfairly treated. Fond of honour, they are even fonder of victory, for youth likes to be superior, and winning evinces superiority . They love both honour and victory more than they love money. Indeed they care next to nothing about money, for they have not yet learned what the want of it means....The young think of no evil ( are not cynical ), but believe in human goodness, for as yet they have not seen many examples of vice.They are trustful , for as yet they have not been often deceived . And they are sanguine; for young men glow with  a natural heat as drinkers are heated with wine, while as yet their failures have not been many. They live their lives for the most part in hope ( anticipation ), as hope is of the future and memory of the past; and for young men the future is long, past but short; on the first day of life there is nothing to remember, everything to expect.They are easily deceived, and for the same reason, since they are quick to hope . being passionate as well as hopeful, they are relatively brave; the passion excludes fear , and hope inspires confidence- no one is afraid when he is angry, and an anticipation of good makes one confident. And the are shy; for as yet they have no independent standard of good conduct, but only the conventional standards in which they were reared. They are high-minded( have lofty aspirations ); first because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor come to know the force of circumstances; and secondly. because high-mindedness means thinking oneself fitted for great things, and  this again is characteristic of the hopeful In their action they prefer honour to expediency; for their lives are rather lives of good impulse(moral instinct or feeling) than of calculation (reason ); and calculation aims at the expedient, virtue at the honourable. They are fond of their friends, intimates and associates- more so than are men in the other two periods of life; this comes from their love of company, and from the fact that as yet they judge nothing , and hence do not judge their friends, by the standard of expediency. All their mistakes are on the side of  intensity and excess, running counter to the maxim of Chilon ('Moderation in all things '). They carry everything too far: they love to excess - and so in all else. They think they know everything, and are positive about everything; indeed, this is why they always carry their doings too far. When they wrong other people, the injuries are wanton (insolent), not malicious. The young are prone to pity, because they think everyone good, or at all events better than people really are. That is, they judge their fellow man by their own guilelessness , an hence assume that his sufferings are undeserved. They are fond of laughter, and therefore facetious, facetiousness being a subdued insolence.

     ...As for the elderly men - men who are past their prime - we may say that their characteristics for most part are the opposite of these. T he old have lived long, have been often deceived , have made many mistakes of their own; they see that more often than not the affairs of men turn out badly.  And so they are positive about nothing; in all things they err by an extreme moderation. The 'think' - they never k"know"  ; and in discussing any matter they always subjoin 'perhaps' - 'possibly.' Everything they say is put thus doubtfully - nothing with firmness. They think evil (are cynical ); that is, they are disposed to put the worse construction on everything. Further, they are suspicious because they are distrustful, and distrustful from sad experience. As a result , they have no strong likings or hates; rather, illustrating the precept of Bias, they love as men ready some day to hate, and hate as ready to love. They are mean-souled (small-minded). because they have been humbled by life. Thus they aspire to nothing great or exalted, but crave the mere necessities and comforts of existence. And they are not generous. Property, as they know , is one of the necessities, and they have learned by experience how hard it is to acquire, how easy to lose. They are cowards, apprehensive about everything - in temperament just the opposite of youth; fot they are grown cold, as youth is hot, so that advancing age has paved the way to cowardice, since fear in itself is a species of chill. They cling to life, and all the more as the latter end of it comes nearer; for,  as the object of all desire is the absent, so the thing they most lack will be the thing they most desire.  They are unduly selfish ( their self-love exceeds the right measure ) - another trait of the mean-souled . And through selfishness they live their lives with too much regard for the expedient, too little for honour; by expediency we mean what is good for oneself, by honour what is good absolutely. They are not shy, but tend to be shameless; because they have less regard  for honour than for expediency, they do not care what people think about them. They are slow to hope; partly from experience - since things generally go wrong, or at all events seldom turn out well; and partly, too, from cowardice. they live in memory rather than anticipation; for the part of life remaining to them is but small, while the part that is past is large - and hope is of the future, memory of the past. Here, again,  is the reason for their garrulity ; they are for ever  talking  of bygone events, which they thus enjoy in recollection. Their fits of passion, though quick , are feeble; as for their desires of sense, these have either wholly failed, or are weakened. Accordingly, the old are not characterized by passion, and their actions are governed, not by impulse, but by the love again. And  hence men in this period of life are thought to be temperate (appears to have the virtue of self-control ); the truth is that their desires have slackened, and they themselves are mastered by the love of gain. Their lives are rather  lives of calculation than of moral bias; for calculation aims at expediency, whereas the object of morality is virtue. When they wrong others, the injuries are done out of malice, and not from insolence. Old men , too, as well as young men, tend to feel pity, but not for treason. Young men feel pity out of human kindness, old men out of their infirmity........

    ( The Rhetoric Of Aristotle -  Lane Cooper - pp.132/136)

 

                                         Liberty

      '' ll our life is lived provisionally,'' he said. ''we think that for the time being things are bad, that for the time being we must adapt ourselves, even humiliate ourselves, but that is all just temporary, and that one day life, real life, will begin. We get ready to die, still complaining that we have never really lived. Sometimes I am obsessed  with the idea that we have only one life, and spend the whole of it living provisionally, waiting for real life to begin, And thus the time passes. Nobody lives in the present. Nobody has any profit from his daily life. Nobody can say: On that day, on that occasion, my life began. Even those who enjoy all the advantages of belonging to the government party have to live by intrigue, and are thoroughly  nauseated by the  dominant stupidity. They too live provisionally , and spend their lives waiting."

     "One must not wait,'' said Spina. In exile one spends one's life waiting too. One must act. One must say:Enough1 from this very day."

     " but if there is no liberty?'' said Nunzio Sacca.

     " Liberty isn't a thing you are given as a present,'' said Spina. " you can be a free man under a dictatorship if you struggle against it. He who thinks with his own head is a free man. He who struggle against for what he believes to be right is a free man. Even if you live in the freest country in the world and are lazy, callous, apathetic, irresolute, you are not free but a slave , though there be no coercion and no opposition. Liberty is something you have to take for yourself. It's no use begging it from others."

           ( Bread and Wine - Ignazio Silone - pp. 28 /29 )  

      From an Island Mentality to a World-Wide Mentality

      This was the first and perhaps the most decisive leap in my intellectual life.A magic portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. Until this time Crete and Greece had been the confined areas in which my struggling soul was jammed; now the world broadened , the divisions of humanity multiplied, and my adolescent beast creaked in an effort to contain them all. Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of the Cretan, but of every man. Above all,only now did I begin to have a presentiment of the great secret: that by means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions  had governed me until this time: fear, the struggle to conquer fear, and the yearning for freedom. But now two passions were kindled inside me: beauty and the thirst  for learning. I wanted to read and learn, to see distant lands, to have personal experience of suffering an joy. The world was larger than Greece, the world's suffering was larger than our suffering, and the yearning for freedom was not the exclusive prerogative of the Cretan, it was the eternal struggle of mankind. Crete did not vanish from my mind, however . Instead, the entire world unfurled within me  to become one gigantic Crete which was oppressed by all sorts of Turks but continually leaping to its feet and seeking liberty. In this way, converting the entire world into Crete, I was able in the early years of adolescence to feel the suffering and pain of all mankind.

    ( Report to Greco - Nikos Kazantzakis - pp.89/90 )

 

            Typical Idiotic and Self-Destructive  Loyalty

     .... The Finn Ottomar Kuusinen, the future Quisling of 1941, did not find it ( the Resolution Aganst Trotsky) strong enough.'      " it Must be said openly, " he suggested, '' that the document sent by Trotsky to the Political Office of the Russian Communist Party has a clearly counter revolutionary character and is proof that its author has nothing in common with the working class."

     Since no one else asked for the floor, after consulting with Togliatti, I apologized to those present for having come late and for not having had a chance to read the document in question.

     "Actually,'' Thalmann candidly remarked, "we haven't seen it either.''

     Confronted with this all-too-frank reply, I preferred to doubt my ears and repeated my objection in other terms.

     " It may very well be,'' I said, ''that Trotsky document should be condemned, but obviously we can't condemn it until we read it."

     "But we haven't read it either,'' replied Thalmann. ''and neither have most of the delegates here, except for the Russians."

     Thalmann was speaking German, and his words were being translated into Russian for Stalin and into French for two or three of us. The answer translated to me seemed so incredible that I had  words with the translator.   

     "it is impossible that Thalmann have said that," I said. "Please give me his answer again , word for word!"

     at this point, Stalin Intervened. He was standing at one side of the room and seemed to be the only calm and unruffled person in the group.

" The Political office of the party thought it best not to translate Trotsky's document and distribute it to the delegates of the International Executive, Stalin said, because there are various allusions in it to the policy of the Soviet Government in China.....

     .... The Bulgarian Kolarov was given this unpleasant task> ( of explaining the situation to the Italian delegates)..

     Let's be frank, he said with a smile.`'' May be` you think I have read the document. No, I haven't read the document. Shall I tell you the whole truth? The document doesn't even interest me. Shall I tell you more?Even if Trotsky were to send me a copy in secret, I would refuse to read it.My dear Italian friends, this is not a question of documents.I know that Italy is a country of academies, but this is no academy. Here we are in the thick of a struggle for power between two rival groups in the Russian central directorate. Which of these groups do we want to line up with? That's the question. Documents have nothing to do with it. It is not a question of finding the historical truth about the failure of the revolution in China. It is a power struggle between two opposed and irreconcilable groups. We have to choose. And I have already made up my mind. I am for the majority group. Whatever the minority does or says, I repeat that I am for the majority. Documents don't interest me.We are not in an an academy here.'

          ( Emergency Exit - Ignazio Silone - pp.75/77 )

 

                           Intolerance  - Meaningless

     ....But from my schooldays, I had known that nothing so strange and so little credible can be imagined but some philosophers had been found to assert it. Later on I found, during my travels, that those who entertain notion that contradict our own are not, for that reason, barbarians or savages, but that many of them use their reason as much as we do, or even more. Finally I consider how different a man of the same disposition would be if he had been brought up from childhood among the Frenchmen or Germans, or if he had lived all his life with Chinese or cannibals, and how our very fashions in dress change, so that what pleased us ten years ago and will please us again ten years hence, now seem extravagant and worthy of ridicule. These tales, moreover, make us imagine many events to be possible which are not so in fact.

           (  Discourse on Method- Rene Descartes- p.40)

 

                                    Books in Calcutta

       If you go up in College street you find yourself in what might well be the biggest second-hand book market in the  world. It is not just college street itself which contains one shop after another full of literature, for perhaps half a mile, together with stalls full of books and pamphlets  on the pavement over the same distance--- and the bookseller will be content with your company and your chatter about books long after he has realized that this time he is not going to make a sale. He and his  fellows are perhaps the only tradesmen in town who will leave you alone if that's how you prefer to be.

     There are far more poets in this city than there are novelists in Dublin and a much difference is that in Calcutta the writers have usually at least put pen to paper.You can see a lot of them every weekend on the Maidan, generally in groups of twenty or thirty, holding a Muktha Mela,, which is a kind of cultural jamboree in which poets recite their verses to each other, composers sing the ballad they have just finished, artists discuss their most recent brushwork and lots of people simply roll up to listen, for the whole thing is entirely informal.. This is the city of Sathyajith Ray, after all, though it probably values him less than do western connoisseurs and has lately taken to heaving bricks at his camera whenever he tries to film on location in Calcutta; for there is much professional jealousy in the film world and here politics enter everything and Ray, like the Frenchman Louis Malle, has been unacceptably realistic in his artistic responses to Calcutta.... one incompetent Bengali film after another that is neither minimal art no more  nor more than minimal box office. But creation is everything here.

     This urge has produced more publishers in Calcutta, it is said, than in  all the rest of India. They sometimes operate from small backrooms which probably accommodate half a dozen members of the family at a time, as well as the man of literature. And so great is the clamour of  other men of literature to get their thoughts and observations into print, that such a publisher sometimes makes a quite a modest living from launching a book of 28 pages and 1500 words (complete with source notes ) on serious topics at two or three Rupees per copy. No author of a thumping bestseller in the west ever put more of himself into these small classics. One of them begins with the dedication "To the memory of my beloved Cosin Chiranthan Bhattacharya, a Sergeant of Calcutta Police knocked down Dead by a Fleeting Lorry on 28 October 1965", and there is averse to go with it. Then there  is a forward. Then comes Preface;"In 1958, on request of my friend Sitangasu Chatterjee, I contributed a series of articles on Derozio  to the Radical Humanist. Since then Maua, a friend of mine has been urging upon me to bring them out in the form of a booklet.I have been in  in search of a publisher for all these years and at last find him here .... My publisher looked through the manuscript by chance  and practically snatched it away from me for publication. Words can hardly express my gratitude to him" Then comes the book proper...

(Calcutta- The City Revealed- Geoffrey Moorhouse -pp.190/91) 

 

                     Against Desecration of Language

       More than nine-tenths of all literate men and women certainly read nothing but newspapers, and consequently model their orthography, grammar and style almost exclusively on them and even, in their simplicity, regard the murdering of language which goes on in them as brevity of expression, elegant facility and ingenious innovation: indeed, young people of the unlearned  professions in general regard the newspapers as an authority simply because it is something printed. For this reason , the state should , in all seriousness,take measures to ensure that the newspapers are altogether free of linguistic errors. A censor should be instituted who instead of receiving a salary, should receive  one louis d'or  for every mangled or stylistically objectionable word, error of grammar or syntax, or misemployed preposition he discovers in them, and three louis d'or for every instance of sheer imprudent mockery of all style and  grammar , with double the sum for any repetition , the amounts to be defrayed by the perpetrators. Or is the German language perhaps anyone's game, a trifle not worthy of that protection of the law which even a dunghill enjoys, Miserable philistines! - What in the world is to become of the German language if every scribbler and newspaper writer is granted discretionary power to do with whatever his caprice and folly suggest.

     (Essays and Aphorisms - Arthur Schopenhauer-pp.205/06 ) 

 

                        How to Use and  Not Use a Language 

     (1)Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

     (2) Never use a long word where a a short one will do. 

     (3) If it is possible to cut a word, always cut it out.

     (4) Never use a passive where you can use the active.

     (5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. 

     (6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

     These rules are elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English... 

     (The Collected Works - George Orwell - Vol.4 - p.169)

                   Time and Space; Past and Present

      "...It is a mistake to be too sentimental over the past and the future. They are nothing but abstract ideas, which were not originally possessed by primitive man; he acquired them only after long effort, to his great misfortune. The thought of the past in itself is sufficiently painful. I do not think  anyone would be willing to begin life again if he had to go over precisely the same ground.That there are delightful hours and exquisite moments I do not deny, but they are pearls and precious stones sparsely sprinkled on the harsh and dismal web of life.The course of the year is, for all its brevity, of tedious slowness, and if it be sometimes sweet to remember it is because we are able to make our minds dwell upon certain isolated moments. And even then the sweetness is pale and melancholy. as for the future, we do not dare look it in the face, so threatening is the gloomy countenance...

"It is certain" rejoined monsieur Bergeret, " that humanity, in its youth, did not conceive of the future and the past as we do. Now these ideas that devour us have no reality outside ourselves. We know nothing of life, and the theory of its development through time is pure illusion. It is by some infirmity of our senses that we do not see tomorrow realized as we see yesterday... With instruments other than those we now possess  we might see ourselves lying dead in the very midst of our own life. For, as time does not in reality exist , and as the succession  of facts is only an appearance, all facts are realized simultaneously  and there is no such thing as the future. The future has already been; we merely discover it... Time is pure idea and space is no more real than time...

     The savages make no distinction between past ,present and future. Languages , which are undoubtedly the oldest monuments of the human race, permit us to go back to the days when our ancestors had not yet accomplished this metaphysical operation... 

      ( Monsieur Bergeret in Paris -Anatole France - pp.55/57)

 

                           How to Start a Story

       For a time I weighed the hard, flexible ream in my hands; then I counted out ten sheets and stowed the rest in my bedside table. I found my fountain pen in the drawer beside the the photograph album;it's full is no problem, how shall I begin?

     You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern, put aside all mention of time and distance and, when the whole thing is done,, proclaim, that you have finally, at the last moment, solve the space-time problem. Or you can declare at the very start that it's impossible to write a novel nowadays, but then, behind your own back so to speak, give birth to a whopper, a novel to end all novels. I have also told that it makes a good impression, an impression of modesty so to speak, if you begin by saying that a novel can't have a hero any more because there are no more individualists, because individuality is a thing  of the past, because man - each man and all men together- is alone in his loneliness and no one is entitled to individual loneliness, and all men lumped together make up a "lonely mass"  without names and without heroes. 

                        ( Tin Drum -Gunther Grass p.3) 

 

                                       Writing a Novel 

     I had long been preparing to become a writer of fiction too, incidentally. But I am of the belief that people of my character should not engage in fiction in the years of their youth - success will not come to them early. Were it not for the financial necessity, arising from the cessation of my publicist  activity by my arrest, I would not have publish  a novel  at the age of 35 either. Rousseau waited until old age. Godwin also. The novel is something intended for the mass of public; it is the most serious of literary occupations, and the most suited to old age. The simplicity of the form should be compensated for, by the seriousness of the thoughts which are being instilled in the masses. Thus I prepared material for the elderly period of my life.

 ( N.G. Cherneshevsky- quoted by Plekhanov- Selected Philosophical Works - Vol.iv - p.207 )

                 Say it in English and Keep it Short 

      Everyone has seen examples of bureaucratic double talk in communication. You know what I mean- a long-winded document that takes the reader through two dozen options and alternatives and ends up with any one of six or seven different conclusions. Most of us associate this phenomenon with government bureaucracies. But tale my word for it, a lot of double talk exist in corporations as well.

    There are three factors behind the mumbo jumbo. First, the almost uncontrollable desire to tell all you know on any given subject. Second, the love of adjectives and adverbs over nouns and verbs. And third, the desire to impress your audience with your depth of vocabulary. I once read a fifteen-page paper that was tough to understand,  I called in  the author and asked him to explain what was in the tome he had written.He did it in two minutes flat. He identified what we were doing wrong, what we could do to fix it, and what he recommended. When he finished I asked him why he didn't write that in the paper the way he'd just said in tome. He didn't have an answer. All he said was: I was taught that way ." And he was  a M.B.A. to boot.

     Write the way you talk. If you don't talk that way, don't write that way.

              ( Talking Straight - Lee Iacocca- P.90 )

 

                                 The Power Of Speech  

      " and How can we put an end to it Papa? How can we change the world?"

     " By the force of speech, my child. Nothing is more powerful than speech.the linking of powerful arguments and noble thoughts forms a chain that nothing can break.Speech, like the sling of David, lays low the violent and causes the mighty to fall. It is an invincible weapon, without which the world would belong to armed brutes. What keeps them in abeyance? Merely thought, naked and weaponless.

      ( Monsieur Bergeret in Paris- Anatole France - p.182 )

                                       Bible Reading

     That I can write as I do without having to think about my style is due to my having been as a child steeped in the Bible, The Pilgrim's Progress  and Cassell's illustrated Shakespeare. I was  told to hold the Bible in such reverence that when one day, as I was buying a pennyworth of sweets in a little shop in Dublin, the shopkeeper tore a leaf of a dismembered Bible to wrap them in, I was horrified, and half-expected to see him struck by lightning. All the same I took the sweets and ate them; for to my Protestant mind, the shopkeeper, as a Roman Catholic, would go to hell as such Bible or no Bible, and was no gentleman anyhow. Besides, I liked eating sweets, I was too  infantile then to reach my mare mature conclusion that the reason I could read and remember the Bible stories and not read  school books was that the Bible stories when translated when  English literary art was at the summit of its majesty, the translators having believed that they were Englishing the very words of God himself.

     Even the wretched and defrauded children who are not allowed to read novels or poems are allowed to read Banyan and the Bible as a pious duty. But for this blessed exception it would probably be found necessary to exterminate them.

  ( Everybody's Political Whats What - Bernard Shaw - p.181 )

 

                             Origins of Classical Art 

      The Penguin  critics vie with one another in affirming that Penguin art has from its origin been distinguished by a powerful and pleasing originality. and that we may look elsewhere in vain for qualities of grace  and reason that characterize its earliest works. But the Porpoises claim that their artists were undoubtedly the instructors and masters of the Penguin. It is difficult to form an opinion on the matter, because the Penguins, before they began to admire their primitive painters , destroyed all their works.

                    (Penguin Island- Anatole France - p.94 )

 

                                       Home and Library 

       Every Human creature needed a home, not a home of the kind understood by crude knock-you-down patriots, not a religion either, a mere insipid foretaste of a heavenly home; nor a real home, in which space, work, friends,recreation, and the scope of a man's ideas came together into an orderly whole,into - so to speak- a personal cosmos. The best of definition of a home was library.

                  (Auto Da Fe- Elias Canetti- pp.50/51 

                                     Terrorist-type Critics

      Candide happened to be sitting near a party of wits, but that did not prevent him from weeping when scenes which affected him were beautifully acted. One of these critics, who was sitting in the next seat, turned to him during the interval, and remarked"

     " You are quite wrong to weep. That actress is very bad , and the actor playing with her is worse still. The play is ev en worse than the actors. The author does not know one word of Arabic, yet the scene is set in Arabia! And what is more, he does not believe in innate ideas.Tomorrow I will bring you twenty reviews of his work, and still hostile"...

     "Who was that ill-mannered creature" said Candide, " who spoke so harshly of the the play at which I wept so freely, and of the actors who gave me such pleasure?"

     " He is an evil-minded fellow" said the Abbe, who earns his living by damning every play and every book. He hates a successful writer, just as eunuchs  hate successful lovers.He is one of those snakes of literature who feed on dirt and venom. He is a pamphleteer! "

     " What do you mean by a pamphleteer?" asked Candide.

     " A dealer in odd sheets of paper " replied the Abbe, "a journalist "

                       (Candide - Voltaire - pp.98/100 ) 

                                         A Novel

      When  Kien  push the wash-trolley out of his bedroom he heard an unexpectedly high note the exclamation:"up already ". Why did the creature speak so loud early in the morning when he was still almost asleep ? Very true he had promised to lend her a book.

     A novel was the only thing worth considering for her,  But no mind ever grew  fat on a diet of novels. the pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for; they undermine the finest characters. They teach us to think ourselves into other men's places. thus we acquire a taste for change. The personality becomes dissolved in pleasing fragments of imagination. The reader learns to understand every point of view.Willingly he yields himself to the pursuit of other people's goals and loses sight of his own. Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into  the closed personality of the reader. The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance,so much the more completely does he crack upon the personality of his victim. Novels should be prohibited by the state. 

                    (Auto Da Fe - Elias Canetti - p.37 ) 

 

                                               Music 

     Three hundred and sixty years ago or thereabouts Shakespeare warned us against people without music in their souls. " Let  no such man be trusted" he said emphatically, declaring them fit only for treason, stratagems and spoils. This daring but profoundly scientific pronouncement is startling at first... Dr. Inge,greatest of all the deans of St. Paul's, is so 'unmusical' that his only recorded comment on cathedral music expresses a doubt whether the Almighty enjoys "this perpetual serenading." Men of the first quality have been tone deaf and colour blind. But their case prove nothing except that they disliked some particular sort of music. William Morris, one of the greatest and wisest world musicians of the nineteenth century,hated the modern grand piano and would not have one in his house. Mozart hated the flute. But Jazz played on good instruments deliberately degraded and burlesqued by mechanical contraptions, provokes musical people to switch off the wireless. The most maddening noise I ever heard was from a first-rate organ in a Cape Town cinema played with all its stops out all the time. Shakespeare is not contradicted by such instances. Dr. Inge is specially susceptible to the Gospel of St. John, the English authorized version of which enchants by its verbal music. Morris when he was dying, was moved to tears by old music that was not banged at him from steel-framed concert grands, but played as it was intended to be played. I can testify that he could sing perfectly in tune. Samuel Butler disliked Beethoven (so did Chopin ) but had a craze for Handel. Besides, art is not so cheap that a love for all its forms can be obtained without something aesthetic education. A complete public school and university training may leaves its graduates so barbarously ignorant that when war comes they are found in all directions trying to close public art galleries and museums, beginning with the  with the  British Museum, and to use them as military stations and stores and offices. Yet even these philistines are often highly susceptible to the poetry of nature and the colours and sounds with which it is associated; for the unhappiest art-starved school prison, though it may hang no pictures and allow no musical instruments, cannot shut the sky, the ripening crops in the fields, the trees changing colours in autumn, the scent of flowers, the songs of birds, and the Eolian cords of the winds....

 ( Everybody's Political What's What - Bernard Shaw - pp.178/79 )

 

                                      German Musicians

     To the most exceptional of my readers I should like to say just one word about what I really exact from music. It must be original, exuberant, and tender , and like a dainty, soft woman in roguishness and grace... I shall never admit that a German can understand what music is. Those musicians who are called Germans, the greatest and most famous foremost, are all foreigners, either  Slavs, Croats, Italian, Dutchmaen- or Jews; or else' like Heinrich Schutz, Bach and Handel, they are Germans of a strong race which is now extinct. For my own part, I have still enough of the Pole left in me to let all other music go, if only I can keep Chopin.

( Philosophy of Nietzsche- Edited by Geoffrey Clive -p.60 ) 

 

                 Novel Way of Deceiving a Kid  

      So long as I was unable to read, newspapers had a mysterious attraction for me. When I used to see my father spreading out their big sheets  covered all over with little black signs, when passages were read aloud and connected ideas were produced from those same signs, it seemed to me as though  I  were a party to some work of magic. From these sheets so thin and covered with lines so tiny, lines that had no signification in my eyes, there issued tidings of crimes , disasters, adventures, festivals - of Napoleon Bonaparte escaping from the fort of Ham;of Tom  Thumb dressed up like a general; of the stalled Ox Dogobert being led through Praslin. All these things were contained in a single sheet of paper, all these things and numberless others besides, things not so solemn but more homely, whereby my curiosity was aroused. There were "ministers" who gave blows or received them, who got run over  by vehicles, who fell off roofs or picked up purses and took them to the police. How come it that there were all these 'ministers" about when I never set eyes on a single one ? I tried , but in vain , to imagine what a "minister" was like.I asked people about it, but never got any satisfactory answer. 

     She (Madame Mathias ) invented all sorts of subtle devices to make a better boy of me. She pretended, for example, to discover in the newspaper, under "Paris day by day"  sandwiched in between an "alleged case of arson '  and an accident to " Mr. Dduchesne, labourer  " an account of my conduct on the previous day. "Yesterday " she would read, "little Pierre Noziere was naughty and would not do so as he was told inthe Jardin des Tuileries; but he has promised not to behave badly anymore."

     I was wide enough awake, when I was two years old, to feel a certain difficulty in believing  that I was mentioned in the newspapers, like M.Guizot and Mr. Duchesne, la labourer. I noticed that Madame Mathias , who could read the news of the day, a little stumbling perhaps, but without having to correct herself over much, used to stammer in the most singular manner when she came to the items which had to do with me.I therefore arrived at the conclusion that they were not printed in the  paper at all, but that she used to make them up as went along, without being equal to the task. In short I was not without a pang that I renounced the glory of figuring in print and I prefered in my heart to regard the matter as doubtful rather than to possess the certainty that it was false.

              ( Little Pierre - Anatole France- pp.29/31)

                        How Shaw Became  a Historian

      .... Have you ever  reflected on the impossibility of learning history from a collection of its bare facts in the order in which they actually occurred. You might as well try to gather a knowledge of London from the pages of  the pages of telephone directory. french history was not one of my school subjects; but by reading with great entertainment the historical novels of Dumas pere I had a vivid conspectus of France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, from Chicot to Cagliostro, from the conquest  of the nobility by the monarchy  under Richelieu to the French Revolution. Like Marlborough, I had already learnt all I knew of English history, from king John to the final suicide of the English feudal aristocracy and its supersession by the capitalists on Bosworth Field, from the chronicle plays of Shakespeare.  Adding to these congenial authorities the Waverley novels of Walter Scott I came out with a taste for history and an acquaintance with its personages and events which made the philosophy of history real for me when I was fully grown. MacCauly did not repel me as a  historian (of sorts) nor Hegel and Marx bore and bewilder me. At last I became historian myself..

(Everybody's Political Whats What - Bernard Shaw-pp.180/81)

                                        Latin Learning

     My school was conducted on the basis of Latin is still the be-all and the end-all of education. This was a matter of course. I was given no reason why I should learn Latin instead of some living language, There was, in fact , no reason, as there were plenty of translations of all the classics that have any survival value. The method of teaching was barbarous: I was ordered to learn the declensions and conjugations and installments of the vocabulary by rote on pain of being caned or kept in after school hours if I fail to reel off my paradigms without prompting. When I could do this, which was easy enough to a child accustomed to pick up new words and memorize them . Caesars commentaries and Virgil's famous epic were thrust into my hands, and without a word of explanation as to what these old commentaries had to do with me, or why I should concern myself laboriously about an ancient Trojan called Eneas, I was ordered to enter the lists against Dryden and extemporize translations of these works, even when I was not being punished, I was suffering imprisonment, the worst of punishments, for half the day, condemned to sit, still and attentive all the time, except for half an hour of relaxation in the playground, during which I yelled and ran about like a mad creature in a reaction against prolonged unnatural restraint. And there seemed no end to this. To stumble through the lines of Caesar and Virgil led to nothing but Greek paradigms and a demand for a translation of Homer's Iliad, which I  had already devoured for myself in the stately English of Lord Derby, which I preferred to Pope's pretty rhymes. 

     Why, if I  was to have a dead language forced on me, they should not have begun with Greek instead of the culturally inferior Roman I was not told, perhaps because  the reason was too silly, being that the school had not yet advanced from the  Norman conquest to the Renaissance. I escaped from  my classical school just as Homer was threatening, but not before I was confronted with Algebra without a word of  the explanation that would have made it interesting to me. I left school, like Shakespeare  and Dickens, with a little Latin and less Greek; even that little I had been taught before i went there by my clergyman-uncle.

( Everybody"Political What's What- Bernard Shaw- pp.159/60)

 

                                    English Learning 

      ....and I frequently heard the irreverent comment, "why, he's last of all!"

     I continued in this unpretentious situation for nearly a year. However, by being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverest boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered  such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell - a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great- was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing - namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practiced continually English analysis . Mr. Somervell had a system of his own. He took a fairly a long sentence and broke it up into its components by means of black, red, blue and green inks.Subjective,verb,object: Relative clauses.Conditional clauses. Conjunctive and Disjunctive Clauses! Each had its colour and its bracket. It was a kind of drill. We did it almost daily. As I remained in the Third Fourth (b) three times as long as anyone else, I had three times as much of it. I learned it thoroughly. Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally i am biased in favour of boys learning English, I would make them all learn English; and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for is not knowing English. I would whip them them hard for that.

         (My Early Life - Winston S., Churchill- pp.24/25 ) 

                                    "Good-Bad" Books

      A type of book which we hardly seem to produce in these days , but which flowered with great richness in the late nineteenth  and early twentieth centuries, is what Chesterson called the "good bad book ;that is the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished... However, all the books I have been speaking of are frankly 'escape' literature. They form pleasant patches in one's memory, quite corners where the mind can browse at odd moments, but they hardly pretend to have anything to do with real life...

     Perhaps the supreme example of the "good bad book" is Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents: It is also deeply moving and essentially true; It is hard to say which quality outweighs the other. But Uncle Tom Cabin, after all, is trying to be serious and to deal with the real world. How about frankly escapist writers , the purveyors of thrills ang light humour. How about Sherlock Holmes, Vice Versa, Dracula, Helen's Babies or King Solomon's mines? all of these are definitely absurd books which one is more inclined to laugh at than with, and which were hardly taken seriously even by their authors. Yet they have survived, and will  probably continue to do so. All one can say is that, while civilization remains such that one needs distraction from time to time, "light" literature has its appointed place; also that there is such a thing as sheer skill, or native grace, which may have survival value than erudition or intellectual power.

              (Collected Essays George Orwell - pp.37/40)

 

                                          Idea   

     What is an idea?

     It is an image that paints in my brain.

     So, all your ideas are  images?

     Assuredly: for the most abstract ideas are the consequences of all the objects I've perceived.In general I utter the word "being" only because I've known particular beings.I use the word 'infinite'  only because I've seen limits, and because I extend these limits in my understanding as far as  I can. I have ideas  only because I have images in my head.

     And by whom is this picture painted?

     It's not , for I am not a good enough draftsman. He who made me make my ideas.

     So you agree with Malbranch, who said that we see everything in God?

     I am quite sure at least that if  we don't see things in God himself we see them in his all-powerful action.

     And how does this operate?

     I have told you a hundred times in our conversation that I haven't the slightest idea, and that God has not told his secret to anyone. I don't know what makes my heart beat, and my blood run in my movements; and you want me to tell you how I feel and how I think! That's not fair. 

              (Philosophical Dictionary- Voltaire - pp.236/37) 

                Even in the Best Library ,The Novel Reigns

     I went to Ann Arbor, where the president showed me all the new buildings, more especially the library, of which he was very proud. It appeared that the library had the most scientific card- index in the world, and that its method of central heating was extraordinarily up-to-date. While he was explaining all this, we were standing in the middle of a large room with admirable desks. " Does anybody ever read the books" I asked. He seemed surprised, but answered. "Why , yes, there is a man over there now reading." We went to look and found that he was reading a novel.

                     (Autobiography- Bertrand Russell - p.221 )

                                                 The Novel

     After all, one may hear the most private affairs of other people, but only in a spirit of respect for  the struggling , battered thing which any human soul is , and in a spirit of fine, discriminative sympathy. For even a satire is a form of sympathy.It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled.It can inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead, Therefore, the novel, properly handled can reveal the most secret places of life; for it is in the passionate secret  places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow. cleansing and refreshing.

     But the novel, like gossip, can also excite spurious sympathies and recoils,mechanical and deadening to the psyche. The novel can glorify the most corrupt feelings, so long as they are "conventionally" pure.Then the novel, like gossip, becomes at last vicious, and like gossip, all the more vicious because it is always ostensibly on the side of of the angels

            ( Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H.Lawrence -p.105 )

                        The Origins of Certain  Obscene Words

     I was under the impression that all four letter words dealing with emotions ranging from love to fornification were introduced into India by the British. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was the other way round, The English got them from Sanskrit and then brought them back to India. Thus love,the modern version of the old English lufa was derivation of the Sanskrit lobh, desire, Even more startling is the genesis of the commonest four letter word now international currency for the expression of lust. Believe it or not, Europeans got it from our ancients. The Sanskrit word bhoga which infuses a sacramental tone into the act of sex was taken over by the Latin facere, to do, then vulgarized by the land of its birth. Why the relationship between the original Sanskrit and its English derivative is not immediately noticeable is because neither Sanskrit or any of our other languages have the equivalent of the letter F in their alphabet. 

        (India Without Humbug- Khushwant Singh - p.117)

 

                             Books of King Solomon 

  The  books attributed to Solomon have lasted  longer than his temple. This is perhaps one of the outstanding proofs of the strength of prejudices and the weakness of the human understanding. only  the name of the author has caused these books to be respected: they have been thought good because they were thought to be by a king and because this was taken to be the wisest of men.

     The first work  attributed to him is the book of proverbs. It is collection of trivial, low, incoherent maxims, made without taste, without selection and without plan. Can it be believed that an enlightened  king compiled a collection of sayings among which there is not one about government, politics , the morals of countries, the customs of the court. Entire chapters are about nothing but trollops who invite passers-by in the streets to go to bed with them.

            ( Philosophical Dictionaries - Voltaire - p. 367 ) 

********************************************************

     Let us take a few of theses proverbs at random.

     There are three things that are never satisfied

     Yea, four that say not, enough:

     The grave: and the barren womb;

     The earth that is not satisfied with water;

     And the fire that saith not,enough.

     There are three things which are too wonderful for me,

     Yea,four which I know not;

     The way of an eagle in the air;

     The way of a serpent upon a rock:

     The way of a ship in the midst of the sea;

     And the way of a man with a maid.

     There are four things which are little upon the earth; 

     But they are exceeding wise:

     The ants are a people not strong, 

     Yet they provide their means in the summer; 

     The conies are but a feeble folk.

     Yet make their houses in the rocks;

     The locusts have no king, Yet go they forth all of them

                                                                               by bonds     

     The lizard taketh hold with her hands, 

     Yet is she in the king's palaces. 

     Is it to a great king, to the wisest of mortals, that we dare impute inanities so low  and so absurd? those who make him the author of such flat puerilities, and who say they admire them, are certainly not the wisest of men.

     Ecclesiastes , for which Solomon is responsible, is a work of an entirely different kind and taste. The man who speaks in this work is undeceived by illusions of grandeur, weary of pleasures and disgusted with knowledge. He is an Epicurean philosopher who repeats  on every page that the just and the impious are subjected to the same mishaps, that man is no more than an animal, that it is better not to have been born than to exist,that there is no other life, and that the only good and sensible thing is to enjoy the fruits of one's labour in peace with the woman one loves.

     The whole work is by a materialist who is at once sensual and satiated. It would appear that an edifying and about God was entered into the last verse to diminish the scandal that such a book would be expected to cause.

     what is still surprising is that this impious work should have been consecrated among the canonical books. If we had to establish the canon of the Bible today, Ecclesiastes would certainly not to be included; but it was included at a time when books were very rare and when they were more admired than read... They were established in times of ignorance, and to the scheme of reason we are obliged to maintain them in enlightened times, and to disguise by allegories their absurdity or their horror

      (Philosophical Dictionaries -Voltaire - pp.367/70 )

 

                                                Words 

     I made a vocabulary of the words I knew, turned, returned and arranged them, so as to enable me to express my thoughts through their medium. I know  nearly one thousand words, which is all that ti absolutely necessary, although I believe there are nearly one hundred thousand in the dictionaries. I cannot hope to be very fluent, but I certainly should have no difficulty in explaining my wants and wishes; and that would be quite as much as I should ever require.

     ( The Count of Monte Cristo -Alexander Duma -p.108 )

                                If You Say You Don't Know ......

     Rudin could develop any idea  perfectly and was a brilliant debater; but his ideas were new born in his own head; he took them from others, particularly Pokorsky.... Rudin was always ready to discuss and debate with anyone who came along. He had not read many books, but far more than Pokorsky and the best of us.  He had a systematic mind and an incredible memory, and that really impresses young people! They want conclusions, even if the conclusions are wrong! A complete honest person would not provide them with that. But just try telling young people that you can't give the whole truth, because you don't know it yourself. They won't even bother to listen to you.

                         ( Rudin - Ivan Turgenev -p.78 )

                                Learning  Foreign  Languages

     When I set seriously to work to learn foreign languages , I chose the New Testament as my first textbook; not merely did it save me from frequent, interrupting dashes to a dictionary for help, but I found it fascinating to see how the golden words looked like in Latin and Greek, French, German and Italian. I read it from Mathew to Revelation in each of these languages, and I commend the practice to students. As a result, many of the textbooks as familiar to me as my own name , and you will find them scattered through most of my sixty five books and numerous pamphlets.

                 (The Cup of Fury -Upton Sinclair - p.15)

 

                                 Reading and Traveling 

     For my part,however, I thought that I had given enough time to the study of languages, and even to the reading of ancient texts, with their histories and their tales. For to live in the company of men of other times is almost the same as to travel. It is good to know something about the manners and customs of other nations so that we judge more sanely of our own, and may not think that whatever is contrary to our own mode of life is both ridiculous and unreasonable, as is usually the case with those who have seen nothing. But a man who spent too much time in traveling becomes in the end a stranger in his own country; and a man who has too much curiosity about what happened in past centuries usually shows a great ignorance of what is happening  in this one.

           ( Discourse on Method - Rene Descartes -p.40 )

                                        Book Publishing

     ...Prior to 1500, by the most optimistic estimates, Europe was producing books at a rate of 1000 titles per year.This means, give or take a bit, that it would take a full century to produce a library of 100,000 titles. By 1950, four and a half centuries later, the rate had accelerated so sharply that Europe was producing 120,00 titles a year. What once took a century now took only ten months. By 1960, a single decade later, the rate had made another significant jump, so that a century's work could be completed in seven and half months. And, by the mid sixties, the output of book on a world scale, Europe included, approached the prodigious figure of 1000 titles per day.

     One can hardly argue that every book is a net gain for the advancement of knowledge. Nevertheless, we find that the accelerative curve in book publication does ,in fact, crudely paralleled  the rate at which man discovered new knowledge.

                 (Future Shock -Alvin Toffler - p.37 ) 

 

                                             Good Books 

     All my life, I have been "drunk" with the intoxicating wonders of good books. With the right book,the world is yours; it waits by tour bedside, at your convenience. You can watch the whole pageant of history. You can enter into and share the experiences of the greatest minds that have lived on earth. You can, in the words of Tennyson, 'dip into the future, far as human eye can see'. You can climb the top of Mount Everest; now for the first time you can go down a mile into the bottom of the sea; you can visit climes hot and cold without discomforts; you can go among strange people and marvel at their ways of survival: you can hunt wild beasts or catch great fish; you can fly to the farthest galaxies and penetrate the infinite minuteness of the atomic nucleus; you can go inside your own body; you can go to Heaven with the saints and to hell with Dante.

     In a world like this, one does not commit suicide " simply because he could no longer drink enough to give him any pleasure.

            ( The Cup of Fury- Upton Sinclair - p.101/02 )

 

                               Heredity and Wisdom 

     " Government," says he (Edmund Burke ) " is a contrivance of human wisdom."

     Admitting  that government is a contrivance of human wisdom, it must necessarily follow , that heredity succession, and hereditary  rights ( as they are called ), can make no part of it, because it is impossible to make wisdom  hereditary; and on the other hand, that cannot be a wise contrivance , which in its operation may commit the government to the wisdom of an idiot.

               (Rights of Man - Thomas  Paine -p.138 )

     Destiny of of a Monarchist  - A Thousand  Years Hence

     A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America and France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their governments, and say, This was the work of our ancestors!  But what can a Monarchical talker say? What he has to exult in? Alas! He has nothing. A certain something forbids him to look back to a beginning , lest some robber or some Robin Hood should rise from the long obscurity of time, and say, I am the origin! Hard as Mr Burke labours the  Regency Bill and hereditary succession two years ago, and much as he dived for precedents, he still has not boldness enough to bring up William of Normandy, and say, There is the  head of the list! There is the fountain of honour! The son of a prostitute, and the plunderer of the English nation 

               ( Rights of Man - Thomas Paine - p.140 )

 

                          Worshiping Foolishness

     But no one Offers sacrifices to Folly. people say, or set up a temple. Well, I am quite surprised myself, as I said before,, at such ingratitude, but I am easy-going and take it all in good part, Besides. I can't  say this is really what I want.Why should I need whiff of incense, a sacrificial  meal, a goat or a pig? Mortals all over the world worship me in a manner which is highly approved, even by the theologians. Ought I to envy Diana because she was propitiated by human blood? i hold the view that I am worshiped  with truest devotion when all men everywhere take me to their hearts, express me in their habits, and reflect me in their way of life- as in  fact they do. This form of worship even if the saints and among Christian believers  is quite rare.  Think of the many who set up a candle to the virgin, mother of GOD, and at midday too, when it is not needed, and of the few who care about emulating her chastity of life, her modesty and love of heavenly things.Yet that is surely the true way to worship and by far the most acceptable to heaven. Besides, what should I ( Folly )want with a temple. The entire world is my temple, and a very fine one too, if i am not mistaken, and I will never lack priest to serve it as long as there are men,. And I am not yet so foolish to demands statutes carved in stones and coloured with paint which can often harm to the cult of us gods, when the stupid and thick-headed give their devotion to images instead of to the divinities they represent, and we suffer the same fate as those who are supplanted by their substitutes. I fancy I can count as many statues set up to me as there are men who wear my living image in their faces, whether willingly or not. And so i have no reason to be envious of other gods because they are each worshiped in their own corner of the earth on fixed days... To me  ( Folly )the whole world offers far more precious victims, without ceasing and with one accord. 

                 ( Praise of Folly- Erasmus - pp.139/40 )

 

               The Most Mysterious Book Ever Written 

     Joyce"s ultimate accomplishment in symbolism was to make his final book almost as  unintelligible as the whole mysterious universe. Finnegans Wake, Joyce himself confessed, was addressed to  " that ideal reader suffering from the ideal insomnia. "Knowledgeable interpreters call it " one of the white elephants of literature"-  'notoriously the most obscure book ever written by a major writer; at least, by one who was believed not to be out of his mind." Yet the riddle of Finnegans Wake reflected no obscurity or confusion in the author. It recreated  the language with unfathomed possibilities. And  when Murray Gell-Man in 1964 needed a name for the newly discovered ultimate particle of matter and found that there were three of them in the proton and the neutron, he recalled from Finnegans Wake the exclamation, " three quarks for Master Mark!" So Joyce's ultimately unintelligible  language provide the name for the ultimately intelligible particle of matter.

     Asked why he had written the book asa he had, Joyce mischievously answered, not in apology but as a boast, "to keep the critics busy for three hundred years.

               ( The Creators - Daniel J. Boorstin - p.714) 

                                       Finnegans Wake

     Does Finnegans Wake describes anything, or is it itself the thing? The book reminds us of an existentialist parable. A man sees a "For Sale" sign outside a house and goes up to ask the price. To which  the occupant replies, ' only the sign is for sale! "Does Finnegans Wake tell us about anything beyond itself.

     It is one of those books, Anthony Burgess reminds us " admired more often than read, when read rarely read throgh to the end, when read through to the end not often fully, or even partially understood. Burgess has dared helped us with A Shorter Finnegans Wake. Other intrepid critics, Joseph Campbell and Henry Mortan Robinson, " provoked by the sheer magnitude of the work...felt that if Joyce had spent eighteen years in its composition we might profitably spend a  few deciphering it." why has so eloquent and lucid a writer as Joyce spent his energies teasing us with a book of colossal  proportions, of 628 dense often-unparagraphed pages, with its puzzling plenitude of invented words, multiple funs, and onomatopoetic inventions? It is inconceivable that this master of the comic may have launched the biggest literary hoax of history? But generation of readers still assume that it is they and not the author who is amiss.

              ( The Creators - Daniel J. Boorstin - P.711)

 

                        Reading Novels -  Once Upon a Time 

     Sophia was in her chamber reading when her aunt came in. The moment she saw Mrs. western she shut the book with so much eagerness that the good lady could not forebear asking her what  book that  was which seemed so much afraid of showing. 'Upon my word, madam", answered Sophia, 'it is a book which i am neither ashamed nor afraid to own I have read.It is the production of a young lady of fashion, whose good understanding, I think,  doth honour to her sex, and whose good heart is an honour to human nature." Mrs. Western then took up the the book and immediately after threw it down, saying: " yes, the author is of a very good family, but she is not much among people one knows. I have never read it;for the best judges sat there is not much in it." "I dare not, madam, set up my opinion" says Sophia, " against the best judges, but there appears to me a great deal of human nature in it, and in many parts so much true tenderness and delicacy that it hath cost me a many tears." 'ay, and do you love to cry, then?": says the aunt." I love a tender sensation," answered the niece, " and would pay the price of a tear for it any time." "Well, but show me" said the aunt, "what you was reading when I came in ; there was something very tender in that, I believe, and very loving too. You blush, my dear Sophia. Ah, child,you should read books which would teach you a little hypocrisy, which would instruct you how to hide your thoughts a little better." "I hope, madam," answered Sophia, "I have no thoughts which I ought to be ashamed of discovering..."

                  (Tom Jones -Henry Fielding - pp.240/41)

 

                     How to Speak and Write " Post-Modern"

     First you need to remember that plainly expressed language is out of the question. It is too realist, modern and obvious. Post modern language requires that one uses play, parody and indeterminacy as critical techniques to point this out. Often this is quite a difficult requirement, so obscurity is a well-acknowledged substitute. For example, let's imagine you want to say something like ,'' we should listen to the views of people outside of western society  in order to learn about the cultural biases that affect us.''This is honest but dull. Take the word ''views."  Postmodernspeak  would change that to ''voices'', or better''vocalities'', or even better ''multivocalities.'' Add an adjective like ''intersexual'' and you arecovered. ''People outside'' is also plain. How about ''postcolonial others''? To speak postmodern properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the familiar racism, sexism, ageism,etc. For example , phallgocentricism (male-centerdness combined with rationalistic forms of binary logic. )

     Finally, ''affect us'' sounds like plaid pajamas. Use more obscure words and phrases, like ''mediate our identities." So, the final statement should say, " we should listen to the intersexual multivocalities of postcolonial  others outside of western culture in order to learn about the phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities.'' Now you are talking about postmodern!

     Sometimes you must be in a hurry and won't have the time to muster even the minimum number of postmodern synonyms and neologism need to avoid public disgrace. Remember, saying the wrong thing is acceptable if you say it the right way. This brings me to a second important strategy in speaking postmodern, which is to use as many suffixes, prefixes, hyphens, slashes, underlinings and anything else your computer ( an absolute must to write postmodern 0 can dish out. You can make a quick reference chart to avoid time delays. Make three columns. In column A go your prefixes and related endings: -ism, de-, dis-, re-, ex-, and counter. In column B go your suffixes and related endings;-ism,-itis, -iality, --ation. -itivity, and-tricity. In colum C add a series of well-respected name that make for impressive adjectives or schools of thought, for example, Barthes (barthesian ), Foucault ( Foucauldian , Foucauldianism ), Derrida ( Derridean, Derrideanism).

     Now fo the test. You want to say or write something like: "contemporary buildings are alienating. This is a good thought, but, of course, a nonstarter. You wouldn't get offered a second round of crackers and cheese at a conference recption with such a line. In fact,, after sayin this, you might get asked to stay and cleanup the crackers and cheese after the reception. Go to yoyr three columns. First, the prefix, Pre- is used useful, as in post-, or several prefixes at once is terrific. Rather than 'contemporary buildings'' be creative. The Pre/pot/ secialities of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneiti" is promism. You would have to drop the weak and dated term "alienating" with some well-suffixed words from column B. How about "antisociality", or be more postmodern and introduce ambiguity with the linked phrase, 'antisociality/seductivity."

     Now, go to column C and grab a few names whose work everyone will agree is important and hardly anyone has had the time or the inclination to read . Continental European theorists are best when in doubt. I recommend the sociologist Jean Baudrillard since he has written a great deal of difficult material about postmodern space. Don't forget to make some mention of gender. Finally, add a few smoothing-out words to tie the whole garbled mess together and don't forget to pack in the hyphens, slashesand parantheses. What do you get/ "Pre?post/specialities of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneity(re) commits us to an ambivalent recurrentialitity of antisociality/seductivity, one enunciated in a de/gendered-Baudrivlliardian discourse of granulated sbjectivity." You should be able to hear a postindustrial pin drop on the retrocultural floor. 

     At some point someone may actually ask you what you're talking about. This risk faces all those who would speak postmodern and must be carefully avoided. You must always give the questioner the impression that they have missed the point, and so send another verbose salvo of postmodernspeak in their direction as a ''simplification'' or ''clarification'' of your original statement. If that doesn't work, you might be left with the terribly modernist thought, 'I don't know." Dont worry. Just say, ' The instability of your question leaves me with several contradictory layered responses whose interconnectivity cannot express the logocentric coherency you seek. I can only say that reality is more uneven and its (mis)representations more untrustworthy than we have time here to explore"

 (Stephen Katz- The Fontana post Modern Reader-pp.88/89 ) 

    

                              Learning Mathematics

     ... Latin I could not learn. I had a rooted prejudice which seemed close to my mind against it.. Two thousand marks were given for Latin. I might perhaps get 400! French was interesting but rather tricky, and difficult to learn in England. So there remained only Mathematics. After the first examination was over, when one surveyed the battlefield, it was evident that the war could not be won without another army being brought into the line. Mathematics was the only resource available. I turned to them -  in desperation. All my life from time to time I have had to get up disagreeable subjects at short notice, but I consider my triumph, moral and technical, was in learning Mathematics in six months. At the first of these three ordeals, I got no more than 500 marks out of 2500 for Mathematics. At the second I got nearly 2000. I owe this achievement not only to my own ''back-to-the wall'' resolution - for which no credit is too great; but to the very kindly interest taken in my case by a much respected Harrow master, Mr. C.H.P. Mayo. He  convinced me that Mathematics was not a hopeless bog of nonsense, and that there were meanings and rhythms behind the comical hieroglyphics; and that i was not incapable of catching glimpses of some of these... 

           ( My Early Life - Winston S. Churchill -  p.33)

 

                                          Knowledge

     In countries such as France and England, which have a traditional educational system, the utilitarian view of knowledge has only partially prevailed. There are still, for example, professors of Chinese in the universities who read the Chinese classics but are unaquainted with the works of Sun Yat Sen, which created modern China. There are still men who know ancient history in so far as it was related by authors whose style was pure, that is to say up to Alexander in Greece and Nero  in Rome, but refuse to know the much more important later history because of the literary inferiority of the historians who related it. Even in France and England , however , the old tradition is dying, and in more up to date countries such as Russia and the United States, it is utterly extinct. In America, for example, educational commissions point out that fifteen hundred words are all that most people employ in business correspondence,and therefore suggest that all others should be avoided in the school curriculum. Basic English, a British invention,goes still further, and reduces the necessary  vocabulary to eight hundred words...

     Knowledge everywhere,  is coming to be regarded not as a good in itself,or as a means of creating a broad and humane outlook on life in a general , but as merely an ingredient in technical skill. ( In praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - pp.24/25 )

 

                            Planets, Stars and Life

     ... We are done now with the twelve spheres and the planets under which men were born happy or unhappy jovial or saturnine. The solid vault of the firmament is cleft asunder.Our Eyes ant thoughts plunge into the infinite abysses of the heavens. Beyond the planets,we discover, instead of the Empyrean of the elect and the angels, a hundred millions of suns rolling through  space, escorted each by its own procession of dim satellites, invisible to us. Amidst this infinitude of systems OUR  sun is but a bubble of gas and the earth a drop of mud. The imagination is vexed and startled when the astronomers tell us that the luminous ray which reaches us from the pole-star has been half a century on the road; and yet that noble star is our next neighbour, and with Sirius and Arcturus, one of the least remote of the suns that are sisters of our own.There are stars we still see in the field of our telescopes which ceased to shine, it may be, three thousand years ago.

     Worlds die, - for are they not born? Birth and death are unceasingly at work. Creation is never complete and perfect; it goes on for ever under incessant changes and modifications. The stars go out, but we cannot say if these daughters of light, when they die down into darkness, do not enter on a new and fecund existence as planets, - if the planets themselves do not melt away and become stars. All we know is this; there is no more repose in the spaces of the sky than on earth, and the same law of strife and struggle governs the infinitude of the cosmic universe.....

     ...When we say life, we mean the activity of organized matter under the conditions in which we see it manifested in our own world. But it is equally possible that life may be developed in a totally different environment, at extremely high or extremely low temperatures, and under forms unthinkable by us. It may even be developed under an ethereal form, close beside us, in our atmosphere ; and it is possible that in this way we are surrounded by angels, - beings we shall never know, because to know them implies a point of common contact, a mutual relation, such as there can never be between them and us.

     Again, it is possible that these millions of suns, along with thousands of millions more we cannot see, make up altogether but a globule of blood or lymph in the veins of an animal, of a minute insect, hatched in a world of whose vastness we can frame no conception, but which nevertheless would itself, in proportion to some other world, be no more than a speck of dust.

     Nor is there anything absurd in supposing that centuries of thought and intelligence may live and die before us in the space of a minute of time, in the confines of an atom of matter, In themselves things are neither great nor small, and when we say the Universe is vast we speak purely from a human standpoint.... The wonder is , not that the field of the stars is so vast, but that man has measured it. 

       ( The Garden of Epicurus - Anatole France - pp.12/16)

                                       Ignorance

     Ignorance is the necessary condition, I do not say of happiness , but of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence a single hour. The sentiments that make it sweet to us, or at any rate tolerable, spring from a falsehood, and are fed on illusions.

      If, like God, a man possessed the truth, the sole and perfect truth, and once let it escape out of his hands, the world would be annihilated there and then, and the universe melt away instantly like a shadow. Divine truth, like a last judgement, would reduce it to powder. 

        ( The Garden of Epicurus - Anatole France -p.32 )

*****************************************************

     Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; and once dispelled, and it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, is only the  absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant , he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.... it has never yet been discovered, how to make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.

               ( Rights of Man -Thomas Paine - p.141)

                            Hero, Reality and Fantasy

     It never occurred to me that a man could become a hero for being on raft ten days and enduring hunger and thirst. I had no choice. If the raft had been outfitted with water , vaccum-packed  biscuits a compass and fishing gears, I   surely would have been alive as  I am now. But I wouldn't have been treated like a hero. So,in my case, heroism consisted solely of not allowing myself to die of hunger and thirst for ten days.

     I did nothing heroic.all my efforts went toward saving myself.But since salvation came wrapped in a glow and with the title of hero as a prize, like bonbon with a surprise inside it, I had no choice but to accept my salvation as it came, heroism and all.

     ... So far as I am concerned, I feel the same as I did before. I am Luis Alejandro Valesco again, and that's enough for me.

     it is other people who have changed. My friends are now friendlier than before. And I imagine that my enemies are worse than enemies, although I don't really think I have any. When people recognize me on the street, they stare at me as if I were some strange animal. For that reason I dress in civilian clothes, and will do so until people forget that I spent ten days on a raft without food or water.

     ... some people tell me this story is a fantasy. And I ask them: if it is, then what did I do during my ten days at sea? 

(The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor - Gabriel  Garcia Marques -pp.101/02 & 106 )

 

                   Education: Traditional and Modern 

     It must also be admitted that a great deal of all the traditional cultural education was foolish. Boys spent many years acquiring Latin and Grammar , without being, at th end,either capable or desirous (except in a small percentage of cases ) of reading a Greek or Latin author. Modern languages and history are preferable, from every point of view,to Latin and Greek. They are not only useful, but they give much more culture in less time.. The traditional schoolmasters'  point of view, which was admirable at the time of the revival of learning, became gradually unduly narrow, since it ignored  what the world has done since the fifteenth century. And not only history and modern languages, but science also, when properly taught, contributes to culture. It is therefore possible to maintain that education should have other aims than direct utility, without defending the traditional curriculum. Utility and culture, when both are conceived  broadly, are found to be less incompatible than they appear to the fanatical  advocates of either.

            ( In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - p.26 )

 

                                How to write History

     However, I do not think that one will be far wrong in accepting the conclusions I have reached from the evidence which I have put forward. It is better evidence than that of the poets, who exaggerate the importance of their themes, or of the prose chroniclers, who are less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of their public, whose authorities cannot be checked, and whose subject matter, owing to the passage of time, is mostly lost in the unreliable streams of mythology. We may claim instead to have used only the plainest evidence and to have reached conclusions  which are reasonably accurate, considering that we have been dealing with the ancient history....

     And with regard to my factual reporting of the events of the war I have made it a principle not to write down the first story that came my way, and not even to be guided by my own general impressions; either I was present myself at the events which I have described or else I heard of them from eye-witnesses whose report I have checked with as  much thoroughness as possible. Not that even so the truth  was easy to discover: different eye-witnesses give different accounts of the same events, speaking out of partiality for one side or the other or else from imperfect memories. And it may well be said that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. It will be enough for me, however,  if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is ) will, at some time or other  and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing, designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.

( The Peloponnesian War - Thucydides - p.24/25 )

 

                             Second-Hand Bookshops

     When I worked in a second-hand bookshop ... the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people.Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten percent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one.First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for their nephews were commonest of all.

     Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere  but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady  who ant a book for an invalid ( a very common demand, that ). and the other dear old lady who can read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover. But apart from these there are two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshops haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old bread crusts who comes everyday, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of paying. In our shop we sold nothing on credit, but we would put books aside, or order them if necessary, for people who arranged to fetch them away later.Scarcely half the people who offered books from us ever came back. It used to puzzle me at first. What made them do it? They would come in and demand some rare and expensive book, would make us promise  over and over again to keep it for them, and then would vanish never to return. But many of them, of course, were unmistakable paranoiacs. They used to talk in a grandiose manner about themselves and tell the most ingenious stories to explain how they had happened to come out of doors without any money -stories which in many cases, I am sure they themselves believed. In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards book-shops, because a book-shop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money...  

     Like most second-hand bookshops we had various sidelines.. We also sold six penny horoscopes compiled by somebody who claimed to have foretold the Japanese earthquake. They were in selected envelopes and I never opened one of them, but the people who bought them often came back and told us how "true" their horoscopes had been. (Doubtless any horoscopes seem "true" if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.) We did a good deal of business in Children's books, chiefly 'remainders.' Modern books for children are rather horrible things,especially when you see them in the mass...

     But our principle sideline was a lending library -the usual "two penny -no deposit ' library of five or six hundred volumes, all fiction. How the book thieves must love those libraries. It is the easiest crime in the world to borrow a book at one shop for two pence, remove the label and sell it at another shop for a shilling. Nevertheless booksellers generally find that it pays them better to have a certain number of books stolen ( we used to lose about a dozen a month. ) than to frighten customers away by demanding deposit....

     In a lending library you see people's real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the "classical" English novelists have dropped out of favour.It is simply useless to put Dickens,Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc., into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out.At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say 'oh.but that's old " and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to sell Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are always meaning to read, and, like the Bible, he is widely known as second hand. People know by hearsay that Bill Sykes was burglar and that Mr. Micawber had a bald head, just as then know by hearsay that Moses was found in a basket of bulrushes and saw the 'back parts' of the Lord. Another thing that is very noticeable is the growing unpopularity of American books. And another- the publishers get into a stew about this every two three years - is the unpopularity of short stories. The kind of person who asks the librarian to choose a book for him nearly always starts by saying " I don't want short stories" , or I"I don't desire little stories" , as a German customer of ours used to put it. If you ask them why, they sometimes explain that it a too much fag to get used to a new set of characters with every story;they like to "get into" a novel which demands no further thought after the first chapter. I believe , though,  that the writers are more to blame than the readers. Most modern stories, English and American, are utterly lifeless and worthless, far more so than most  novels. 

     .... As a rule , bookshop  is horribly cold in the winter, because if it is too warm the windows get misted over and a bookseller lives on his windows. And books give off more nastir dust than any other class of objects yet invented, and the top of a book is the place where ever blue  bottle prefers to die.

     But the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them. 

  (The Collected Works - George Orwell -Vol.1 - pp.273/77)                    

 

                      Qualifications to be a Politician 

     Demosthenes: ..This oracle which I have predicts that you will become a  Great Man.

     : A sausage seller be a great man? Ha! Ha! Come on, tell me another.

     Demosthenes: No, I am serious. That's precisely your  Qualification to be a Great Man-that you're born ans bread in the Market Square, and that you're a brazen-faced rogue.

 Sausage-Seller: But look'ere - I don't think I deserve to be great.

 Demosthenes What's all this about not deserving to be great? You've not got any secret virtues on your conscience, have you?( The Sausage-Seller shakes his head.)

     You're not of good birth, by any chance?

     Sausage-Seller: The worst birth you could think of.

     Demosthenes:Thank heaven! That's just what's wanted for a politician. 

     Sausage-Seller: But look 'ere - I hardly went to school, I got no learning. Why, I can only just read an' write.

     Demosthenes: What a shame you can only just! If only you couldn't at all! Come off it, you don't think politics is for the educated, do you, or the honest? It's for illiterate scum like you now1 I beg you, don't let slip the marvellous opportunity the holy oracle has revealed....  

      Sausage-Seller:  So long as wot doesn't let wot- never mind. I like that oracle. But I still don't know how you expect me to manage all the peoples business.

     Demosthenes; Dead easy.Just carry on doing what you've always done, mix all the City's policies into complete hash, butter the people up a bit, throw in a pinch of rhetoric as a sweetener, and there you are. All the other essentials of a good politician you've got already. You have a voice to scare a Gorgon, you were brought up in the Market Square, oh yes and born in the gutter -what more do you need?  And all the oracles and Pythian Apollo himself point the way to greatness. Here, put on this wreath and pour libation to stupidity.

                  ( The Knights -Aristophanes - 42/44)

                                  Science and Truth

     ... She read, discovering one book after another, strange books of the East which were not strange to her, and a vast library of books of the West. Here in this building set in living water, she discovered a meeting place of the two halves of human history, East and West, but in books... The modern books of the West, which she has read since her adolescence, had been filled with tragedy - tragedy in the Greek sense - but here in India there were no unhappy endings, for there was no end.

     There is no end, she thought, because in India, life never ends. It goes on into some other realm. And this, she thought, surprised , is modern truth, for if science teaches any precept, it is that there is no destruction but only change. She found immense comfort in the discovery that here in this oldest country , in the most ancient culture there was a truth as new as today. And then, reading a book she ordered from London, she found the report of a speech made by the Prime Minister of India, that most modern man, in which he had quoted a saying from the wandering saint of new India, that spirit of the past made flesh today, and they were the words of Vinobha Bhave: " Politics and religion are obsolete", the saint declared. "The time has come for science and spiritualist."

     And upon this, the author, an English scinetist, had thus continued; " truth - that is of course the key word; for what does science mean except truth? And of all human activities, the quest for truth is the most noble, the most disinterested, the most spiritual." 

 Truth, she thought, truth is reality - about myself, about the world, and life, and past and present. Reality is what I want. I shall not rest in the pursuit.

      " Sit down", a Huxley had written a hundred years ago, "sit down before as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."

                ( Mandala - Pearl S. Buck -pp.175/76)

 

                                           Patriotism

     Patriotism is the most absurd of all sentiments. In its best sense it expresses an animal instinct of self-preservation. In its worst it is tainted with material interests and such sordid things as money and self-advancement. in the Englishman it manifests itself in a dumb contempt for everything that is nit English.The  Scot has a more practical patriotism. His contempt for foreigners  includes the Englishman, but is carefully concealed. His jingoism is confined to cheering Scotland at Twickenham. It is racial rather than local. It concerns Scotland hardly at all. Its aim is the glorification and self-satisfaction of the Scot in whatever part of the globe the impulse of self-advancement drives him.

     There  is, however, another form of patriotism which may be expressed as love of country. This is the actual love for the place in which he was born and brought up.. It may be inspired by by vanity, by the desire to see himself reflected again in the glory of his youth. It is especially strong in the man who has been brought up in beautiful surroundings, but it affects even the man from Wigan.

    (Memoirs of a British Agent - Bruce Lockhart - pp.29/30 ) 

 

                                               Wars

     Perhaps it is right or even necessary to forget accidents, and wars are surely accidents which our species seems prone. If we could learn from our accidents it might be well to keep the memories alive, but we do not learn. In ancient Greece it was said that there had to be a war at least every twenty years because every generation of men had to know what it was like. With us, we must forget, or we could never indulge in the murderous nonsense again.

     The war I speak of, however, may be memorable because it was the last of its kind. Our civil war has been called the last of the '' gentlemen's wars'' and the so-called Second World War was sure the last of the global wars. The next war, if we are stupid as to let it happen, will be the lat of any kind. There will be no one to left remember anything. And if that is how stupid we are, we do not, in a biological sense, deserve survival. Maany other species have disappeared  from the earth through errors in mutation judgement. There is no reason to suppose that we are immune from the immutable law of nature which says that over armament, over-ornamentation and, in most cases over-integration are symptoms of coming extinction...

        (Once There was a War - John Steinbeck- p.viii)

                              Marriage and deception 

     One charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing - we do meet occasionally, and when we dine out together, or go down to the duke's - we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me. 

               (Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde -p.10

 

                                                  Sex

     And however one might sentimentalize it , this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connection and subjection. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they know it most definitely than ever. The beautuful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs....

     ... And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites... But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away.

          (Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence - pp.7/8 )

***************************************************      

      Family legend has it that I tried to see the arrival in this world of the first daughter, Wanda,  born to Uncle Lucho and Aunt Olga, by spying on her birth from one of the tall trees in the front patio, from which Uncle Lucho hauled me down by one of my ears. But that must not be true, since I don't remember it,, or if it's true, I didn't manage to find out very much, because, as I've already said, I left Bolivia convinced that children are ordered from heaven and brought into the world by storks....

     Shortly after entering the school, the brothers Artadi and Jorge Salmon, one afternoon when we were taking a a dip in the already ebbing waters of the Piura.... reveled to me the real origin of babies and the meaning of that unutterable dirty word: fuck. It was a traumatic revelation, although i am certain that this time I silenly mulled the subject over in my mind and did not go to tell Uncle Lucho about the repugnance I felt on imagining men who turned into animals, with stiff penises, mounted on top of the poor women who had to tolerate being gored. That my mother had been able to endure such an attack so that i could come into the world filled with disgust, and made me feel that, by finding out  about it, I had sullied myself and sullied my relationship with my mother and somehow sullied life itself. Tome, the world had suddenly  become dirty. Theexplanations of the priest who was my confessor, the one person whom I dared consult about this deeply distressing subject, must not have brought me any peace of mind, since the matter tormented me day and night and a long time went by before I resigned  myself to accepting that that was what life was like, that men and women did together the filthy things summed up in the verb fuck and there was no other way for the human species to continue to exist and for me to have been born. 

   ( A Fish in the Water - Mario Vargas LLosa - pp.16/18 )

 

                    Sex Education in a Tribal Society

       The physical operation on the genital organs of both sexes is regarded as a starting-point for various activities in the tribal organisation. It signifies that the individual operated upon has been given, during the course of the pre-initiation ceremonial dances and songs, all the essential information on the laws and customs of the tribe. 

     Among the things taught during this period are the matters relating to rules and regulations governing sexual indulgence. In order not to suppress entirely the normal sex instinct, the boys and girls are told that in order to keep good health they must inquire the technique  of practicing a certain restricted form of intercourse, called ombani na ngweko  (platonic love and fondling). This form of intimate contact between youn people is considered right and proper and the very foundation stone upon which to build a race morally, physically and mentally sound. For it safeguards the youth from nervous and psychic maladjustments.... 

     ...After the partners have been arranged one of the boys gets up, saying: Ndathie kwenogora " ( I am going to strech myself). His girl partner folloes him to the bed. The boy removes all his clothing. The girl removes her upper garment, nguo ya ngoro , and retains her skirt. mothuru, and her soft leather apron, mwengo, which she pulls back between her legs and tucks in together with her leather skirt, mothuru. The two v-shaped tails of her mothuru are pulled forward between her legs behind and fastened to the waist, thus keeping mwengo in position and forming an effective protection of her private parts. In this position the lovers lie together facing each other, and with their legs interwoven to prevent any movement of their hips. They then begin to fondle each other, rubbing thei breasts togethe, whilst at the same time they engage in love-making conversation until they gradually fall asleep. Sometimes the partners experience sexual relief, but this is not an essential feature of the ngweko...

     ....a Gikuyu  man has been taught from childhood to develop the technique of self-control in the matter of sex, which enables to sleep in the same bed with a girl without necessarily having sexual intercourse; while the missionaries' idea is, that since a white man would not be able to restrain himself under similar circumstances so the African would not be ableto, and so must be forbidden to sleep with a woman-friend in the Gikuyu fashion.

     The tribal law prohibits a young man from pulling out a girl's garment (kogucia mwengo wa moiteru ) while having ngweko. He must put his sexual organ between his thighs so as to prevent touching the girl with it. The custom also prevents a girl from touching the male sexual organ with her hands, Of course, it sometimes happen that in the case of a long-standing friendship a girl may allow a boy to put his sexual organ between her thighs and hold it tight in that posiyion without penetrating; or by mutual arrangement a girl may allow her lover to have fuller intercourse, trusting that incomplete penetration would safeguard against the risk of conception. But such behaviour is absolutely against the tribal law and never takes place between casual lovers. If it does happen, which is rare, the law punishes it by imposing social stigma upon the offenders. Neither the man nor the girl can sleep with the back turned against the partner, tHe girl may not lie on top of the boy  or across him (gotogarara); to do so, or touch the man's penis. is 'unclean' (mogiro orthahu) and both moust be purified by a mondo-mogo (purifier).

     The girl is expected to be a virgin in the sense of having an unperforated hymenal membran when she marries....

     (Facing Mount Kenya - Jomo Kenyata -pp.148/153 ) 

              

                         Suppression of Sexuality

     Many people who boasts of succeeding in being abstinent have only been able to do so with the help of masturbation and similar satisfactions which are linked with the auto-erotic sexual activities of early childhood. but precisely because of this connection such substitutive  means of sexual satisfactions are by no means harmless: they predispose to the numerous varieties of neuroses and psychoses  which are conditional on an involution of sexual life to its infantile forms. Masturbation moreover, is far from meeting the ideal demands of civilized sexual morality, and consequently drives young people into the same conflicts with the ideals of education which they hoped to escape by abstinence. Furthermore, it vitiates the character through indulgence, and this is more than one way. In the first place, it teaches people to achieve important aims without taking trouble and by easy paths instead of through an energetic exertion of force - that is, it follows the principle that  sexuality lays down the pattern of behaviour; secondly, in the phantasies that accompany satisfaction the sexual object is raised to a degree of excellence which is not easily found again in reality. 

                    ( Sigmund Freud -Vol. 12 - p. 51 )

 

                     No  Hollow Modern Verbosity

     These wiseacres started originally with ridiculous fallacy that a people is learned when every body has learned the same things, as if the variety  of human pursuits did not involve a corresponding variety of accomplishments , and as if a trader could advantageously know just what a doctor does! This misconception was fertile in mistakes;  in particular , it gave birth to another yet more mischievous than itself. It was supposed that the  terminology of Anatomy, for instance, or Chemistry had a value of its own , and that it was desirable thing to learn it quite independently ofv any use surgeons and chemists make of it. Surely as foolish a superstition as ever the old Scandinavians cherished, who used to write their runes and imagine there are words of power so tremendous that, if once pronounced, they will quench the sun and reduce the earth to dust.

     A smile of pity rises to the lips as one thinks of generations of schoolmasters  teaching children the words of language their pupils will never hear or speak. They profess, these pedagogues, that this is the way to teach the elements of all the sciences, and diffuse a broad light over girl's minds. But it is only darkness they are disseminating , as anyone can see for himself; to put ideas in these young heads, so malleable and volatile, a totally different method must be followed.. Show in a well-chosen words the the main aim of a science, draw attention to its achievements  by some striking examples. Deal in broad generalities, be philosophical, but hide your philosophy so skillfully that you appear as artless as the minds you address. Avoiding technical jargon , expound in the vulgar tongue all share alike a small number of great facts that strike the imagination and satisfy the intelligence. Let your language be simple, noble, magnanimous. Never pride yourself on teaching a great number of things, Rest content to rouse curiosity. Be satisfied with opening your scholar's minds, and do not overload them. Without any interference of yours, they will catch fire at the point where they are inlammable

     And if the spark dies out, if some intellects remain unillumined  , at any rate you will not have burnt them. There will always be dunces amongst us.....

    ( The Garden of Epicurus - Anatole France - pp.170/71)

 

                                    Media in Action

      By now, The expression "don"t believe what you read in the newspapers " has become a cliche.

     Or, as one of our national politicians put it after another day of hard knocks from reporters:" The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than  the man who reads nothing but newspapers." He also recommended that an editor "divide" his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st Truths, 2nd probabilities, 4th Lies. The first chapter would be very short. 

     We all know who said those things, don't we? Richard Nixon right? or,was it Garry Hart?

     Nope. Thomas Jefferson.

     It just goes to show you, some things never change. In the nineteenth century one etiquette book  advised the upper crust that it was bad form to order a newspaper man kicked down the stairs simply because he was earning a living in a most disagreeable way.Today  you may not find that sort of advice in Ann Lander's column, but much of the public still looks at reporters in about the same way they do used-car salesman.

     Yet no matter how you feel about the press, there is no question that its role is vital to a  free society. In fact, in today"s global economy and world of instant communications, what happens in Timbuktu or Lapland could affect our lives too. I'll bet you would never heard of Chernobyl - I hadn't - then suddenly you were squirming every time you watched the evening news in your living room. So, unless you have got a lot of free time on your hands and have won a Frequent Flier Grand Prize, the only way to know the score is through the printed word, and infamous boob tube....

     Nobody understands the power of the press better than politicians, because reporters have as much  (or more ) to do with who goes to Washington as do the people who pull the levers in the voting booths. 

     The press notices everything today,and with the immediacy of television, lets everyone else in on the scoop. When newspapermen  camp outside politician's home with telescopes, it's clear that reporters have reached a new level of snoopiness.

     It's small wonder, then, that everyone in Washington is caught up in the world of image and perception. Every ten seconds the politicians get the flashes on a TV screen: How did they cover my speech? What did they say about what I had for lunch? Sometimes the  powers in government seem more interested in whether they get two or three lines in the newspaper, or thirty seconds on TV, than in how well they do their jobs... 

     sometimes you can be skeptical  of the motives of the press, but anyone who underestimates its power is naive- no, plain stupid... 

     The editors set the agenda of the nation. They decide what is page one , what is page thirty-eight , and what is no page at all. Now that's clout.

     Media power from nine thousand miles away in America - got Marcos a one-way ticket to Hawaii, ( And cost the missus five hundred black brass and three thousand pairs of shoes... If you go away for a long weekend and skip the papers, you might come back and find out that your worst enemy is now your best friend.

     Life is nothing more than accountability. Kids are accountable to their parents 9or should be .) Workers are accountable to their bosses, I am accountable to my board. But i am not sure who the press is accountable to. I t likes to picture itself as the watchdog of society. But who is watching the watchdog?

     To some extent, it is inevitable that a lot of people distrust the media. The press, after all, often bring us the news we don't particularly  want to hear; airplane crashes, murders, sex scandals - or more disasters, like car recalls.

     But the problem goes beyond that, Such  an adversarial role has developed between the press and many of the people and institutions it covers that the two sides hardly ever trust each other. Part of the problem, I am convinced, is that some apple-cheeked, eager-beaver reporters are so intent a making a name for themselves that they play fast and loose with facts. The best (or worst)  example of  this is Janet Coke, the young Washington Post reporter who several years ago fabricated an entire story about an eight-year old heroin addict, thinking it would win her a promotion. Well, it did more than that, It won hera Pulitzer Prize , until some poking around by other reporters uncovered the fraud. She lost the prize and her job...

     The press is quick to announce when someone has been accused of something, but slow to report when that same person has been cleared of the charges. Indications always seem to get reported on page one. News of their being dropped, on the other hand, has a way of turning up on page sixty-two, just before the want ads.

            (Talking Straight - Lee Iacocca - p.p.147/153 ) 

 

                                 Art of Composition

     The guiding principle in the art of composition should be that the human being can think clearly only one thought at a time, so that he should not be asked to think  two, not to speak of more than two thoughts  at the same time. But  this is what he is being asked to do when parantheses are inserted into sentences which have been broken up to accommodate them, a practice which causes unnecessary and wanton  confusion. German writers are the worst offenders in this respect. That their language lends itself to it more readily than the other living languages may account for the fact but does not make it commendable. The prose of no language reads so pleasantly as easily as that of French, and this is because it is as a rule free of this error.The French writer sets his thought down one after the other in the most logical and natural order possible and thus places them before his reader in succession, so that the reader can give his undivided attention to each of them.The German, on the other hand, weaves them together into an involved and twice involved and thrice involved period, because he insists on saying six things at once instead of presenting them one after the other.

     The true national character of the German is ponderousness. It is evident in their gait, their activities, their speech, their mode of narrating, their way of understanding and thinking, but especially in their style of writing, in the pleasure they tak in long ponderous, involved periods, where the memory has to bear the burden for a good five minutes, patient and unaided, until,  at the end of the period, reason comes into action and the conundrum  is solved. This is the kind of they enjoy, and if affectation and bombast can be introduced as well, the author revels in it; but Heaven help the reader.

     it is obviously counter to all sound reason to clap one though down straight over another, as if making a cross: but this is what happens when a writer interrupts what he has started to say in order to say something quite different  in the middle of it, thus leaving a meaningless half-period in the custody of the reader until the other half comes along. It is like handing a guest an empty plate and leaving him to hope something will appear on it.

     This form of construction reaches the height of tastelessness when the parantheses are not even dovetailed organically into the period, but by making a straight breach in it, simply wedged in. If it is an impertinence to interrupt others, it is no less of an impertinence to interrupt oneself, as happens in a form of construction which for some years now every inferior,,careless, hasty scribbler with visions of payments before his eyes has employed six times on every page and enjoyed doing so...

 ( Essays and Aphorisms - Arthur Schopenhauer -p.206/o8 )

  

                             Social Gatherings and Woman

     Society is vain and frivolous Granted. Nevertheless , it is no bad school for politicians. Indeed we may well regret it is so little frequented by our present-day statesmen.What constitutes society ? Woman.;she is its sovereign arbitress; it exists by her and for her exclusively. But woman forms the great educating influence for men; she iit is trains him in the gifts that charm, - courtesy, discretion, and the pride that shudders to be self-assertive. She it is teaches a few the art of pleasing, and all the useful art of not displeasing. From her we learn the lesson that human society is more complex and more delicately adjusted than in generally suspected by the politicians of the cafes. Last but not least. it is she brings home to us the great truth that the ideals of sentiment and the visions of faith are invincible forces, and that it is by no means reason that governs humankind. 

        (The Garden of Epicurus -Anatole France- p.36 )

                                     Careers for Women

     I have no sympathy with the gibes levelled by our farce writers at lady doctors. If a woman has a vocation for science, what right have we to upbraid her for following her bent..... It is hardly reasonable to wish to make all women learned. Is it any more so to want to warn them off the domains of high thinking? And again, from a purely practical point of view, are their not cases where science is a precious stand-by for a woman? Because there are more governesses nowadays than are needed, are we to find fault with the young women who take up teaching as a career, in spite of the cruel futility of the prescribed studies and monstrous unfairness of the examinations?... I am ready to admit women are less in their element, and therefore less charming, composing a book than acting a play.Nevertheless, a woman who can write would not be justified in refusing to use her pen if its exercise does not interfere with her life, not to mention that her inkstand may prove a good friend to her when she comes to take the difficult step that inaugurates   the epoch of retrospection. There is no doubt of this: if women do not write better than men, they do write differently, and contrive to leave on the paper something of their own divine grace. For my part, I am deeply grateful to Madame de Caylus and Madame de Stael-Deaunay for having left behind them sundry immortal pen scrawls....

     ....Knowledge is the bond of union between man and nature. Like ourselves, women require their share of learning; but by the methods chosen for their instruction,far from multiplying their points of contact with the Universe, we have separated and as it were fenced them off from nature. We have taught them words and not things, and stuffed their heads with lists of names in History, Geography, and Zoology that by themselves possess no meaning whatever.The  innocent creatures have borne their burden and more than their burden of those vicious schemes of study which democratic self-complacency and bourgeois patriotism erected like so many Babels of priggishness and pedantry.

      (Garden of Epicurus- Anatole France -pp.167/170 )

 

                    Paradise and Knowledg

e

          You sent the heavenly gendarmes down

          With flaming swords of light,

          And drove me out of Paradise

          Without either pity or right!

 

          I travel forth beside my wife,

         Across the world we range;

         But I've tasted the fruit of knowledge now 

         This you can never change.

         You cannot change the fact I know

         How empty you are, how small,

         No matter how great you make yourself out

         With death or a thunderball.

 

        I know that I shall never miss

        That paradisal ease;

         It was not true Paradise -

        There were forbidden trees.

        All rights of freedom must be mine!

        Should the least restraint prevail, 

        Then Paradise is changed for me

        Into a hell, a jail.

(The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine -Hal Draper- pp.392/93)

    

                                          Language 

     Keynes had been widely acclaimed as a master of English prose. A good part of this praise has come from economists who are not the best of judges. Much of it approved his criticism of the Versailles Treaty or Winston Churchill, or his pleasant memoirs on academic contemporaries. But the real test of a writer is whether he remains with a difficult subject until he has thought through not only the problem but also its exposition. This Keynes did not do. The general theory is an acrostic of English prose.The fact that it was an important book should not cause anyone to say that it was well written. In a real sense it was not even finished. Other writers - Mrs. Joan Robinson, Professor Hansen and Samuelson - turned Keynes's ideas into accessible English, thus showing that it could be done. A better writer patience has a certain notoriety as component of genius - would have done the job himself. The ideas of The General Theory  could have been  stated in clear English.

     The influence of this book, combined with its unintellegibility, does bring up another question. It is whether clear and unambiguous statement is the best medium for persuasion in economics. Here, I think ,  one may have doubts. 

     Had the Bible been in clear, straight forward language, had the language been constantly modernized to accord with contemporary taste, it would certainly have  been, or have become a work of lesser influence. In the familiar or King James version it has three compelling qualities. the archaic  constructions and terminology put some special strain on the reader.Accordingly, by the time he has worked his way through... he has a vested interest in what he he has read.

     The contradictions of the Old Testament also mean that with a little effort anyone can find a faith that accords with his preferences, and  moral code that is agreeable to his tastes, even if fairly depraved. In consequence dissidents are not excluded from the faith; they are retained and accommodated in a different chapter.

     Finally, ambiguities of the scriptures allow infinite debate over what is meant. This is most important for attracting belief, for in the course of urging his preferred variant on a particular proposition, the disputant become committed to the large writ....  

     Yet ambiguity is a tactic which not everyone should try. Economists will seize upon the ill-expressed ideas of a very great man and argue over what  he had in mind. Others had better not run the risk.

  (Economics, Peace And laughter - J.k. Galbraith pp.28/30 ) 

                                      Mother Tongue

     General Botha had succeeded the late  President Kruger. His knowledge of English was excellent; yet when he met the King and ministers in England, he always preferred to talk in his own mother tongue, Who can say that this was not the proper thing to do?  Why he should run the risk of committing a mistake  in order to display his knowledge of English ? Why should he allow his strain of thought to be disturbed in the search for the right word?The British ministers might quite unintentionally employ some unfamiliar English idiom,he might not understand what they meant, be led into giving the wrong reply and get confused; and thus his cause would suffer. Why should he commit such a serious blunder?

( Sathyagraha in South Africa - The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi - vol.3 - pp.20/21 ) 

 

                                    Learning Grammar 

     "You have never done any Latin before? "he said.

     "No Sir "

     "This is a Latin grammar." he opened it at well-thumbed page. "You must learn this" he said, pointing to a number of words pn a frame of lines."I will come back in half an hour and see what you know."

     Behold me then on a gloomy evening, with an aching heart, seated in front of the First Declension.

                                        Mensa      a table

                                        Mensa      O table 

                                        Mensam   a table 

                                        Mensae    of a table     

                                        Mensae    to or for a table

                                        Mensa      by, with or from a table

     What on earth did it mean? Where was the sense in it ? It seemed absolute rigmarole to me. However, there was one thing i could always do: I could learn by heart. And I thereupon proceed , as far as my private sorrows would allow, to memorize the acrostic-looking task which had been set me.

     In due course  the master returned. 

     "Have you learned it ? he asked.

     " I think I can say it, sir" I replied, and I grabbed it off.

     He seemed so satisfied with this that I was emboldened to ask a question. 

     " what does it mean, sir?"

     " It means what it says. Mensa, a table. Mensa is a noun of the First Declension. There are five Declensions. You have learnt the singular of the First Declension."

     "But"I repeated, what does it mean?"

     "Mensa means a table" he answered.

     "Then why does mensa also means o table' I repeated", I enquired, "and what does o table mean?"

     "Mensa, o table, is the vocative case" he replied.

     "But why o table?". I persisted in genuine curiosity.

     "o table- you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table." And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, "You would use it in speaking to table. "

     " But I never do", I blurted out in honest amazement.

     " If you are impertinent, you will be punished, and punished, let me tell you, very severely" was his conclusive rejoinder. 

     Such was my first introduction to the classics from which < I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit

             ( My Early Life - Winston S. Churchill -p.19 )

 

                                     Examinations 

     I had scarcely passed my twelfth birthday when  I entered  the inhospitable regions of examination, through which for the next seven years I was destined to journey, These examinations were a great trial to me. The subjects which were dearest to the examiners were almost invariably those I fancied least. I would have liked to have been examined in history, poetry and writing essays. the examiners, on the other hand, were partial to Latin and mathematics. And their will prevailed. Moreover, the questions which they asked on both these subjects were almost invariably those to which I was unable to suggest a satisfactory answer. I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew,

. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations. 

                  ( My Early Life - Winston S. Churchill - p.23 )

 

                                        Media Freedom

     ...Soon after the Inauguration he (Henry Kissinger) told his staff that he alone would leak information to reporters, He made one exception: anyone could talk to TIME magazine for a cover story that was being planned on him. He began to cultivate some journalists socially and others privately. 

     The lavishly furnished house of Joseph Alsop in Dumbarton Avenue in Georgetown epitomized the nature of the journalistic elite... Kissinger was soon a frequent guest... His wit, his apparently modest and self-deprecating irony, his exquisite charm, a willingness to discuss high matters of state after dinner, and the apparent confidences that he entrusted - all this made him irresistable. He was quickly recognized throughout Georgetown as the one oasis in this dour , rather hostile and boring administration of bond salesman advertising executives and zoning lawyers.

     Behind their backs, Kissinger was often contemptuous of individual journalists - he regaled his staff with accounts of their ignorance and their willingness to have information spoon-fed to them - but to their faces he was delightful , and he had a highly developed way of persuading each one, whatever his views, that he respected him enormously and agreed with him. Few reporters were able to resist the flattery of the discreet murmur. ' I wouldn't trust this information with anyone else but.... ",or the unexpected phone call, " I would like you alone to know that...". Each was convinced that he and  Kissinger had a special relationship. Joseph Kraft (who was wiretapped by Ehrlichman } said later , " He would always deal with me as though I was responsible and all the rest of the colleagues in the press  were irresponsible. " Henry Brandon. of the Sunday Times of London said : " Henry used to tell me that I was the one correspondent in this town that he does not try to manipulate ." Kissinger had Brandon wire-tapped.

     Ordinary reporters saw less of him socially than columnist, but those covering the State Department or the White House were both amazed and grate ful for the access they had to him. It had never before happened that a national security adviser met them or returned their phone calls so often: few wished to upset their source. And that, they soon learned, was easy to do. Even the slightest criticism would send him into a rage and result in angry calls either to the reporter himself or, worse still, to his editor - who might well have had dinner with Kissinger only the night before. If there was a story in the first edition of the Washington Post that he disliked, Kissinger might call the paper's publisher. Katherine Graham, that same evening to denounce it. Such likelihood made many reporters understandably wary when writing about Kissinger.

     He used his position both to obtain public attention and to shield himself.

              (Sideshow - William Shawcross - Pp. 96/97 

 

                           Fake News -Media Reporting

     Reporters of the yellow press took the opportunity to invent all sorts of wild stories about it. Some newspapers -short of  something to write about - raked up all the gigantic imagining creatures they could find from the white whale - the terrible "Morby Dick" of the hyperborean regions - to the huge Kranken, whose tentacles could enfold a 500 ton ship and drag it down to the bottom of the ocean. Even the accounts found in ancient writings were revived: the opinions of Aristotle and Pliny, who admitted the existence of such monsters; the Norwegian tales of Bishop Fontoppidan: the reports of Paul Heggede; and lastly, the reports of Mr. Harrington, whose good faith may in no way be considered suspect when he says that in 1857, on board the Castillan, he saw that enermous serpent that had until then never be seen any waters except those ones navigated by the now-defunct newspaper, The Constitutional.

( Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea - Jules Verne- p.14)

                                             War

      In obedience therefore to his Honour's commands, I related to him the revolution under the Prince of Orange, the long war with France entered into by the said Prince, and renewed by the successor the present Queen, wherein the the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged, and which still continued. I computed, at his request, that about a million  of Yahoos might have been killed in the whole progress of it, and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk.

     He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another. I answered they were innumerable, but I should only mention  a few of the chief. Some times the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Differences in opinions hath cost many millions of lives; for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or virtue; whether it is better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red or grey; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or  wide or clean, with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.

     Sometimes the the quarrel between two princess is to decide which of them shall disposses a third  of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrel with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon, because the enemy is strong, sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things we have, or have the things which we want; and we both fight, till they take ours or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions amongst themselves. It is justifiable to enter into war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us,or  a territory of a land, that would render our dominions round and compact. If a prince send forces into a nation where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize them from their barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance  of another to secure him against  an invasion, that the assistant, when he hath driven out the invader, should seize the dominion himself, and kill, imprison or banish the prince he came to relieve. Alliance by blood  or marriage is a sufficient cause of war between princess, and nearer the kindred is, the greater is their disposition to quarrel poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud , and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.

     There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations, for so much a day to each man; of which they keep three fourths to themselves , and it is the best part of their maintenance; such are those in Germany and other northern part of Europe....

     I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said, whoever understood the nature of Yahoo, might easily believe it possible for so vile  an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equaled their malice. But as my discourse had increased  his abhorrence of the whole species , so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind, to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears being used to such abominable words, might by degrees admit them with less detestation. That although  he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did gnnayh  ( a bird of prey ) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to Reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that instead of Reason, we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices..

         (Gulliver's Travels- Jonathan Swift- pp. 292/95 )

 

                                War and the Coffins 

     Some of the wisest of the coffin-makers, knowing how good wars are for their business, had for months ahead  made coffins and stored them in their own houses and in temples and anywhere they could,preparing for what was to come. But even all of these coffins were not enough for so many dead as were now in and around that city. Many were buried without coffins, and the  enemy dug holes and shoveled the dead bodies into them and covered them shallowly so that hungry dogs clawed them up again. Luck for all it was winter and summer, or the stench of that city would have risen into the nostrils of the gods themselves.

                  (Dragon Seed - Pearl S. Buck - p.147 )

                                  Curse the War-Mongers !

     "Curse all these men who come into the world to upset it with wars! " he shouted, " and curse them for spoiling our homes and fouling our women and making our life a thing of fear and emptiness! Curse such childish men that cannot have done with fights and quarrels in childhood but still be children when they are grown and by their fights and quarrels ruin the lives of decent people such as we are ! Curse all women who give birth to men who make war and curse their grandmothers and all who are their kin "

                     ( Dragon Seed - Pearl S. Buck- p.176 ) 

 

                           Punishment - No Remedy 

     ... I ask you not to reject what is useful in my speech for the sake of what is specious in his. Yuy may well find his speech attractive, because it fits in better with your present angry feelings about the Mytilenians: but this is not a law-court, where we have to consider what is fit and just:it is a political assembly, and the question is how Mytilene can be most useful to Athens.

     Now, in human societies the death penalty has been laid down for many  offences less serious than this one Yet people still take risks when they feel sufficiently confident. No one has ever risked committing a crime which  he thought he could not carry out successfully. The same is trur of states. None has ever yet rebelled in the belief that it had insufficient resources, either in itself or from its allies, to make the attempt. Cities and individuals alike, all are by nature dispose to do wrong, and there is no law that will prevent it, as shown by the fact men have tried every kind of punishment, constantly adding to the list, in the attempt to find greater security from criminals. It is likely that in the early times the punishments even for the greatest crimes were not so severe as they are now, but the laws were still broken, and in the course of time the death penalty became generally introduced. Yet even with this , the laws are still broken. Either, therefore, we must discover some fear more potent than the fear of death, or we must admit here certainly we have not got an adequate deterrent....

     Our business, therefore, is not to injure ourselves by acting like a judge who strictly examines a criminal; instead we should be looking for a method by which, employing moderation in our punishments, we can in future secure for ourselves the full use of those cities which bring us important contributions. And we should recognize that the proper basis of our security is in good administration rather than in the fear of legal penalties.

      (The Peloponnesian War - Thucydides - pp.187/89 )

          Military System -The Worst Outcrop of Herd Life

     This topic brigs me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in fours to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him.He has only been given his big brain by mistake: unprotected spinal marrow was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be  abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! How vile and despicable seems war to me. I would rather hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long agoi, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the press.

          ( Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein - pp.10/11 )

 

                                   Why Revere the Gods

     Let us now consider why reverence for the gods is widespread among the nations. What has crowded their cities with altars and inaugurated those solemn rites that are in vogue today in powerful states and busy resorts/what has implanted in mortal hearts that chill of dread which even now rears new temples of the gods the wide world over and packs them on holy days with pious multitudes? The explanation is not far to seek. Already in those early days men had visions when their minds were awake, and more clearly in sleep, of divine figures, dignified in mien  and impressive in stature. To these figures they attributed sentience, because they were seen to move their limbs and give voice to lordly utterance appropriate to their stately features and stalwart frames. They further credited them with eternal life,because the substance of their shapes was perpetually renewed and their appearance unchanging and in general because they thought that beings of such strength  could not lightly be subdued by any force. They pictured their lot as far superior to that of mortals, because none of them was tormented by the fear of death, and also because in dreams they saw they perform all sorts of miracleswithout the slightest effort.

     Again, men noticed the orderly succession of celestial phenomena and the round of the seasons and were at a loss to account for them. So they tok refuge in handing  over everything to the gods and making everything dependent on their whim. They chose the sky to be the home and headquarters of the gods because it is through the sky that the moon is seen to tread its cyclic course with day and night and night's ominous constellations and the night-flying torches and soaring flames of the firment , clouds and sun and rain, snow and wind, lightning and hail, the sudden thunder-crash and long drawn intimidating rumble.

     Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such responsibilities and throw in a vindictive temper! What grief they hatched then for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for posterity! This is not piety... True piety lies rather in ithe power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

     ( On the Nature of the Universe- Lucretius- pp.207/08 )

                                    How the God Save!

      ... He slipped into the parish church, because in the Padre's religion class he had been told that since the Middle Age the church had traditionally served as a place of asylum; the Martizez gang nonetheless followed him inside and after a horrendous chase across the pews caught him before the main altar and kicked and beat him beneath the indifference gaze of plaster saints wearing gilt brass halos. The energetic priest had come running at Gregory's cries and lifted his enemies off him  by the hair of their heads.

     " God didn't save me1 " the boy yelped, more humiliating than hurt, pointing to the bloodied Christ presiding over the altar.

     " What do you mean, he didn't save you " roared the priest. "Didn't I come to help you , you ingrate ?"

     " too late! Look what they did to me " Gregory howled, displaying his bruises. 

     "God has no time for such hair-brained feuds. Get up and blow your nose" the Padre commanded.

     " You said it was safe here.... "

     " It is, if the enemy knows it is a holy place; those blockheads don't even realized the sacrilege they committed."

     Your lousy church isn't worth a damn."

     " You watch what you say, or you will be missing your teeth, you young runt!"The Padre's uplifted hand unlined the threat.

     "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" Gregory remembered  just in time, a ploy the had the virtue of cooling the Basque blood of the priest, who took a deep breath to compose himself and attempted to speak in tones more appropriate to his holy vestments.

     "Look here , son, you need to learn to defend yourself. God helps those who help themselves, as the old saying goes. 

            ( The Infinite Plan - Isabel Allende - p. 48 )

 

                                   On Mahabharatha 

     "What is in this work may be found elsewhere, but what is not in this work is to be found nowhere? ", claims the Mahabharatha. An empty boast ? Even our quick glance indicates the epic's breadth and depth,and shows reflections of the epic's patterns in Indian history; we mark the truth in Sukthankar's comment that the Mahabharatha is our past thrusting itself into the present - that we were, are and possibly will be the Mahabharatha.

    Yet this truth is not wholly comforting. That the epic, emerging from history of our past, is continually recreated on Indian soil can of course only be true in spirit; the epic cannot recreate itself literally. Yet even in spirit an inescapable continual recreation of the Mahabharatha, while extraordinary tribute to the epic's grasp of human nature and of some forces of history, would also be an extraordinary condemnation  of the Indian people's maturity and common sense levels.

     Proud as we are of the epic's codes of chivalry, we cannot be proud, I suggest in all humility, of the story,or history, it reveals. In particular we cannot be proud of the epic's acquiescence  in the triumph of revenge over reconciliation. I suggest, further, that we cannot  be glad that the epic is reproduced in varied forms in our history.

     When Lal calls the epic 'a mirror in which the Indian sees himself undeceived", I infer  that the Mahabharatha enables human being (not Indians alone ) to see the pride, revenge, and treachery of which they are capable. When he adds that 'the theme of this epic is history of India, I say yes, but sadly, and I am unable to say,  "so be it,"

 ( Revenge and Reconciliation - Rajmohan Gandhi - p.34 )

 

                                              Philosophers 

     Next to them ( lawyers) come the philosophers, cloaked and bearded to command respect, who insist that they alone have wisdom and, all other mortals are but fleeting shadows. Theirs is certainly a pleasant form of madness, which sets them building countless universes and measuring the sun, moon, stars and planets by rule of thumb or a bit of string, and producing reason for thunderbolts, winds, eclipses and other inexplicable phenomena. They never pause for a moment, as if they had access to the secrets of nature, architect of universe, or had come to us straight from the council of the gods. Meanwhile Nature has a fine laugh at them and their conjectures , for their total lack of certainty is obvious enough from the endless contention amongst themselves on every single point. They know nothing at all, yet they claim to know everything. Though ignorant of  themselves and sometimes not able to see the ditch or stone lying in their path , either because most of them are half-blind  or their minds are far away, and they still boast that they can see ideas, universals, separate forms, prime matters quiddities, ecceitiesa , things which are all so insubstantial that I doubt if even Lyneus could perceive them. And how they despise the vulgar crowd whenever they bring out their triangles, quadrilaterals, circles and  similar mathematical diagrams, piled on top of each other and intertwined like a maze, and then letters of the alphabet which they marshall in line and deploy hither and thither in order to throw dust in the eyes of less well-informed! Some of them too will also foretell the future by consulting the stars, promising furthe wonderful marvels, and they are lucky enough to find people to believe this too.

               (Praise of Folly- Erasmus  - pp.151/52 )

 

                                                        War

     War is not one of the complicate economic, financial,or judicial public institutions that are in a mess because they are mismanaged by political amateurs who do not understand them. Everybody understands war only too well; for it is a primitive blood sport that gratifies human pugnacity. Successful players at it earn fame enough to satisfy the maddest human ambition. I enjoy civil celebrity; but as I have never killed anybody in a violent manner I am hopelessly outshone by warriors who have hundreds of thousands 0f violent deaths to their credit. Napoleon was contemporary of Kant, Goethe, Mozart and Beethoven. Compare their tombs, and you will get an aesthetic measure of how much more we admire a great soldier than a great philosopher, poet or a composer. Adolf Hitler, when, having decimated Poland and demolished half Warsaw, he drove the British army out of France into the sea and Red Army out of the Baltic Provinces and back to the Don,was lord of half Europe whilst Einstein was an exile, with a smaller income than a baseball champion. We speak of war gods, but not of mathematician gods, poet or painter gods, or inventor gods.Nobody has ever called me a god;I am at best a sage, We worship all the conquerors, but only one price of peace, who was horribly put to death, and, if he lived today in these islands, would have some difficulty in getting exempted from military service as a  conscientious objector if indeed he did not catch the war infection and head the rush to enlist. 

(Everybody's Political What's What - Bernard Shaw - pp.122/23 )

                                    War and the Truth

     After Austerlitz and the campaign of 1807, Rostov knew from his own experience that was always lie when they describe deeds of battle, as he did himself indeed. He had had too sufficient experience to know that everything in battle happens utterly differently from our imagination and description of it.

     If the reports that our losses are great, it is false; perhaps about  4000,not that, but that is nothing; if it had been 10000, what of it, that's war. But on the other hand, the enemy's losses were immense.

                        ( War and Peace - Lev Tolstoy - pp.700)

 

                                            Military Genius 

     And why do they all talk of military genius? Is a man to be called a genius because he knows when to order biscuits to be given out, and when to march his troops to the  right and when to the left? He is only called a genius because of the glamour and authority with which the military are invested, because masses of sycophants are always ready to flatter power, and to ascribe to it qualities quite alien to it. The  best generals I have known are, on the contrary, stupid and absent-minded men. The best of them is Bagration - Napoleon himself admitted it.- And Bonaparte himself! I remember his fatuous and limited face on the field of Austerlitz. A good general has no need of genius, nor of any great qualities; on the contrary, he is the better fof the absence of the finest and highest of human-qualities - love, poetry, tenderness, philosophic and inquiring doubt. He should be limited , firmly convinced that what he is doing is of great importance, (or he would never have patience to go through with it) and only then will he be a gallant general.. It is perfectly comprehensible that the theory of their genius should have been elaborated long,long ago, for the simple reason that they are the representatives of power. The credit of success in battle is not by right theirs: for victory or defeat depends in reality on the soldier in the ranks who first shouts "Hurrah" or " we are lost." And it is only in the ranks that one can serve with perfect conviction, that one is of use!

                    (War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - 97) 

                   ******************************

     In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov and Napoleon acted without decision or rational plan. After the accomplished fact, historians brought forward cunningly devised evidences of the foresight and genius of the generals, who of all the involuntary instruments of the world history were the most slavish and least independent agents.

     The ancients have transmitted to us examples of epic poems in which the whole interest of history is concentrated in a few heroic figures; and under their influence we are still unable to accustom our minds to the idea that history of that kind is meaningless at our stage in the development of humanity. 

                      ( War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - p.817) 

                               National Characteristics

     National characteristics are not easy to pin down, when pinned down they often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connection with one another.Spaniaeds are cruel to animals, Italians can do nothing without making a deafning noise , the Chinese are addicted to gambling. Obviously such things don't matter in themselves. Nevertheless, nothing is causeless, and even the fact that that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell something about the realities of English life.

     Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that that the English are not gifted artistically. They were not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectuals.  They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic "world view." Nor is this because they are "practical" as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply, their obstinate clinging to everything  that is out of date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis...to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world- famed hypocrisy - their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance, bound up with this. Also , in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly draw together act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the Germans' "a sleep-walking people", would have been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of being called a sleep-walker.

     But here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers.. we are a nation of flower lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers , amateur carpenters, coupon-snipers, dart players, crossword-puzzle fans.

     In England, all the boasting and flag-wagging, the "Rule Britania" stuff, is done by small minorities. The patritism of the common people is not vocal or even conscious. They do not retain among their historical memories the name of a single military victory. English literature, like other literature, is full of battle-poems, but it is worth noticing that the ones that have won for themselves a kind of popularity are always a tale of disasters and retreats... The most stirring battle-poems in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction...

     The reason why the English anti-militarism disgusts foreign observers is that it ignores the existence of the British Empire.

        ( Collected Essays -Vol.2- George Orwell -pp.76/80 )

 

                                       Ancient Customs 

     If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, , and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things.There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's country...Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he called it "King of all."

                     (The Histories- Herodotus - pp.190/91)

 

                             Persian Marriage Customs 

     This desolate country, infested by dangerous wild beasts, extends for twenty days journey, without shelter or food except perhaps every third or fourth day, when the traveller may find some habitation where he can renew his stock of provisions. Then he reaches a region with villages and hamlets in plenty and a few towns perched on precipitous crags. Here there prevails a marriage custom of which I will tell you. It is such that no man would ever on any account take a virgin to wife. For they say that a woman is worthless unless she has had knowledge of many men.They argue that she must have displeased the gods, because if she enjoyed the favour of their idos the men would desire her and consort with her. So they deal with their womenfolk in this way. When it happes that men from a foreign land are passing through the country and have pitched their tents and made a camp, the matron from neighbouring villages and hamlets bring their daughters to these camps . to the number of twenty or forty, and beg the travelers to take them and lie with them. So these people choose the girls who please them best, and others returned home disconsolate. So long as they remain, the visitors are free to take their pleasure with the women and use them as they will, but they are not allowed to carry them off anywhere else.When the men have worked their will and are ready to be gone, then it is the custom for every man to give the woman with whom he has lain some trinket or token so that she can show, when she comes to marry, that she has had a lover. In this way custom requires every girl to wear more than a score of such token hung around  her neck to show that she has had lovers in plenty and plenty of men have lain with her. And she who has most tokens and can show that she has had most lovers and that most men have lain with her is the most highly esteemed and the most acceptable as a wife; for they say that she is the most favoured by the gods. And when they have taken a wife in this way they prize her highly; and the account it a grave offense for any man to touch another's wife, and they all strictly abstain from such an act... Obviously the country is fine one to visit for a lad from sixteen to twenty-four.

                 (The Travels Of Marco Polo  -pp.143/44 )

                                  Persian Customs

      The following are certain Persian customs which I can describe from personal knowledge. The erection of statues , temples and altars  is not an accepted practice amongst them, and anyone who does such a thing is considered a fool, because , presumably , the Persian religion is not anthropomorphic  like Greek.

     .. They erect no altar and kindle no fire; the libation, the flute music the garland, the sprinkled meal - all these things, familiar to us, they have no use for... The actual worshiper is not permitted to pray for any personal or private blessing, but only for the king and for, the general good of the community, of which he is himself a part...

     If an important decision is to made. they discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submit their decisions for consideration when they are sober... Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk...

     After their own nation they hold their nearest neighbours most in honour, then the nearest but one- and so on, their respect decreasing as the distant grows, and the most remote being most despised. Themselves they consider in every way superior to everyone else in the world.

     No race is so ready to adopt foreign ways as the Persian; for instance, they wear the Median costume because they think it handsomer than their own, and their soldiers cwear the Egyptian corselet. Pleasures, too, of all sorts they are quick  to indulge in when they get to know about them- a notable instance is Pederasty, which they learned from Greeks...

     What they are forbidden to do, they are forbidden to mention. They consider telling lies more disgraceful than anything else, and next to that,  owing money. There are many reasons fot their horror of debt , but the chief is their conviction that a man who owes money is bound also to tell lies... They have a profound reverence for rivers; they will never pollute a river with urine or spittle, or even wash their hands in one, or allow anyone else to do so. There is one other peculiarity which one notices about them, though themselves are unaware of it: all their names, which express magnificence or physical qualities, end in the letter "S ."

                  ( The Histories - Herodotus - pp.69/71 )

                                   Marriage and Virginity

     You must  know that the young ladies of the province of Cathay excel in modesty and the strict observance of decorum. They do not frisk and frolic and  dance or fly into a pet.They do not keep watch at the windows gazing at passers-by or exposing themselves to their gaze. They do not offer a ready ear to improper stories. They do not gad about to parties and entertainments. If it happens that they go out to some respectable place, as for instance to the temples of their idols or to visit the houses of relatives , they walk in the company of their mothers, not glancing brazenly about them but some of them wearing pretty hoods over their heads which obstruct their upward view.On the way they always walk with their eyes cast down in front of their feet. In the presence of their elders they are respectful and never utter a needless word - indeed they do not speak at all in their presence unless addressed. In their own chambers they remain intent on their own tasks, seldom presenting themselves to the sight of fathers  and brothers and the older members of household and never listening to suitors. The same applies to young lads of good family.

     When someone wishes to give his daughter in marriage or receives a request for her hand, the father will pledge his daughter to the prospective son-in-law as  a virgin, and the two will draw up contracts on that basis , so that if it should be found to be otherwise the marriage would not stand. When the contracts and covenants have been duly entered into and confirmed between the parties, the intended bride is conducted to the baths for her chastity to be put to the proof. Here the mothers and kinswomen of the betrothed  pair will be waiting, and certain matrons specially deputed by both parties will first test her virginity with a pigeon's egg. If the women of the bridegroom's party are not satisfied with this test, on the ground that the loss of integrity may well be disguised by means of medicaments, one of these matrons, having wrapped one finger in fine white linen, will slightly bruise the vena virginalis, so that the linen may be slightly stained with the virginal blood. For it is a distinctive property of this blood that its stain cannot be removed from cloth by any washing. So, if the stain is washed out, that is a sign that the blood is not that of an undefiled virgin. ..You must know that, to ensure this strict preservation of virginity, the maidens always walk so daintily that they never advance one foot more than a finger's breadth beyond the other, since physical integrity is often destroyed by a wanton gait. This rule must be understood as applying to the natives of Cathay.

                       ( The Travels of Marco Polo-P.168 )

 

                                        Imprisonment

     Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling  punishment on the individual but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it it has done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say,it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shuns a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one om whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irremediable wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me;and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side. 

               ( De Profundis -Oscar Wilde -p.10/11 ) 

                                               Prisons

     All men who have experienced prison know that its terrible grasp reaches out far beyond its physical walls. There is a moment when those whose lives it will crush suddenly grasp, with awful clarity, that all reality,all present time, all activity- everything real in their lives - is fading away, while before them opens a new road onto which they tread with the trembling step of fear. That icy moment of arrest.

     ... Man imprisoned differs from man in general even in his outward appearance. Prison marks him from the very first hour. Incarceration begins with the search.

                  ( men in Prison - Victor Serge - p.1 & 8)

                           How to Adapt to Prison Life

     The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner , is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one's belief. The first task was in accomplishing , that is exactly what one must do to survive. To that end, one must know the enemy's purpose before adopting a strategy to undermine it. Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve.To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality - all with the idea if stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.

           (Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela - p. 463 )

 

                                 Mathematical Terror

     In six days God made everything, that is except Math.If God did not make Math, Math must have been made by the Devil, which gave us the right to hate it. The second reason is that the human drain did not evolve to do the Math- there was no need to do it  in the jungle.

     There are same unusual humans, however , who really did Math and end up earning a PHD in Math. Unfortunately, by that time, their brain has become so exalted that they are unable to communicate with poor mortals like you and me. Even more unfortunately, these people end up teaching Math, thus perpetuating the spreading of mathematical  terror in the unwary minds of young students. The result is generation after generation of Math haters.

                     ( Planet Earth - Cesare Emiliani - p 15 ) 

 

                           Science and  Pseudo- Science

     pseudo-science is embrace, it might be argued ,in exact proportion as real  science is misunderstood - except that the language breaks down here. If you have never heard of science ( to say nothing of how it works 0, you can hardly be aware you are embracing pseudo-science, You are simply thinking in one of the ways that humans always have. Religions are often the state-protected nurseries of pseudo-science, although there is no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way,it's an artifact from times long gone. In some countries nearly everyone believes in astrology  and precognition, including government leaders...

     Most of the case histories i will relate in this book are American- because these are the cases I know best , not  because pseudo-science and mysticism are more prominent in the United States  than elsewhere. But the psychic spoon bender and extraterrestrial  chaneler Uri Geller hails from  Israel . As tensions rise between Algerian secularists and  Muslim fundamentalists, more and more people are discreetly consulting the country's 10000 soothsayers and clairvoyants (about half of whom operate with a license from the government.) High French officials, including a former President of France, arranged  for million of Dollars to be invested in a scam ( the Elf-Aquitain scandal ) to find a new petroleum reserves from the air. In Germany there is concern about carcinogenic " Earth rays" undetectable  by science;they can be sensed only by experienced dowsers brandishing forked sticks. " Psychic Surgery " flourishes in the Philippines. Ghosts are something of national obsession in Britain. Since World War ii Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural.An estimated 100,000 fortune tellers flourish in Japan:  the clientele are mainly young women. Aum Shinkriyo, aa sect thought to be invoved in the release of nerve gas Sarin in the Tokyo subway system in March 1995, features levitation, faith heeling  and ESP among its main tenets. Followers at a high price, drank the "Miracle Pond" water from the  bath of Asahara, their leader. In Thailand, deseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverised sacred Scripture. "Witches " are today being burned in South Africa. Australian peace-keeping forces in Haiti rescue a  woman tied to a tree: she is accused of flying from rooftop to rooftop, and sucking the blood of children.astrology is rife in India, geomancy widespread in China.

     Perhaps the most successful recent global pseudoscience- by many criteria, already a religion - is the Hindu doctrine of transcendental meditation (TM ). The soporific homilies of its founder and spiritual leader, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, can be seen on television. Seated in the Yogi position, his white hair here and there flecked with black, surrounded by garlands and floral offering, he has a look. One day while channel surfing we came upon this visage. " You know who that is? asked our four year old son. "God." The worldwide TM organisation has an estimated valuation of $ 3 billion.For a fee they promise through meditation to be able to walk you through walls, to make  you invisible, to enable you to fly. By thinking in unison they have , they say, diminished the crime rate in Washington, D.C. and caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, among other secular miracles. Not one smattering of real evidence has been offered for any such claims. TM sells folk medicine,  runs trading companies, medical clinics and research universities, and has unsuccessfully entered politics. In its  oddly charismatic leader,its promise of community, and the offer of magical powers in exchange for money and fervent belief , it is typical of many pseudo-sciences marketed for sacerdotal export.

     At each relinquishing of civil controls and scientific education another little spurt in pseudo-science occurs. Leon Trotsky described it for  Germany on the eve of the Hitler takeover  ( but in a description that might equally have applied to the Soviet Union of 1933.)

     "Not only in peasant homes,but also in the city skyscrapers, there lives alongside the twentieth century the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms.. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery.

      ( The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan - pp.15/17 )

 

                                                 Cities

     Whoever said that God laid the first garden and the devil the first city was wide off the mark when it comes to Paris. Here God and Devil took on a bet who could do better. God ordered the river Seine to flow through the city; He laid many gardens and parks and even raised a few cathedrals to glorify His name. The Devil spanned the Seine with ornate bridges, built memorials to glorify wars, massacres  and mass executions; he also festooned the city's boulevards with fountains, crammed its narrow lanes with automobiles , littered it with bars, night clubs and bordellos. You do not have to conduct a public opinion poll to find out who won the bet. More people patronize bistros to sip absinthe, visit the follies bergere to ogle at naked dances or enjoy the earthly pleasures of Place Pigalle than go to see or pray in Notre Dame or other Cathedrals. When it comes to Paris, The Devil won hands down. Long live the builder of cities. 

        ( Around the World with Khushwanth Singh -p. 62 )   

                                         New York

     Oh, I can't tell you how different New York is from all the other cities! Berlin and Paris were marvellous, but still somewhat like Warsaw and Kiew. New York is another world. It's as if one were walking upside down. It is not as pretty as Paris, far from it! Even ugly. Most of the houses aren't plastered, the bricks are visible. There are no courtyards here either, children play in the streets. I studied French in gymnasium, but I don't understand a word of English. On the ship we all spoke Russian. They gave me an English reader, but Americans pronounce words differently. Even their mouths seem different from ours. But God knows if I will ever learn this language... 

      I could go on forever about New York. This city reflects the chaos in my soul. Everything here opposes our way of thinking. what is beautiful in Europe is considered ugly here. What is comical to us serious to them. In spite of their democracy and liberty, votes are purchased at election time. Bribes are openly accepted. The butcher, the corrupt policeman, the tavern keeper rule here. Death has no special significance. Mortuaries stand between barbershop and restaurants. Cemetries are not fenced in. Besides a stable there's a hospital. Women drink great mugs of beer in taverns. The men speak only of boxers and circus athletes. Negroes shine shoes on the sidewalks. Speakers declaim in the midst of the city. The architecture drives me wild. I tried to read English newspapers. Not one serious word about the world situation - only news about prospective weddings, funerals, amusements. Mister "this" arrived, Mrs. "that" has gone away. Miss "something-or- other ' has become a bride. The surmons of the priests ministers (as well as Rabbis) are printed as if these people had discovered the North Pole. Everything else is advertisements.Even churches advertise. Spiritualists advertise. .. Someone has told me that America must be discovered over again by each person who  come here. 

        ( The Estate - Issac  Bashevis Singer -pp. 60&62 ) 

  

                                           Lawyers

     Capitalists, workingmen ,politicians, citizens - all breaking the law or letting it broken. Who is let to uphold it? Lawyers? Some of the best lawyers in this country are hired, not to go into courts to defend cases, but to advise corporations and business firms how they can get around the law without too great a risk of punishment. The judges? Too many of them so respect the law that for  some "error" or sqibble they restotr to office liberty men convicted on evidence overwhelmingly convincing to common sense. The churches ? We know of one, an ancient and wealthy establishment, which had to be compelled by a Tammany hold-over health officer to put its tenements in sanitary condition. The colleges? They don't understand.

 (The Muckrakers - S.S. McClure- quoted in 'The Progressive Movement' edited by Richard Howstadter -p.17 )

 

                  Parents' Role in Science Education

      My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder. they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method. They were only one step out of poverty. But when I announced that I wanted to be an astronomer, I received unqualified support - even if they ( as I ) had only the most rudimentary idea of what an astronomer doea. They never suggested that, all things considered, it might be better to be a doctor or a lawyer...

     I've always been grateful to my mentors of the 1950s, and tried to make sure that each of them knew my appreciation. But as I look back, it sems clear to me that  I learned the most essential things not from my school teachers, nor even from my university professors, but from my parents, who knew nothing at all about science  in that single  far off year of 1939. 

            ( The Demon- Haunted World Carl Sagan-xiii/xv)

 

                                        Book Reviewer

     ...Half-hidden among the pile of papers is a bulky parcel containing five volumes which his editor has sent with a note suggesting that they 'ought to go well together'. They arrived four days ago, but for forty-eight hours the reviewer was prevented by moral paralysis from opening the parcel. Yesterday in a resolute moment he ripped the string off it and found the five volumes to be Palestine at the Crossroads, Scientific Dairy Farming, A Short History of  European Democracy, (this one is 680 pages and weighs four Pounds ), Tribal customs in Portugese East Africa, and a novel, It's Nicer Lying Down, probably included by mistake. His review -800 words , say - has got to be "in ' by midday tomorrow.

     Three of these books deal with subjects of which he is so ignorant that he will have to read at least fifty pages if he is to avoid making some howler which will betray him not merely to the author ( who, of course.Knows all about the habits of book reviewers.), but even to the general reader. By four in the afternoon he will have taken the books out of their wrapping paper but will still be suffering from a nervous inability to open them. The prospect of having to read them, and even the smell of the paper, affects him like the prospect of eating cold ground-rice pudding flavoured with castor oil. Yet curiously enough his copy will get to the office in time. Somehow it always does get there in time. At about 9p.m, his mind will grow relatively clear, and until the small hours he will sit in a room which grows colder and colder, while the cigarette  smoke grows thicker and thicker, skipping expertly through one book after another and laying each down with a final comment, 'God, what tripe! In the morning, blear-eyed , surly and unshaven, he will gaze for an hour or two at a blank sheet of paper until the menacing finger of the clock frightens him into action. Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases - ' a book that no one should miss', 'something memorable on every page', 'of special value are the chapters dealing with etc.,etc., - will jump into their places like iron filling obeying  the magnet - and the review will end up at exactly the right length and with just about three minutes to go. Meanwhile another wad of ill-assorted, unappetizing book will have arrived by post. so it goes on. And yet with what high hopes this downtrodden, nerve-racked creature started his career, only a few years ago.

     Do I seem to exaggerate? I ask any regular reviewer - anyone who reviews, say, a minimum of a hundred books a year - whether he can deny in honesty that his habits and character are such as I have described.  Every  writer , in any case, is rather that kind of person, but the prolonged indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash, though it does not involve that, as I will show in a moment - but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever. The reviewer, jaded though, he may be, is professionally interested in books, out of thousands that appear annually, there are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them; more probably he gets hold of two or three.The rest of his work, however conscientious  he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug. He is pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time.

     The great majority of reviews give an adequate or misleading account of the book that is dealt with... Seeing the results, people sometimes suggest that the solution lies in getting book reviewing out of the hands of hacks, Book on specialized subjects out to be dealt with by experts .  and on the other hand a good deal of reviewing, especially of novels, might well be done by amateurs. Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, if it is only a passionate dislike, in some or other reader whose ideas about it would surely be worth more than those of a bored professional. But unfortunately, as every editor knows, that kind of thing is very difficult to organise.

     ... In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively, truthful criticism would be "this book is worthless" , while the truth about the reviewer's own reaction would probably be " This book does not interest me in any way, And I would not write  About it unless I were paid to." But the public will not pay to read that kind of thing. Why should they? They want some kind of  guide to the books they are asked to read, and they want some kind of evaluation.But as soon as values are mentioned, standard collapse. For if one says- and nearly every reviewer says this kind of thing at least once a week- that King Lear  is a good play and the Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word "good" ?

     The best practice, it has always seemed to me, would be simply to ignore the great majority of books and to give very long reviews -1000 words is a bare minimum - to the fewthat seems to matter. Short notes of a line or two on forthcoming books can be useful, but the usual middle length review of about 600 words is bound to be worthless even if the reviewer genuinely wants to write it... I must say, from experience of both trades, that the book reviewer is  better off than the film critic, who cannot do his work at home, but has to attend trade shows at eleven in the morning and,with one or two notable exceptions, is expected to sell his honour for a glass of inferior Sherry.

              ( Collected Essays - George Orwell - pp.216/18 ) 

                                 Healing by Touching

     Perhaos the last relic of such superstitions  which lingered about oyr English kings was the notion that they could heal Scrofula by their touch.. The disease was accordingly known as the King's Evil. Queen Elizabeth  often exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On Mid-Summer Day 1633, Charles the First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in the chapel royal at Holyrood. But it was under his son Charles the Second that the practice seemed to have attained its highest vogue. It is said that in the course of his reign Charles the Second touched nearly ahundred thousand persons for Scrofula.the press to get nearhim was sometimes terrific. On one occasion seven of those who came to be healed were trampled to death. The cool-headed William the Third contemptuously refused to lend himself to the hocus pocus; and his palace was besieged by the usual unsavoury crowd, he ordered them to be turned away with a dole. On the only occasion when he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient, he said to him, 'God give you better health and sense."

            ( The Golden Bough - J.G. Frazer -pp.88/89 )

 

                                    Religion and Science

     Those who think the sciences can go on advancing and spreading wider and wider without threatning the continued existence and prosperity of religion are very much in error. Physics and Metaphysics  are the natural enimies of religion. To speal of peace and accord between them is very ludicrous: It is a bellum ad internecionem (war of extermination ). Religions are the children of ignorance, and they do not long survive their mother.Omar understood that when he burned the library at Alexandria: his reason for doing so - that the knowledge contained in the books was either also contained in the Koran or was superfluous- is regarded as absurd, but is in fact very shrewd if taken cum grano salis (with a grain of salt )  : it signifies that if the sciences go beyond the Koran they are enemies of religion and consequently not to be tolerated. Christianity would be in much better shape today if Christian rulers had been wise as wise as Omar. By now, however, it is a little late to burn all the books.

     Mankind is growing out of religion as out of its childhood clothes.Faith and knowledge do not get on well together in the same head: they are like a wolf and a sheep in the same cage- and knowledge is the wolf which threatens to eat up its companion. In its death throes, we see religion clinging to morality, whose mother it would like to pretend to be. In vain!- genuine morality is dependent on no religion, although religion sanctions and thereby sustains it.

     Belief is like love: it cannot be compelled; ans as any attempt to love produces hate, so it is the attempt to compel belief which first produces unbelief.

     The reason civilisation is at its highest point among Christian people is not that Christianity is favourable to it but that Christianity is dead and no longer exercises  much influence: as long as it did exercise influence, civilisation was at a very low point among Christian peoples. All religion is antagonistic towards culture. 

( Essays and Aphorisms -Arthur Schopenhauer -pp.196/97 ) 

                                          Naked Ape

     There are one hundred and ninety three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo Sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great  deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. He is proud that he has the  biggest brain of all the primates, but attempts to conceal the fact that he also has the biggest penis, preferring to accord this honour  falsely to the mighty gorilla.

     I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal. He is therefore fair game for my pen and I refuse to avoid him any longer simply because some of his behaviour patterns are rather complex and impressive. My excuse is that, in becoming so erudite , Homo Sapiens has remained a naked ape nevertheless; in acquiring lofty new motives, he has lost none of the earthly old ones. This is frequently a cause of some embarrassment  to him, but his old impulses have been with him for million of years, his new ones only a few thousand at most - and there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past. He would be far less worried and more fulfilled animal if only he would face up to this fact 

               ( The Naked Ape - Desmond Morris - p. 9 )

 

                                          " Horse Power"

     Horses were still the basis of planning at the outbreak of the First World War - one horse for every three soldiers. Moreover, the reliance on horses greatly complicated the problems of  supply,  for each horse required ten times as much as each man. At the beginning of the war , at First Battle of the marine, one German general cursed that he did not have a single horse that was not too exhausted  to drag itself forward across the battlefield. By the end of the war, whole nations would lie exhausted; for the oil-powered engine, while simplifying the problems of mobility and supply, also multiplied the devastation.

( The prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power- Daniel Yergin - p.168 )

 

                                 Manipulating History

     In February 1948, Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque place in Prague to address the hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizenz packed into Old Town Squire. It was crucial moment in Czech history- a fateful moment of the kind that occurs once or twice in a millennium.

      Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with Clementis standing next to him. There were snow flurries, it was cold,and Gottwald was bareheaded. The solicitous Clementis took off his own fur cap and seton Gottwald's head.

     The Party propaganda section put out hundreds of thousands of copies of a photograph of that balcony with Gott wald, a fur cap on his head and comrades at his side, speaking to the nation. On that balcony the history of Communist Czechoslovakia was born. Every child knew the photograph from posters, schoolbooks, and museums. 

     Four years later Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. the propaganda section immediately airbrushed him out of history and, obviously, out of all the photographs as well. Ever since Gottwald has stood on that balcony alone. Where Clementis once stood, there is only the bare palace wall. All that remains of Clementis is the cap on Gottwald's head. 

 (The book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera - p.1)

 

                            Abusing Chairman Mao 

     One day, we read in the Peoples Daily that an old peasant had stuck thirty two portraits of Mao on his bedroom walls, 'sothat he can see Chairman Mao's face as soon as he opens his eyes, whatever direction he looks in. ' So we covered the walls of our classroom with pictures of Mao's face beaming his most benign smile. But we soon  had to take them down, and quickly too. Word circulated that the peasant had really used the pictures as wallpaper, because Mao's portraits were printed on the best quality paper and were free. Rumours had it that the reporter who had written up the story had been found to be a class enemy for advocating "abuse of Chairman Mao." For the first time, fear of Chairman Mao entered my subconscious.

                    ( Wild Swans - Jung Chang - ( p.368/69 )

                                     The Chinese Universe

     Of allthe great nations, the Chinese have had the least commerce. indeed, one might say that they have had practically no contact whatever with outside nations, and consequently they are grossly ignorant of what the world in general is like.True, they had charts somewhat similar to this one, that were supposed to represent the whole world, but their universe was limited to their own fifteen provinces, and in the sea printed around it they had placed a few islands to which they gave names of different kingdoms they heard of. Allof these islands put together would not be as large as the smallest of the Chinese Provinces. With such a limited knowledge , it is evident why they boasted of their kingdom as being the whole world, and why they call it THIENHIA, meaning, everything under the heavens. When they learned that China was only a part of the great east, they considered such an idea, so unlike their own, to be something utterly impossible, and they wanted to be able to read about it, in order to form a better judgement.

     We must mention here another discovery which helped to win the goodwill of the Chinese. To them the heavens are round, but the earth is flat and square, and they firmly believe that their empire right in the middle of it. They do not like the idea of our geographies pushing their China into one corner of the Orient.They could not comprehend the demonstrations proving that the earth is a globe, made up of land and water, and that a globe of its nature has neither beginning nor end. The geographer was therefore obliged to change his design and, by omitting the first mention of Fortunate Islands, he left a margin on either side of the map, making the Kingdom of China to appear right in the center. This was more in keeping  with their ideas and gave them a great  deal of pleasure and satisfaction...

     Because of their ignorance of the size of the earth and the exaggerated opinion they have of themselves,  the Chinese are of the opinion that only China among the nations is deserving of admiration. Relative to the grandeur of empire, of public administration, and of reputation for learning, they look upon all other people not only as barbarous but as unreasoning  animals. To them there is no other place on earth that can boast of a king, of a dynasty, or of culture. The more their pride is inflated by this ignorance, the more humiliated they become when the truth is revealed. 

( Matteo Ricci quoted in "The Discoverers" by Daniel J. Boorstin -pp.56/57)

                                  French Revolution

     "Justice has its anger, Monsieur Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever may be said matters not. The French Revolution is the greatest step in advance taken by mankind since the advent of Christ; incomplete it may be, but it is sublime. It loosened all the secret bonds of society; it softened all hearts, it calmed, it appeased, enlightened; it made the waves of civilisation to flow allover the earth; it was goog. The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity . 

                     (Les Miserable- Victor Hugo -p. 29 )

     "Monsieur, forget not this: The French Revolution had its reasons. Its wrath will be pardoned by the future; its result is a better world. From its most terrible blows come a caress for the human race." (ibid- p.30 )

                            British and the Philosophy

The British are distinguished among the nations of modern Europe, on the one hand by the excellence of their philosophy, and on the other hand by their contempt for philosophy. In both respects they show their wisdom. But contempt for philosophy, if developed to the point at which it becomes systematic, is itself a philosophy;it is the philosophy which, in America, is called "instrumentalism '. I shall suggest that philosophy, if it is bad philosophy, may be dangerous, and therefore deserves that degree of negative respect which we accord to lightning and tigers.. 

                ( Unpopular Essays Bertrand Russel - p.11 )

                                  War, Dollars and Men

     The president (of the Parliament ) arose and, in the midst of general inattention, muttered rather than spoke the following formulas which the interpreter immediately translated to the doctor. 

     "The war for the opening  of the Mongol markets being ended to the satisfaction of the States, I propose that the accounts to be laid before the financial committee..."

     "Is there any opposition?"

     "The proposal is carried."

     " The war for the opening of the markets of Third-Zealand being ended to the satisfaction of the states, I propose that the accounts be laid before the financial committee..."

     " Is there any opposition?..."

     "The proposal is carried."

     "have I heard right?' asked professor Obnubile. "What? You an industrial people and engaged in all these wars." 

     " Certainly," answered the interpreter, " these are industrial wars. People who have neither commerce nor industry are not obliged to make war, but a business people is forced to adopt a policy of conquest. The number of wars necessarily increases with our productive activity. As soon as one of our industries fails to find a market for its products , a war is necessary to open new outlets. It is in this way we have had a coal war, a copper war, and a cotton war. In Third-Zealand we have killed two-thirds of the inhabitants in order to compel the remainder to buy our umbrellas and braces."

     At this moment a fat man who was sitting in the middle of the assembly ascended the tribune.

      " I claim" said he, 'a war against the Emerald Republic which insolently contends with our pigs for the hegemony of ham and sauces in all tha markets of the universe.'

     " Who is that legislator " asked Doctor Obnubile.

     " He is a pig merchant."

     " Is there any opposition? said the President. " I put the proposition to the vote."

     The war against the Emerald Republic was voted with uplifted hands by a very large majority.

      "What?" said Obnubile to the interpreter. "You have voted a war with that rapidity and that indifference."

     "Oh! It is an unimportant war which will hardly cost eight million Dollars."

     And men.... "

     "The men are included in eight million Dollars."

                ( Penguin Island -Anatole France - pp.126/28 )

                        How to Know and Not to Know Italy

     Italy is universally considered a particularly unpredictable and deceptive country. Some people even believe that this is the only absolutely certain thing about it. They are, of course , right some of the time, but also wrong as often. There are no sure guides to what Italy is and what it might do next. Italians themselves are almost always baffled by their own behaviour. The only people who have no doubts and hold very definite and clear ideas about the country and its inhabitants are foreigners who streak through it in a few days , possibly for the first time in their lives... Foreigners who linger longer and those who come back begin at a certain point to be disturbed by vague doubts.They suspect that things and people may not always be what they appear to be, and Italian words may not invariably mean what the dictionary says. Those who settle here... end by discovering that there are no hard and fast rules.. The only way to folloe, these foreign residents discover, is the old Italian proverb that says "to trust is good . not to trust is better " . an illustration of this bewildering quality of life was years ago put in a nutshell by a foreign correspondent. He said, "In Moscow one knows nothing but understand everything, in Rome one knows everything but understands nothing.

                 ( The Europeans - Luigi Barzini - p.157/58)

 

The Secret of Stalin's anti-semitism According to his daughter 

      I understood the great rple played by Trotsky in the party and the revolution. Knowing my father well, I could now clearly perceive the origin of his anti-semitism. Undoubtedly it has stemmed from the years of struggle for power with Trotsky and his followers, gradually transforming itself from political hatred to a racial aversion for all jews bar none. Just to enumerate to oneself the names of all the party members annihilated by my father on his way to power was enough to make one go mad.

                  ( Only One Year - Svetlana Alliliyewa - p.168 )

                        Soviet Leaders - A new "Theory "

     In 1989, a Soviet philosopher told me a bit of folk wisdom. According to an anecdote then making the rounds in Moscow, he said, the Soviet state oscillates between bald leaders and hairy ones - between reformers and conservative tyrants. He ticked the pairs: Lenin, the bald revolutionary, was followed by Stalin, the tyrant with thick, bristling brush-cut hair and menacing mustache. Nikita Krushchev, the the peasant reformer, who was a bald as a potato, gave way to Breznev, the conservative, whose bushy eyebrows and headful of hair were parodied by cartoonists in the east and west. Yuri Andrapov, a wispy-haired puritan bent on modernism and efficiency, was succeeded by Konstatin Chernenko, a defender of the old guard, who even in senility had an abundant head of white hair. So it was only natural that Gorbachev, wose birthmark gleams from a naked pate, should usher in a new era of radical reform. And of course the philosopher said, smiling nervous liberals were already beginning to speculate about what hairy hard-liner would succeed Gorbachev.

                      (The New Russians - Hedrick Smith -p7 ) 

 

                                                  Gold 

      ...In our day, financiers depend upon the superstitious reverence for gold. The ordinary citizen is struck dumb with awe when he is told about gold reserves, note issues, inflation, deflation, and all the rest of the jargon.He feels that anyone who can converse glibly about such matters must be very wise, and he does not dare to question what he is told.

      This condition  unintelligent respect on the part of the general public is exactly what the financier needs in order to remain unfettered by the democracy. He has of course, many other advantages in dealing with opinion. Being immensely rich, he can endow universities, and secure that the most influential part of academic opinion shall be subservient to him. Being at the head of the plutocracy, he is the natural leader of all those whose political thought is dominated by fear of communism. Being the possessor of economic power, he can distribute prosperity or ruin to the whole nation as he chooses.But I doubt whether any of these weapons would suffice without  the aid of  superstition. It is a remarkable fact that, in spite of the importance of economics to every man, woman and child, the subject is almost never taught in schools and even in universities is learnt by a minority. Moreover, that minority do not learn the subject as it would be learnt, if no political interests were at stake. There are a few institutions which teach it without plutocratic bias, but they are a few: as a rule the subject is so taught as to glorify the economic status quo.

           ( In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russel - p.51 ) 

 

                    *****************************

     The legend of King Midas has been generally misunderstood. Most people think the curse that turned everything the old miser touched into gold, leaving him unable to eat or drink , was a lesson in the perils of avarice. But Mida's true sin was his failure to understand monetary economics. What the gods were really telling him is that gold is just a metal. If it sometimes seems to be more, that is only because society has found it convenient to use gold as medium of exchange - a bridge between other, truly desirable, objects.  there are other possible mediums of exchange, and it is silly to imagine that this pretty. but  moderately useful, substance has some irreparable significance. 

      ( The Accidental Theorist - Paul Krugman - pp.266/67 )

 

                             Tactic of Philosophical Warfare

     At heart I am a warrior. Attacking belongs to my tactics ....for a philosopher who is combative challenges even problems to a duel. The task is not to overcome opponent's against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill , and one's swordsmanship.. My war tactics can be reduced to four principles: First, I attack only things that are triumphant - if necessary I wait until they become triumphant - if necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly,I attack only those things against which I find no allies, against which I stand alone - against which I compromise nobody but myself... I have not yet taken  one single step before the public eyes which did not compromise me: that is my criterion of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I never make personal attacks - I use a personality merely as a magnifying glass, by means of which I render a general but elusive and scarcely noticeable, evil more apparent.In this way I  attacked David Strauss, or rather thr success given to a senile book by the cultured classes of Germany - by this means I caught German culture red-handed. In this way I attacked Wagner, or rather the falsity or mongrel instincts of our "culture" which confounds the super-refined with the strong, and the effete with the great. Fourthly. I attack only those things from which all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing as a background of disagreeable experience is lacking. On the contrary, attacking is to me a proof of goodwill and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude. By means of it, I do honour to a thing, I distinguish a thing; whether I associate my name with that of an institution or a person, by being against or for is all the same to me.

(The Philosophy of Nietsche- edited by Geoffrey Clive-pp.46/47)

 

                                                Agnostic 

      The agnostic point of view poses as  fair , impartial and balanced. See how many fallacies you can find in it. Here are a few obvious ones: First, agnostic allows the arbitrary into the realm of human cognition. He treats arbitrary claims as ideas proper to consider, discuss, evaluate - and then he regretfully says, "I don't know", instead of dismissing the arbitrary out of hand. Second, the onus-of-proof issue: the agnostic demands proof of a negative in a context where there is no evidence for the positive." It is up to you " he says, 'to prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt." Third, agnostic says, "May be these things will one day be proved,." In other words, he  asserts possibilities or hypotheses with no jot of evidential  basis.

     The agnostic miscalculates. He thinks he is avoiding any position that will antagonize anybody. In fact, he is taking a position which is much more irrational than that of a man who takes a definite but mistaken stand on a given issue, because tha agnostic treats arbitrary claims as meriting cognitive consideration and epistemological respect. He treats the arbitrary as on par with the rational and evidentially supported. So he is the ultimate epistemological egalitarian; he equates the groundless and the proved. As such, he is epistemological destroyer. The agnostic thinks that he is not taking any stand at all and therefore that he is safe, secure and invulnerable to attack. The fact is that his view is one of the falsest - and most cowardly- stands there can be.

 ( The Ayn Rand Lexicon - edited by Harry Binswanger- p.4)

 

           The Circumlocution Office-  How Not To Do It !

     The Circumlocution Office (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under the government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest  public tart.It was equally impossible to do the plainest right, and to undo the plainest wrong, without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another gunpowder plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of  the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the Parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family vault- full of ungrammatical  correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

     The glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing country was first distinctly revealed to statesmen, It had been foremost to study that bright revelation, and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the  public departments in the art of perceiving - How Not To Do It. Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which  it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to over top all the public departments, and the public condition had risen to be- what it was.

     It is true that how not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all around the Circumlocution Office. iIt is true that every new Premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner came in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How Not To Do It. It is true that, from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentlemen in the opposite interferes , on pain of impeachment, to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, how it was not to be done. It is true that that the debates of both Houses of Parliament, the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation. How Not To Do It. It is true that the royal speech at the opening  of such session virtually said, my lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective Chambers, and discuss. How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session.

     Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship . How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it , or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute and a memorandum and a letter of instructions, that distinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, national philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists people with grievances,people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who could not get rewarded for merit, and who could not get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap of the Circumlocution Office.

      Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the general warfare ( and they had better have had wrongs  at first than have taken that bitter English recipe for certainly getting them )  who in slow lapse of time and agony had passedsafely through other public departments who, according to rule, had been bullied in this, overreached by that, and evaded by the other; got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office and never reappeared  in the light of day. Board sat upon them, clerks registered, entered, checked , and ticked them off, and they melted away. in short, all the businesses of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it, and its name was Legion. 

     Sometimes angry spirits attacked Circumlocution Office. Sometimes Parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even Parliamentary motions made or threatened about it, by demagogues so low and ignorant as to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would the noble lord or right honourable  gentleman, in whose department it was to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his pocket, and make a regular field day of the occasion. Then would he come down to that House with a slap upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman foot to foot. then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that the Circumlocution Office, not only was blameless in this matter, but was commendable in this matter, was extolable to the skies in this matter. Then would he be there to tell the honourable gentleman the, although, the Circumlocution Office was invariably right, and wholly right, it never was so right as in this mattere. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that it would have been more to his honour, more to his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good sense, more to  half the dictionary of commonplaces  , if he had left the Circumlocution Office alone, and never approached this matter. Then would he keep one eye upon a coach or crammer from the Circumlocution  Office, sitting below the bar, and smash the  honourable gentleman with the Circumlocution office account of this matter. Although one of two things always happened; namely either that the Circumlocution Office had nothing to say, and said it ,or that it had something to say  of which the noble lord or right honourable gentleman blundered one half, forget the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted immaculate by an accommodating majority. 

                  ( Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens - pp.97/98 )

 

          The  Importance of Being a Government Officer 

     Every governing official in quiet, untroubled times feels that the whole population under his charge is only kept by his efforts; and it is this sense of being indispensably necessary in which every governing official finds the chief reward for his toils and cares. It is  easy to understand that while the ocean of history is calm , the governing officer holding on from his crazy little skiff by a pole to the ship of the people, and moving with it, must fancy that it is his efforts that move the ship on to which he is clinging. But  a storm has but to arise set the sea heaving and the ship tossing upon it, and such error becomes at once impossible. The ship goes on it svast course unchecked , the pole fails to reach the moving vessel, and the pilot, from being the master, the source of power,finds himself a helpless, weak and useless person.

                  ( War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -p. 958 )

 

                          Hypocritical Office Work

     Having spent thirty years in the dull environment of a government office, he had acquired all the habits and inclinations of a hardened bureaucrat  who cannot stand for a minute to be free from pretending to himself that he is busy. However, having soberly appraised the situation, he came to the conclusion that the world of official, active idleness was transferable and could easily be moved to another sphere. Indeed as soon as he settled in Golovlov, he created for himself a mass of trifles and little details which he could go on turning over without danger of ever running out of an occupation.

     Every morning he sat down at his desk and went to work. He checked the accounts of the manager, the dairymaid and the housekeeper first by one method, then by another. Then he devised a very complicated system of bookkeeping both for money and for goods;: each Kopek, each item had to be entered in twenty books. When he drew up the balances he sometimes found himself short by half a Kopek at other times, he discovered a Kopek too much. Finally he would take his quill and write complaints to the justice of the peace or to the court of arbitration. All these activities left him without a free moment and even created the impression that he was doing the work of several men. So, Judas , instead of  complaining of idleness, complained that he could not cope with everything he had to do.

           ( The Golovlovs - Sheltikov Sheridan -p.126/27 ) 

                               A Method of Research

     " look here, my friend, I need to know how many potatoes Russia can produce in a year, I would like you to make detailed estimate ." 

     Do you think the official would be dismayed  by such a request, or give so much as a thought to the method he might use to compute the figures? Oh, no. He would proceed quite simply. He'd draw a map of Russia, divide it into perfectly equal squares, calculate the area of each square, then walk over to the nearest grocery store and inquire how many seed potatoes are planted per acre and how many are harvested on the average from each acre. Finally with the help of God and of the four basic operation of arithmetic , he would calculate that, under favourable conditions, so may, And the chances are that this labour would not only satisfy his superior, but would also find its way into volume 102 of some Economic Papers.

                ( The Golovlov - Sheltikov Sheridan - p.128 )

                                            Women

     Many men are afraid of being influenced by women, but as far as my experience goes, this is foolish fear.  It seems to me that men need women, and women need men, mentally as much as physically. For my part, I owe a great deal to women whom I have loved, and without them I would have been far more narrow-minded. 

                 (Autobiography - Bertrand Russell - p.214 ) 

                                         Women-Stealing

     Thus far there had been nothing worse than women-stealing on both sides; but for what happened next  the Greeks , they say, were seriously to blame: for it was the Greeks who were, in a military sense, the aggressors. Abducting young women, in their opinion , is not, indeed a lawful act; but it is stupid after the event to make a fuss about it.The only sensible thing is to take no notice; for it is obvious that no young woman allows herself to be abducted if she does not wish to be. The Asiatics, according to Persians, took the seizure of the woman lightly enough,but not so the Greeks; the Greeks, merely on account of  a girl from Sparta, raised a big army, invaded Asia and destroyed the empire of Priam. 

                       ( The Histories - Herodotus- p.14 )

 

                                   Virginity and Reality 

     He ( King Pheron) was blind for ten years, after which he received an oracle from the city of Buto to the effect that the time of his punishment being now ended, he would recover his sight if he washed his eyes with the urine of a woman who had never lain with any man except her husband. He tried his wife first ,  but without success - he remained as blind as ever; then he tried other women , a great many, one after another, until at last his sight was restored. Then he collected within the wall of a town, now called Red Clod, all the women except the one whose urine had proved efficient, set the place on fire, and burnt them to death town and all.

                    ( The Histories - Herodotus - p.142 )  

                           How To Be A  Virtuous Woman

     ... Every time she opened her mouth about how miserable she was , her father would start lecturing her, telling her that a virtuous woman should suppress her emotions and not desire anything beyond her duty to her husband. It was all right to miss her husband, that was virtuous, but a woman was not supposed to complain. In fact, a good woman was not supposed to have a point of view at all, and if she did, she certainly should not be so brazen as to talk about it. He would quote the Chinese saying, " if you are married to a chicken, obey the chicken; if you are married to a dog, obey the dog.

                          (Wild Swan - Jung Chang - p.45)

 

                                 The Plight of Women 

     " Women are sad. "  With these words her mother usually began her homily. Then she continued: " The cause for this basic sadness is that women allow themselves to dream of faithfulness in love. It is only a dream and dreams are always dangerous. For men cannot be faithful. Their nature forbids it. When a dog sees a rabbit his jaws quiver and his saliva runs. He cannot help it. Similarly when a man sees a young and pretty woman, however he may wish to be faithful, his jaws quiver and his saliva runs. You will be foolish if you allow yourself to be hurt."

     It was true that in her girlhood Moti had dreams of love. "How can I be prevent being hurt? " She asked her mother one day...

     "Try not to love your husband too much" her mother had advised.

      " But is it not my duty to love him as much as I can?" Moti had inquired.

     " I give you my secret advice. " her mother replied. " I know very well that if you allow yourself to love him. you will assuredly be hurt. Read your books, study your music , learn languages , do anything to occupy your time and your mind, but keep from loving your husband too much - or any man."

     " What other man could I love?" she asked in her innocence.

     Her mother had appeared confuse. "Of course there is is no other," she had replied.

                          (Mandela - Pearl S. Bock - pp.22/23 ) 

 

                                         Folly of Women 

     I don't think the female sex is so foolish as to be angry with me for attributing folly to them, seeing that I am Folly, and  a woman myself. If they look at the natter in the right way they must see  that it is entirely due to folly that they are better off than men in many respects. In the first place  they have the gift of beauty which they rightly value above everything else, for it ensures their power to tyrannize  over tyrants themselves. Besides,  that unkempt look , and rough skin, bushy beard and all the marks of old age in a man can come only from the corrupting influence of wisdom, seeing that a woman always has smooth cheeks, gentle voice, soft skin and a look of perpetual youth. Next, what else do women desire in this life but to give maximum pleasure to men? Isn't this the purpose of all their attention to their persons, all that make-up, bathing, hair dressing and all those oinments and perfumes, as well as so many arts of arranging, painting and disguising face , eyes and skin ? Now,does anything count more in winning them men's favour than their folly? There is nothing which men won't permit to women, and for no other return than pleasure, but it's their folly which makes women delight them. No one will deny the truth of this who considers the nonsense a man talks  with a woman and the silly things he does whenever he wants to enjoy the pleasure she gives. 

                    (Praise of Folly- Erasmus -pp.88/89 ) 

 

                           Birth of a New Child

     My mother often used to tell me a variety of things connected with my entry into this world that did not strike me as meriting the importance she attached to them....

     ....there was a great gathering of worthy dames in Mistress NozziereS bed chamber to await my arrival in this vale of tears....

     "Groan away, Madame Noziere, groan all you can" said Madame Caumont, "it will ease the pains."

     Madame Dusuel, not knowing what to do with her daughter Alphonsine, aged seven, had brought her into the room, from which, however, she kept hastily thrusting her lest I should dawn, with unbecoming abruptness, on the view of this very young lady, for that would have been a mostly unseemly occurrence.

     These ladies had well-oiled tongues, it seemed, and cackled away quite in the good old fashion, Madame Caumont, to my mothers great displeasure , kept tellingthe most horrible tales of the sinister effects of the "Evil Eye." She had a friend who, when she was in an interesting condition, met a legless women holding a laundry iron in iron in each hand and begging alms of the passers-by. That friend's child was born without legs. She herself, when she was expecting her daughter Noemi, was frightened by a hare which rushed in between her legs; and, behold, Noemi , was born with pointed ears that waggled..  

     At midnight the pains ceased and matters were at a standstill. It was an anxious time, particularly as my mother had previously a still-born child and nearly lost her life. All the women insisted on giving advice. Madame Mathias, the old servant, was at her wit's end. My father came in every five minutes looking very pale and went out again without a word... During the night the pains came on again, and I made my appearence at fine o'clock in the morning.

    " It'a boy!" said old Fourier. 

     Whereupon all the gossips exclaimed with one accord that they had declared all along that it would be.

                      ( Little Pierre - Anatole France - pp.9/11 )

                 An Alternative to Opium, Drink and Women

     .. Above all,I read , and read seriously. The average Planter's library might contain a varied selection of the prose and poetry of Kipling, but it's chief stand-by in those days was the works of Hubert Wales and James Blyth. I do not know what authors have taken their place today, but to me Hubert Wales was neither lurid nor instructive. I made a rule never to buy a novel, and to the weekly packet of serious literature, which I received from Singapore, I owe my sanity and my escape from the clutches of the Eastern Trinity of opium , drink ad women. All three were to spread the net of their temptations over me, but reading saved me from the worst effects of a combined offensive.

    ( Memoirs of a British Agent - Bruce Lockhart - p.12)

 

                Male Chauvinist Masquerading as a Saint

     He was imbued, moreover, with Pauline doctrine of the subjection of the women to the man and to him it was enough if she kept his house and bore his children and waited on his needs. "The man is head of the women.' Through man only could she approach God. So the scriptures taught. True,it was well if Carie taught some of the women in the churches as far as she was able , but he must have the final examination in the faith and knowledge of all and his must be the final decision, as priest of God, whether or not they ere to come into the congregation.

     When Carie perceived his mind, all her swift, rebel blood boiled. It seemed to her that for the first time she saw this saint of hers that she married for his goodness, as she really was - for all his goodness towards her he was narrow and selfish and arrogant. What -was she not go to God direct because she was a born a woman? Was not her brain swifter, keener, clearer than the brains of most men? Why - was God like that - Andrew's God/ It was as though she had come bearing in her two hands her rich gifts of brain and body, giving them freely and as touchingly sure of appreciation as a child - her gifts had been thrown back at her as useless. And it was her first real and acknowledged contact with Andrew's mind.

     ... However two might strain each other, however barren might be the husks of union between them, however far they dwelt in spirit from each other, the outward bond was not to be broken. Stronger than any bond  of love could ever be, were the bonds of religion and duty.

                ( The Exile - Pearl S . Buck -pp.184/85 )  

 

                              Russian View of Women

     The Moscovite idea of women, derived from Byzantium, had nothing of those romantic medieval western conceptions of gallantry, chivalry and the Court of Love. Instead , a woman was regarded as a silly, helpless child, intellectually void, morally irresponsible and, given the slightest chance, enthusiastically promiscuous. This puritanical idea that an element of evil lurked in all little girls affected their earliest childhood. In good families, children of opposite sexes were never allowed to play together- to preserve the boys from contamination. As they grew older, girls , too , were subject to contamination, and even the most innocent contact between youths and maidens were forbidden. Instead o , to preserve their purity while teaching them prayer, obedience and a few useful skills such as embroidery, daughters were kept under  lock and key. A song described them , "sitting behind thirty locked doors, so that the wind may not ruff their hair, nor the sun burn their cheeks, nor the handsome man entice them. "This they waited, ignorant and undefiled, until the day came to thrust them into the hands of husband....."

     whether or not marriage was desirable state for  a seventeenth  century Russian woman was arguable. But there were some women in Russian Society who would never know. By rank, they were at the very top, the sisters and daughters of the Tsar. By fortune, who can say. None of these  princess , called Tsarevnas,  would ever meet a man, fall in love, marry and have children. Similarly, none would ever be haggled over, marketed, legally raped, beaten or divorced. The barrier was their rank.

     ... When a Tsarevna was ill, the shutters were drawn and the curtains closed to darken the room and hide the patient. If it was necessary to take her pulse or examine her body, it had to be done through a covering of gauze, so that no male fingers would touch the naked female skin. Early in the morning or late at night, the Tsarvenas went to church, hurrying through closed corridors and secret passageways. In cathedrals and chapels, they stood screened behind red silk curtains in a dark part of the choir to avoid the gaze of male eyes... 

        ( Peter the Great - Robert K. Massie - pp. 31 & 35 ) 

 

                            Argentinian Sexuality 

     Machismo - the cult of sexual conquest - was, still is , deeply rooted in the Argentine way of life. Women, legally as well as socially, were regarded as part of a man's material possessions, as wives, virgin daughters, and mistresses - the first to be protected from dishonour, the third to be pursued and used for pleasure. A wife could not get a divorce in Argentina (still she cannot ) and legally both she and her children were considered part of her husband's property. She expected him to be unfaithful. She might not like it. But she put up with it as long as he did not embarrass her by flaunting his girl friend in their own social strata. In wealthy families , he would have his garconneriere ,bachelor rooms, in a discreet block of flats in town. For those who could not afford such luxuries, there were always the amoblados , love hotels which exist in every town and city in Argentina, where rooms are rented by the hour. In the countryside, in the home of the wealthy estancieros, sons  of the family gained their sexual experience with the servant girls or the daughters of the estancia's farm workers. They could not , of course, sleep with a girl from their own class of society. Her virginity was the most prized  family possession of all, to be relinquished only for the price of good marriage.

      For the poor girl on the pampas, virginity was almost certainly a thing of the past by her fourteenth birthday.

                      ( Eva Peron - John Barnes  - p.12 )  

                                  Sexuality in Bali 

     The Balinese attitude sex was different from anything else in Asia and sharply at varience with western practice..

     In their daily tasks Balinese women and girls went naked above the waist and bathed every day in the temple or forest pools or grottos. On the beautiful Koeta beach ... men and women merely dropped their Kains behind them and walked in as they were born. In such a land there were no "sex secrets " kept from children, to whom knowledge came early, naturally and unashamedly . The practice of segregation of women during menstruation and pregnancy as unclean, which was prevalent in  primitive Asian societies and even in parts of India, was unknown in Bali... 

     " once the Dutch sent a new governor here " Karsen told me, " who had kind of prude for a wife. She was shocked by the naked breasts and demanded that her burgomeister forbid it at once. To pacify her he ordered  that women must cover their uppers. The next Sunday when they drove out in their carriage to church hundreds of Balinese women lined the road to wait for them. In each village as carriage drew up, the women lifted their Kains  high above their heads and covered their breasts - but exposed their bare bottoms."

      I laughed appreciatively.

      "  Oh,yes, they have plenty of humor. They made a play about the whole thing. The governor became such a laughing stock the Dutch had to withdraw him. They never tried to enforce his order again."

     ( Journey to the Beginning - Edgar Snow - pp.113/14 )

 

                             Upbringing of Children

     The new-born infant cries, his early  days are spent in crying. He is alternately petted and shaken by way of soothing him; sometimes he is threatened , sometimes beaten, to keep him quiet. We do whatwe want, we submit to his whims or subject him to our own. There is no middle course; he must rule or obey.Thus his earliest ideas are those of the tyrant or the slave. he commands before he can speak, he obeys before he can act, and sometimes he is punished for faults before he is aware of them, or rather before they are committed. Thus early are the seeds of evil passions sown in his young heart. At a later day these are attributed to the nature, and when we have taken pains to make him bad we lament his badness.

     In this way the child passes six or seven years in the hands of women, the victims of his own caprices or theirs, and after they have taught him all sorts of things, when they have burdened his memory with words he cannot understand , or things which are of no use to him, when nature has been stifled by the passions they have implanted in him, this sham article is sent to a tutor. The tutor completes the development of the germ of artificiality which he finds already well grown, he teaches him everything except self-knowledge and self control, the arts of life and happiness. When at length this infant slave and tyrant, crammed with knowledge but empty of sense, feeble alike in mind and body, is flung upon the world, and his helplessness, his pride and his other vices are displayed, we begin to lament the wretchedness and perversity of mankind. We are wrong: this is the creature of our fantasy; the natural man is cast in another mould.

            ( Emile- Jean Jacques Rousseau -pp. 15/16 ) 

                                Arrogance of Elders

     Every now and then, I am lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side and light on skepticism. They  are curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them.They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I am asked follow-up questions. They have never heard of the notion of a "dumb question."

     But when I talk to high school seniors  I find something different. They memorize 'facts." By and large, though, the joy of discovery , the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They have lost much of the wonder, and gained very little skepticism. there are worried about asking 'dumb" questions: they are willing to accept inadequate answers: they don't pose follow-up questions: the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second by second, the approval of their peers. They came to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously  examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in....

     But there is something else: I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the moon round? , the children ask . Why is grass green? What is a dream ? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world's birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: " What did you expect the moon to be, square?" Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before 6-year old. I can't for the life of me understand. What's wrong with admitting that we don't kmow something? Is our self-esteem so fragile?...

     There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, question put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question. 

         (Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagen - pp. 322/23)

                                      Scholarly Tribes

      Some historical teachers of our day deliberately their "seminar" as " laboratories" and , perhaps less consciously  but no less decidedly, restrict the term " original work ' to denote the discovery  or verification of some fact or facts not previously established. At the furthest, the term is extended to cover the interim reports upon such work which are contributed to learned journals or to synthetic histories. There is a strong tendency to depreciate works of historical literature which are created by single minds, and the depreciation becomes the more emphatic the nearer such works approximate to being 'Universal Histories" . For example, H.G. Wells's The Outline of History was received with unmistakable hostility by a number of historical specialists. They criticized severely the errors which they discovered at the points where the writer, in his long journey through time and space, happened to traverse their tiny allotments, They seem not to realize that, in reliving the entire life of mankind as a single imaginative experience, Wells was achieving something which they themselves would hardly have dared to attempt - something, perhaps, of which they had never conceived the possibility. In fact, the purpose and value oh Wells's book seem to have been better appreciated by the general public than by the professional historians of the day. 

            ( A Study of History - Arnold Toynbee -P.32 )

 

                          Methodology of Scholars

     We, intelligent people that we call ourselves, behave almost identically as witness our scholarship deliberation. At first the scholar feels himself terribly unworthy, and begin cautiously starting with the humblest of questions: is it not perhaps from there? Could not such and such a country perhaps derive its name from that corner? or, does this document perhaps not belong to another later period? or, Should we not perhaps understood by this people by this other people? He immediately cites various writers of antiquity and the moment he detects any hint of something or imagines such a hint that he breaks into a trot and feeling emboldened, he now chats as an equal with the writers of antiquity, asking them questions, and even answering on their behalf, entirely forgetting how he began with a timid surmise: it already seems to him that he can see it, the truth, that it is clear- and his deliberation is concluded with the words:" So that it is how it was, that it is how such and such people should not be classified, that it is the angle from which the subject should be viewed." This then the publicly declaimed ex-cathedra for all to hear and the newly-discovered truths set off on its travels round the world, gathering followers and advisors as it goes.

                      (Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol -p.208 )

 

                                        Fate of Forecasts

     No doubt  we put our small measure of dignity at risk attempting to foresee and explain profound changes in the organisation of life and culture that binds it together . Most forecasts are doomed to make silly reading in the fullness of time. And the more drastic the change they envision, the more embarrassingly  wrong they tend to be. The world does not end. The Ozone doesn't vanish> The coming Ice Age dissolves into global warming. Notwithstanding all the alarms to the contrary, there is still oil in the tank...

     Most attempts to "unveil" the future soon turn our to be comic. even where self-interest provides a strong incentive to clear thinking, forward vision is often myopic. In 1903, the Mercedes company said that there would never be as many as million automobiles worlwide. The reason was that it was implausible that as many as 1 million artisans worldwide would be trainable as chauffeuers.

     Recognizing this should stop our mouths. It does not. We are not afraid to stand in line for a due share of ridicule. Ifwe mistake matters greatly, future generations may laugh as heartily as they please, presuming anyone remembers what we said. To dare a thought is to risk being wrong.We are hardly so stiff and useless that we are afraid to  err. Far from it. We would rather venture thoughts that might prove useful to you than suppress them out of apprehension that they might prove overblown or embarrassing in retrospect.

( The Sovereign Individual - J.P. Davidson & W. Rees-Mogg - pp. 33/34 ) 

                                           Hypocrisy

     Judas was not a hypocrite of the Tartuffe-type nor was he like my contemporary French bourgeois who sings like a nightingale  on the subject of social justice. No,  if he was a hypocrite he was one of the pure Russian brand, that is, a man deprived of any moral scale of values, a man without any idea of the truth beyond what's found in copybook adages. He was boundlessly ignorant, petty, false, an inevitable babbler; on top of all this, he was terrified of the devil. These are at he negative traits that offer no solid ground for positive hypocrisy.

     In France, hypocrisy is a result of upbringing. It is, we may say, a part of good manners, and almost always has a clearly political or social colouring. There are hypocrites in religion, social morality, property, family, patriotism and what not.Recently, there have even appeared hypocrites preaching stability.

     This type of hypocrisy does not qualify as conviction, but it is still a banner around which rally people who find it rewarding to advocate hypocritically one particular set of ideas rather than another. And they are consciously hypocritical. A French bourgeois visualizes the world as a huge                on which one hypocrite gives his cue to another. Hypocrisy is an inducement to decency, to decorum, to elegant appearances, most important, it is a bridle restraining people.  It isn't, of course, supposed to restrain those who practice it at the top of the social cauldron but only those crawling around  at the bottom of it.  Hypocrisy keeps passions under control, making their indulgence the privilege of tiny minority. As long as the release of passion is confound to a small, tightly knit people group,it is not dangerous. In fact, it is even useful in supporting and nourishing the tradition of graceful living.

             The Golovlovs - Sheltikov Sheridan - pp.124/25)

                                              Prejudices

     Prejudice is an irrational opinion. Thus throughout the world all sorts of opinions are installed into children before they are able to use judgement.

     There are universal and necessary prejudices which constitute virtue itself. In all countries children are taught to acknowledge a god who rewards and avenges; to respect and love their fathers and mothers; to regard theft as a crime, selfish lying as a vice,before they can imagine what is a vice and a virtue.

     There are therefore very good prejudices; they are those ratified by the judgement when one is able to reason.

     Feeling is not mere prejudice, it is something much stronger. A mother does not love her son because she has been told that she must love him; she happily cherishes him despite herself. It is not out of prejudice that you run to help an unknown child about to fall into a precipice or to be devoured by an animal.

     But it is out of prejudice that you respect a man dressed in a certain way, who behave solemnly and talks in the same way. Your parents told you should bow to this man. You respect him before you know whether he deesrves your respect. You grow in age and knowledge. You perceive that this man is a charlatan eaten up with pride, selfishness and guile. You despise what you revered and prejudice yield to judgement. Out of prejudice you believed the fables which your childhood was deluded. You were told that the Titans made war on the gods and that Venus was in love with Adonis. When one is twelve one takes these fables for truths, at twenty-one regards them as ingenious allegories... 

     Most histories have been believed without investigation, and this credulity is a prejudice. Fabious Pictor tells us that several centuries before his time a vestal going to draw water in her pitcher, in the ton of Elba, was raped. that she gave birth to Romulus and Remus, that they were suckled by a she-wolf, etc. The Roman people believed this fable. They did not inquie whether there had been vestals in Latium at that time, whether it was credible that the daughter of a king should leave her  convent with her pitcher, whether it was probable that a she-wolf should suckle two children instead of eating them. The prejudice established itself.

     A monk wrote that Clovis, being in great danger at the battle of Tolbiac, vowed to become a Christian if he got through it safely. But it is natural to address oneself to an alien god at such a time?Is it not then that the religion in which one was born acts most powerfully? What Christian in a battle against the Turks,would not address himself to the Holy virgin rather than to Mohammed?... Prejudice believed all the anecdotes of this kind. Those who know human nature are well aware that the usurper Clovis and the usurper Rolon or Rol became Christians in order more easily to control the Christians, just as the Turkish usurpers became Moslems more easily to control the Moslems.

                (Philosophical Dictionary - Voltaire - p.345 ) 

 

                                The Most Ancient Race 

     The Egyptians before the reign of Psammetichus used to think that of all races in the world they were the most ancients; Psammetichus, however, when he came to the throne, took it into his head to settle this question of priority, and ever since his time the Egyptians have believed that the Phrygians surpass them in antiquity and that they themselves come second. Psammetichus, finding that mere inquire failed to reveal which was the original race of mankind, devised an ingenious method of determining the matter. He took at random, from an ordinary family, two newly born infants and gave them to a shepherd to be brought up among his flock, under strict orders that no one should utter a word in their presence. They were to be kept by themselves in a lonely cottage, and the shepherd was to bring in goats from time to time, to see that the babies had enough milk to drink, and to look after them in any other way that was necessary. All these arrangements were made by Psammetichus because he wished to find out what word the children would first utter, once they had grown out of their meaningless baby talk. The plan succeeded: two years later the shepherd, who during that time had done everything he had been told to do, happen one day to open the door of the cottage and go in, when both children, running up to him with hands outstretched, pronounced the word "becos.' the first time this occurred the shepherd made no mention of it;  But later when he found that every time he visited the children to attend to their needs, the same word was constantly repeated by them, he informed his master, Psammetichus  ordered the children to be brought to him, and when he himself heard them say 'becos' he determined to find out to what language the word belonged. His inquiries revealed that it was Phrygian for 'bread' , and in consideration of this the Egyptians yielded their claims  and admitted the superior antiquity of the Phrygians. 

                    ( The Histories - Herodotus _ pp.102/03 )

 

                          Slaves sans the Name of Slaves

     Well,it was a curious country, and full of interest. And the peple! They are the quaintest and simplest and trustworthy race - why, they were nothing but rabbits. It was pitiful  for a person born in a wholesome atmosphere to listen to their humble and heavy outpourings of loyalty toward their king and church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honour king and church and noble, than a slave has to love and honour the lash,or a dog has to love and honour the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me any kind of loyalty, however modified, any kind of aristocracy, however pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of  arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself and don't believe it when somebody else tells you.It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and seventh rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies - a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions.

     The most of King Arthur's British nation were slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name and wore the iron collar on their necks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; they imagined themselves men freemen, and called themselves so. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object and one only: to grovel before king and church and noble;to slave for them, sweat blood for them; starve that they might be fed; work that they might play; drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of the world.And for all this the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honour.

     Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to  observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should have proposed to deliver them by reasoned argument would have had a long contract on his hands. For instance, those who have inherited the idea that all men without title and long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts or requirements  or hadn't, were creations of no more consideration than so many animals, bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the idea that human daws who can consent to masquerade in the peacock-shams of inherited dignities and unearned titles, are of no good but to be laughed at.... The animal is not reverent, neither was I; I was not even respected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title; and so in the king's and noble's eyes i was mere dirt;the people regarded me with wonder and awe, but there was no reverence mixed with it; through the force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of anything being entitled to that, except pedigree and leadership. there you see the hand of that awful power, the Roman Catholic Church. in two or three countries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms. Before the day of the church's supremacy in the world men were men, and held their heads up, and had a man's pride and spirit and independence; and what of greatness and position a person got, he got mainly by achievement, not by birth. But the church came to the front, with axe to grind; and she was wise, subtle and knew more than one way to skin a cat - or a nation; she invented "divine right of kings" and proposed it all around, brick by brick, with the beautitudes - wrenching them  from their good purpose to make them fortify an evil one; she preached ( to the commoner ) humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of sacrifice; she preached (to the commoner ) meekness under insult; preached ( still to the commoner, always to the commoner ) patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance under oppression; and she introduced heritable ranksand aristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations of the earth to bow down to them and worship them. Even down to my  birth century that poison was still in the blood of Chritendom, and the best of English commoners was still content to see his inferiors impudently continuing to hold a number of positions, such as lordships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his country did not allow him to aspire; in fact he was not merely contended with this strange condition of things , he was even able to persuade himself that he was proud of it. It seems to show that there is not anything you can't stand, if you are born and bred to it. Of course,that taint, that reverence for rank and title,  had been in our American blood, too - I know that; but when I left America it had disappeared  - at least, to all intents and purposes. the remnants of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. When  a desease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairly  be said to be out of the system.  

( A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain -p. 87/90 )

                        The Burden of Being a King

     The following description  of Mikados ( Kings of  Japan) was written about two hundred years ago.

     "Even to this day the princes descended of this family, more particularly those who sit on the throne, are looked upon as persons most holy in themselves, and as Popes by birth. And, in orderto preserve these advantageous notions in the minds of their subjects, they are obliged to take an uncommon care of theirsacred persons, and to do such things, which, examined according to the customs of other nations, would be thought ridiculous and impertinent. It will not be improper to  give a few instances of it. He thinks that  it would be very prejudicial to his dignity and holiness to touch the ground with his feet; for this reason, when he intends to go anywhere, he must be  carried thither on men's shoulders. Much less will they suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his head. There is such a holiness ascribed to all parts of his body that he dares to cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails. However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the night when he is asleep:because, they say, that which is taken from his body at that time, hath been stolen from him, and that such a theft doth not prejudice his holiness or dignity.  In ancient times, he was obliged  to sit on the throne for some hours every morning, with the imperial crown on his head, but to sit altogether  like a statue, without stirring either hands or feet, head or eyes, nor indeed any part  of his body, because, by this means, it was thought that he could preserve peace and tranquility in his empire; for if, unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other , or if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was apprehended that war, famine, fire, or some other great misfortune was near at hand to desolate the country,But it having been afterwords discovered, that the imperial crown was the palladium, which by its immobility could preserve peace in the empire, it was thought expedient to deliver his imperial person, consecrated only to idleness and pleasures, from his burdensome  duty, and therefore the crown is at present place on the throne for  some hours every morning. His victuals must be dressed every time in new pots, and served at table in new dishes; both are very clean and neat , but made only of common clay; that without any considerable expense they may be laid aside, or broke, after they have served once. They are generally broke, for fear they should come into the hands of laymen, for they believe religiously, that if any layman should presume to eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would swell and inflame his mouth and throat. The like ill effect is  dreaded from the Dairi's sacred habit... To the same effect an earlier account of Mikado says : " It was considered as shameful degradation for him even to touch the ground with his foot. The sun and moon were not even permitted to shine over his head. None of the superfluities of the body were ever taken from him, neither his hair, his beard, nor his nails were cut. Whatever he ate was dressed in new vessels. "

           ( The Golden Bough - J.G. Frazer- pp.167/68)

                                            Creation 

     In the face of these truths, some people who knoe nothing of matter believe that nature without the guidance of the gods  could not bring round the changing seasons in such perfect conformity to human need, creating the crops and those other blessings that mortals are led to enjoy by the guide of life,  divine pleasure, whichcoaxes them through the arts of Venus to reproduce their kind, lest the human race should perish. Obviously, in imagining that the gods establishedeverything for the sake of men, they have stumbled in all respects far from the path of truth. Even if I knew nothing of the atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phinomena themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power; it is so full of imperfections. 

         ( On the Nature of the Universe - Lucretius - p.65 )

                                      Human Nature

      One thing was clear, and that concerned human nature:a person might be prudent, sagacious and sensible in all matters concerning other people, but not himself, how judicious, how decisive the advise he gives others in difficulties. " What a quick thinker1" cries the crowd. " What a strong character!' But let some disaster befall this quick thinker and may he find himself in difficulties, and you will wonder what happened to his character, the pillar of strength is gone completely and instead there is a wretched little coward, a small, weakchild, or simply a nannygoat, as Nzdryov would say.

 

                          (Dead Souls  - Nikolai Gogol - p.230) 

     Ever since the world has existed and men have killed one another, a man has never committed such a crime against his fellow men without consoling himself with the same idea. That idea is le bien publique , the supposed public good of others.

     To a man not swayed by passion, this good never seems certain; but a manwho has committed such a crime always knows positively where that public good lives.

                     (War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy - p.963 )

                                              Immortality

     Every artist wants to live for ever. Though he creates primarily because he must, still he expects his creation to win immortality for him. There are many paths to this heaven, all of them difficult; the most certain of them is when men can say - "this is the phrase that launched a thousand ships." It does not matter if the phrase is misinterpreted, torn from its context, made to do work for which it was never intended. The great thing is to crystalize the beliefs and delusions of a generation in a single sentence.  Rousseau would have been appaled by the terror which was conducted in the name of the social contract; Darwin was bewildered by the political doctrines which were build around the survival of the fittest; Marx would have railed against the dictatorship of the proletariat as it is practiced in Russia. for that matter, Jesus Christ would have been dismayed by the doctrines and, still more, the practice of the christian churches. every great movement crucifies its founder;  and in doing so gives him immortality. 

                    ( Europe - grandeur and Decline - p.194 )

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     Men live after their own deaths in the minds of others. Samuel Butler thought that this was the only form of immortality. For most men it is a wasting asset. Memories fade; causes change. Who now cares what Gladstone said in 1868?  Occasionally  the historian acts as a ressurection-man. He discovers that some forgotten figure was the real survivor of his country  maker of empire. Our nineteenth century prime ministers, for instance , are being pushed aside; and their fame is being usurped by civil servants, hitherto obscure. There is another, and more lasting, way to survival. The historical figure is turned into a symbol. the man becomes a myth; and though his real deeds are forgotten, he is mobilized in defense of some cause which might have surprised him; the founders of the great religions have all enjoyed this fate. Millions of men repeat their names while knowing nothing of the details of their lives. The carpenter's son of Galilee blesses the grandeurs of the Papacy; And the tyranny of the Politburo is carried out in the name of a crabbed German scholar. 

 ( Europe - Grandeur and Declin- A.J. P. Taylor - p.22 )

 

                             A little Bit of Immortality

     Ian often asked why it is I write in German; nowhere am I worse read than in the Fatherland. But who knows, after all, whether I even wish to be read today ? To create things upon which times tries its teeth in vain; in form and in substance   to strive after a little mortality - I have never been modest enough to demand less of myself, The aphorism, the apophthegm, in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book- what everyone else does not  say in a book... I have given mankind the profoundest book it possessses, my Zarathustra .

                        ( Twilight of the Idol - Nietzsche )

                 Key to Success : Information or people ?

     People who visit my office at Chrysler are often surprised that I don't have a computer terminal on my desk. May be  they forget that everything that comes out of a computer, somebody has to put in. The biggest problem facing American business today is that most managers have too much information. It dazzles them, and they don't know what to do with it all. The key to success is not information . It's people.

                   (an Autobiography -Lee Iaccocca p.60 )

                                             The People

     I meditated suicide cooly, as a Greek philosopher might.  My regret was that there were too many dependents upon me for food and shelter for me to quit living. But that was sheer  morality.

     What really saved me was the one remaining illusion - The PEOPLE.

     The things that I had fought for burned my midnight oil for, had failed me. Success  - I despised it.  Recognition - it was dead ashes. Society men and women above the ruck and muck of waterfront and the forcastle. I was appalled by their unlovely mental mediocrity. Love of women -it was like the rest. Money - I could sleep in only one bed at a time, and of what worth was an incme of a hundred porter-houses  a day when I could eat only one? Art, culture - in the face of the iron facts of biology, such things were ridiculous, the exponents of such things only the more ridiculous.

     From foregoing it can be seen how very sick I was. I was born a fighter. The things I have fought for had proved not worth the fight. remained PEOPLE. My fight was finished, yet something was left still to fight for - the PEOPLE.

     But the PEOPLE saved me. By the PEOPLE I Was handcuffed to life. There was still one fight left in me, and there was the the thing for which to fight. I threw all  precautions to the winds., threw myself with fiercer zeal in the fight for socialism. 

                         (Martin Eden -Jack London -p.)

 

                ***********************************

     The people needs a chief, made resplendent by fame and victory; it does not want theories and governments , the phrases and oratory of the ideologues. Give the masses a toy! They will play with it, and allow themselves to be led - provided always that the leader is adroit enough to hide his true aims!

                        (Napoleon - Emil Ludwig - p.98 )

                   The Advantage of Being Unintelligent

... I am discovering late in life that not to understand is a great faculty. It sometimes help you to the conquest of the world. If Napoleon had been as intelligent as Spinoza he would have lived in a garret and written four books.

    (Monsieur Bergeret in Paris - Anatole France  - p.180 )

                               Playing with Grand Ideas

     And when you say that I sacrifice the individual to the State, the living man to an abstraction , I am, on the contrary, subordinating the abstraction to reality, to the State which I suppress by identifying it with the activities of the whole social organism,.

     Even were my republic never to exist, I should be glad that I had played with the idea of it. It is permissable to build in utopia. august Comte himself, who flattered himself that he built only on the data of positive science , placed Campanella in the calander of great men.

     The dream of philosophers have in all ages raised up men of action who have set to work to realize those dreams. Our thought creates the future.Statesmen work on the plan which we leave behind us. No my child, I am not building in Utopia. My dream, which is in no way belongs to me, but is, at this very moment, the dream of thousand upon thosands of souls, is true and prophetic.

    ( Monsieur Bergeret in Paris - Anatole France- pp.180/81 )

                                       Modern Man

     The modern man, although he believes profoundly in the wisdom of his period, must be presumed to be very modest about his personal powers. His highest hope is to think first what is about to be thought, to say what is about to be said, and to feel what is about to be felt; he has no wish to think better thoughts than his neighbours, to say things showing more insight, or to have emotions which are not those of some fashionable group, but only to be slightly ahead of others in point of time. Quite deliberately he suppresses what is individual in himself, for the sake of the admiration of the herd. A mentally solitary life, such as that of a Copernicus, or Spinoza, or Milton after the restoration, seems pointless, according to modern standards...

     The money rewards and widespread through ephemeral fame which those agencies have made possible places temptations in the way of able men which are difficult to resist. To be pointed out, admired, mentioned constantly in the press, and offered easy ways of earning much money is highly agreeable; and when all this is open to a man,he finds it difficult to go on doing the work that he himself thinks best and is inclined to subordinate his judgement to the general opinion.

     Various other factors contribute to this result. One of these is rapidity of progress which has made it difficult to do work which will not soon be superseded. Newton lasted Einstein. Einstein is already regarded by many as antiquated. Hardly any man of science, nowadays, sits down to write a great work, because he knoes that, while he is writing it, others will discover new things that will make it obsolete before it appears...

         (Unpopular Essays - Bertrand Russell - pp.78/79) 

 

                                                Divorce

     The desire of both parties for divorce is an indication that divorce is necessary. It is not the business of the court to establish the fact that this mutual desire exist; the court has simply to pronounce the divorce  when the desire exists.

                        (Napoleon - Emil Ludwig -p.160 ) 

         A Queer Way of Becoming a Citizen of the World

     Any Triestino over say, the age of thiry-five, has lived a remarkably varied existence from the point of view of nationality. He was born a subject of the old austro- Hungarian monarchy if he saw the light of day before 1918. He thenbecame an Italian for a little over twenty years. But his native city was occupied by the Germans towards the end of world war ii, and then formally annexed by Germany, so he was under the German sovereignity  for a time. In1945 he was taken over by the Yugoslavs for an angry interlude, and then rescued by New Zealanders. Now if he lives in the British American zone of the newly constituted Free territory of Trieste, he is ruled, in the last analysis by the security council of the United Nations; if he lives in the yugoslav zone he has become to all practical intent a Yugoslav- even though ethnically he has been an Italian all along.

              ( Behind the Curtain - John Gunther - p.18) 

 

                                    Death and Immortality

     ....To anyone who listened to us were of course prepared to maintain that the death was the necessary outcome of life, that everyone owes nature a death and must expect to pay the death, in short that death was natural, undesirable  and unavoidable. In reality, however, we were accustomed to behave as if it were  otherwise. we showed an unmistakable tendency to put death on one side, to eliminate it from life. We tried  to hush it up; indeed we even have a saying (in German ) : to think of something as though it were death. That is, as though it were our own death, of course. It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death: and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators. Hence the psychoanalytic school could venture on the assertion that at bottom no one believes in his own death, or to put the same thing another way, that in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.

                          (Sigmund Freud - Vol .12 - p. 77 )

 

                                    Funeral Orations

     The man who knows the facts and loves the dead may well think that an oration tells less than what he knows and what he would like to hear: others who do not know so much may feel envy for the dead, and the orator over praises them, when he speaks of the exploits that are beyond their own capacities. Praise of other people is tolerable only up to a certain point, the point where one still believes that the one could do oneself some of the things one is hearing about. Once you get beyond this point, you will find people becoming jealoua and incredulous.

             (The Peloponnesian War - Thucydides -p.116 ) 

                 A General's Attitude Towards Death

     He (the General ) always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard. He had fought all his wars in the front lines, without suffering a scratch, and he had moved through enemy fire with such thoughtless serinity that even his officers accepted the easy explanation that he believed himself invulnerable. He had emerged unharmed from every assasinatin plot against him, and on several occasions his life had been saved because he was not sleeping in his own bed. He did not use an escort, and he ate and drank with no concern for what was offered him or where. only Manuela knew that his disinterest was not lack of awareness or fayalism, but rather the melancholy certainty that he would die in his bed, poor and naked and without consolation of public gratitude.

 ( The General in His Labyrinth- Gabriel Garcia Marquez-p.8)

                         England - the "Elected Nation"

     We should recall there was a time when England like Germany in the twentieth century, believed itself to be an 'elected' nation.In John Foxe's sixteenth century polemical Protestant tract, The Book of Martyrs , England is specifically designated as an 'elect' nation under a godly queen singled out by god as an instrument of divine providence. Elizabeth ordered  the work to be placed alongside the Bible in every church in the land. our pretensions have since diminished, but have by no means vanished : in recent decades our prime ministers have deliberately corroborates the nation's grandiose self-image. Alec Douglas Homes East of Suez defense policy was matched by Harold Wilson's daydream that our frontier was on the Himalayas. Wilson's 1964 proclamation 'we are a word power', and a " world influence or we are nothing " was echoed in the Conservative's 1987 election slogan: 'Britain is great again', while Thatcher trumpeted to the electorate that ' This is no ordinary country.' At the Conservative Party Conference in 1992, Major's grudging acknowledgement of Britain's changing position expressed in his commitment to the Mastricht  Treaty, was yet again camouflaged under tired, moth-eaten,patriotic garb leaving the Conference delegates free to sing "Land of Hope and Glory '  and retain their inner fantasy that still the sun never sets upon the empire.

               (Wotan - My Enemy - Leo Abse - pp.67/68 )

 

                                          Nationalism 

     Nationalism, as the story is generally told, begins as sleepin beauty and end as Frankenstein's monster. The nation- and our model here is Germany - was awakened to her destiny , not by one handsome prince, but by a variety of distinguished servitors. Romantic poets like Heine made the pulse race.Philosophers like Harder or Fitche explained who the maiden was and why she had been so long asleep. Philologists like the brothers Grimm explored the purity of her languages and bathed in the unselfconscious wisdom of her folktales. Preachers like Schleiermacher gave her a divine blessing. As for the politician , like Bismark or Cavour, they were as usual found to be doing the right thing for the wrong reason. And why had Sleeping  Beauty been sleeping? She had been put to sleep, these  servitors explained, by wicked kings and self-seeking aristocrats. If, however, we remembered back to the barbarian tribes of Roman times, the true Germany was recognisable in Tacitus' description  of her lusty infant vittues. Would Sleepng Beauty live happily ever afterwards. Yes, indeed, but only after these wicked influences had been destroyed inthe struggle now approaching. Yet  in the course of that struggle, Sleeping Beauty began to develop some unlovely characteristic. On close inspection, it transpired that she was in fact partly composed of lump of flesh torn from other bodies politic.

                      (Nationalism-K.R. Minogue- pp.7/8)

 

                                              Collectivism 

  ".. In my republic there will be no gain, no wages, and all will belong to each ."

     "papa, that's collectivism" said pauline quietly.

     " The most precious gifts' replied Monsieur Bergeret, ' are common to all men and have always been so. Air and light are the common property of all that breathes and sees the light of day. After secular labour of egoism and avarice, in spite of the violent efforts of individuals to seize and keep wealth, the individual possessions enjoyed by the wealthiest among us are little when compared  with those that belong without distinction to mankind in general. And even in our society do you not notice that the most beautiful and splendid possessions , such as roads, rivers, forests, which were once ryal, libraries and museums, belong to all? not a single rich man has a greater claim than I do to an old oak-tree at Fontainbbleau or a picture in the Louvre. And they are more mine than the rich man's, if I canappreciate them better. Collective property, dreaded like some remote monster, is already among us in a thousand familiar forms...

  (Monsieur  Bergeret In Paris - Anatole France - pp.178/79 )

 

                           Hitler's Way of Reading books

     ... He (Hitler )had no feeling for literature at all, or interest in books for their own sake, but regarded them solely as a source from which he could extract material that fitted in with views he already held. Much of his reading appears to have been "popularized" editions of books. In these he found many questions from original works which he retained and quoted in turn as if it were these he had read. He had a remarkable memory, particularly for facts and figures. The dimansions of buildings, the specifications of ornaments, which he used to confound experts and impress the uncritical. At most historians have come to recognise, it is a mistake to underestimate the power of Hitler's mind and of the mental system which he put together from the material he picked up from his reading and experience. But everything he ever said or wrote reveals that his mind lacked not only humanity but the capacity for critical appreciation, for objectivity and reason in the assimilation of knowledge , which have traditionally been seen as the hallmark of an educated man, and which Hitler openly despised.

     As in the case of social democracy and Marxism, Hitler claims to have turned to books for enlightenment about the Jews.  In this case we have the specific statement that the  'books' were some anti-semitic pamphlets which he bought for a few pence, and magazines like Ostara. This was published  by a defrocked monk calling himself Lanz von Liebenfels, and was dedicated, under the sign of Swastika, 'to the practical application of anthropological research for the purpose of preserving the European master race from destruction by maintenance of racial purity.'

               (Hitler and Stalin - Alan Bullock -p.24 ) 

                         Hitler's  Method of Making Speeches

     ... Hitler sought to convince his audience of the sincerity and strength of his own emotions. 'Men believe' Nietzche wrote, inthe truth of all that is seen to be strongly believed inn. Hitler frequently gave the impression of being so carried away by what he said as to be out of control, but learned the orator's and actor's art of stopping short of incoherence, and of varying the effect by dropping his voice, by employing sarcasm, or by switching from bitter denunciation of the 'criminals who had betrayed Germany to a glowing declaration of his faith in her capacity to rise again in renewed strength. 

     In speeches which often lasted two hours or more, he did not make the mistake of haranguing his listners all the time. He could make them laugh with his mimicry and win their approval by the quick-wittedness with which he answered hecklers. He spent hours practicing his gestures and facial expressions in front of a mirror, and studying the shots which the photographer heirich hoffman took when he was speaking, in order to select those which were most effective, eliminating the rest.

           ( Hitler and Stalin - Alan Bullock - pp.79/80 )

                         Germany's Self-Sacrifice Syndrome

     Graf Hermann Keyserling, the philosophically-minded East Prussian aristocrat, in 1933, when seeking to explain the electoral success of Hitler, succintly identified Germany's self-sacrifice syndrome  and made a tragically accurate prognosis of where Hitler was leading the nation:

 "Hitler is emphatically the suicidal type, one who, in seeking death, embodies a fundamental trait of the German nation, which has always been in love with death, and for whom Niebelungennot is a constantly recurring fundamental experience. Only in this situation do the Germans feel entirely German: they admire and desire death without a purpose, self-sacrifice. And they sense that through Hitler they are once more being led towards grandiose destruction, towards another  Niebelungennot ; that is what fascinates them about him. He is fulfilling their deepest longing. The French or the English want victory, the Germans always only want to die.

                    (Wotan , My Enemy - Leo Abse - p.47 )

                    The Importance of Being an American

     "did I not say the crocodiles are no longer to be fed? I wish them to die "

     " Highness, you did " the man replied,  "but if they are not fed they will not die.They will eat our children. They will even snatch our women- while the bathe and wash clothes... "

     Jagath continued to be impatient. " We must be rid of these monsters before the hotel is opened to guests. One American eaten and it will make such a noise around the world that we shall be ruined.

     "Yes, Highness," the man agreed peaceably. No more was said, but Jagath knew nothing would be done unless he himself shot the old and sacred crocodiles. Yet he , too, would do nothing, and knew he would not, until compelled by some mischance. Meanwhile the crocodiles would be fed and he knew that, too, with a sort of despair. In the midst of change, there was something unchanging and unchangeable in himselfas well asin his people...

                 ( Mandala - Pearl S. Buck -p.105 )

                                            Italians

     What happened to Italy is what usually happens to old ladies who were once famous beauties. Just as they relinquish only reluctantly the gestures, curls, witticisms and fashions of their sunset years, Italy still clings to the manners and ideals of the two centuries which followed the coranation of Charles v.

                     ( The Italians -Luigi Berzini - p.299)

 

                                    A french Monopoly 

     The French have no monopoly on intellectual pretensions, or on muddled thinking. They may not even be more likely than other people to combine the two. There is, however, something special about the way the French political class discuss economics. In no other advanced country is the elite so willing to let fine phrases overrule hard thinking, to reject the lessons of experience in favour of delusions of grandeur.

         ( the  Accidental Theorist - Paul Krugman - p. 35 )

 

                           Englishman and principles 

      Napoleon; ..... No Englishman is too low to have scruples. No Englishman is high enough to be free from tyranny. But every Englishman born with a certain miraculous power that makes himself master of the world. When he wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there comes in to his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants. Then he becomes iresisteble. Like the aristocrat, he does what he pleases him and grab what he covets; like the shopkeeper, he pursues his purpose with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it colonisation. When he wants a new market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the Gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary; he flies to arms in defense of  Christianity; fight for it; conquers for it; and takes the market as a reward from heaven. In Defense of his island shores, he puts a chaplain on board  his ship; nails a flag with a cross on  it to his top gallant mast; and sails to ends of the earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas with  him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment he touches British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age to work under the las in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He makes two revolutions and then declares war on our one in the name of law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on royal principles.

(The Man Of Destiny- Play Pleasant-Bernard Shaw -pp.205/06)

                          American Tolerance of Criticism

      It is natural enough that Americans should resent it when Englishmen in America criticise , and the retort is obvious: " If you don't like the country why don't you go away?" They don't make it; yhey brood in dudgeon. But what is that when they criticise England, and you don't take offense, but are quite likely to agree with them, they ascribe it to your conceit. They take it as an affront, for they think you don't care. And you don't.

        ( A Writer's Notebook- Somerset Maugham - p. 302 )

                           Some American Delusions

     1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country

     2) That American Coffee is good

     3)That Americans are business-like

     4)That Americans are highly-sexed than others 

     Of all the hokum with which this country is riddled the  most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

                                         ( ibid - p. 296 )

 

                                      American Housing

     But the houses of our country are a revelation of our variety. No man knows what an American will construct when he is able to afford his own house. He pays no heed to history or landscape. On the contrary, he behaves as though he were Adam in some Eden of his own.

              ( My Several Worlds - Pearl S. Buck - p.46 ) 

                                              Bengalis

     Encircled by this mass of migrants are the Bengalis, the only native of this strangely beloved kalkatar. Theses are the Basus, the Boses, the Mithras, the Sens< the Duttas, the Chowdhurys, the Chakrabarthys, the Roys, the Mujumdars, theBenerjees, the Chattergees and the Mukharjees of the city; orvariations of these names, for there are thirty-0ne ways of rendering Chakrabarthys, ranging from Chakrabutty to Chakervertty, and there are fourteen forms of Mukharjee, eleven of Banerjee, eight of Chatterjee. The Bengalis have distinctive personal habits, like a Bengali way of sitting, which consists of resting on your left kip and left hand with one leg drawn up, unlike a Bihar, who simply crosses and sits on his heels. They have their own New Year's Day, which is April, whentheir astrologers take counsel and advise that in 1377 (which is also 1970 ) life in Calcutta will be eventful and unpleasant because Saturn is in an unfavourable position. They have Bengali way of declaiming, either in theatre or in politics, a rhetorcal style of pumping out words andphrases on a rising intonation to a final explosion, which mesmorizes  in the theatre, but which can make a Communist Party meeting sond alarmingly like a Nuremburg rally. 

                  (Calcutta - Geoffrey Moorhouse - p.186 )

 

                                    Japanese People 

     Extremes beget opposite extremes. This has been especially true of race. Examples of two extremes and a middle view will make this matter clear. Japan ranks with Germany as a country temporarily obsessed by the "racist" point of view. Compulsory textbooks for little children contain statements which may be paraphrased thus:

      Japan is  the best of all countries. It is the central country of the world. Its soil, its climate, its location and its vegetation surpass those of all other lands. Its people are descended from the gods. Their strength  ,wisdom, and ability are unrivaled.

      Such claims are  bolstered by statements like the following by Huogoro Sakurai. a member of the Japanese Diet.

     "The question is whether the Yamato (Japanese ) race is of superior bred.Dr.Konchi Tanaka ... in the tokyo University if Science and Literature says 'yes.' He has dealt a blow to the complacent sense of superiority among the Europeans and Americans that the ;yellow race is inferior  to thw white race by publishing the result ofg his statistical research showing that the Yamato race is the finest race in the world. This ,too, shows the importance of keepig pure by preventing any intermarriage with the Chinese. 

 (Mainspring of Civilisation -Ellsworth  Huntigton - p.)

 

            The Most Beautiful  Experience: MYSTERIOUS 

     The most beautifulexperience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel , is as good as dead , and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that endangered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty which only in their  most primitive forms are accessible to our minds - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity: in this sense, and in this sense only I am deeply a religious man. I cannot conceive of God, who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a  will of the kind that experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive  of an individual that survives  his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoisn, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it even so tiny , of the REason that manifest itself in nature.

              (Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein - p. 11 )

 

                                          Vindictiveness 

     The quiet one was replaced by a man who was vicious martinet.His name was Van Rensburg.His reputation preceded him, for his name was a byword among prisoners for brutality.

     Van Rosenburg was a big, clumsy, brutish fellow who did not speak but shouted. During his first day on his job , we nticed he had a small Swasthika tatooed on his wrist. But he did not need this offensive symbol to prove his cruelty. His job was to make our lives as wretched as possible, but he pursued that goal with great enthusiasm.

     Each day over the next few months, Van Rosenburg would change one of us for insubordination or malingering. Each morning, he and the other warders would discuss who would be charged that afternoon. It was a policy of selective intimidation, and the  decision on who would be charged was taken regardless of how hard that prisoner had worked that day.

     Van Rosenburg was vindictive in large ways and small. When our lunch arrived at the quarry and we would sit down to eat, Van rosenburg would inevitably choose that  moment to urinate next to our food. I suppose, we should have been grateful that he didn't urinate directly on our food....

      ( Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela - pp.513/15 ) 

                                             Optimism

     I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed towards the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was solely tested, but I would not  and could not give myself up to despair. That way lay defeat and death.

           ( Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela- p.464 )

                                               Leadership

     The final requirement of effective leadership is to earn trust. Otherwise there won't be any followers - and the only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. To trust a leader it is not necessary to like him, nor is it necessary to agree with him. Trust the conviction that the leader means what he says. It is a belief in something very old fashioned called " integrity ". A leader's action and a leader's professional beliefs must be congruent , or at least compatible.

           (Managing for the Future- Peter Drucker .p.122 )

                 ************************************

     As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be known for years to come. there are victories whose glory lies only in the fact that they are known to those who win them. This particularly is true of prison, where you must find consolation in being true to your ideals, even if no one else knows of it. 

          ( Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela - p.464 )

                                            Leadership

     Indeed, charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change. 

     The foundation of effective leadership is thinking through the organisations's mission, defining it and establishing it, clearly and visibly. He makes compromises, of course; indeed effective leaders are painfully aware  that they are not in control of the universe... The leader's first task is to be the trumpet that sounds a clear sound.... 

     The second requirement is that the leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege. Effective leaders are rarely "permissive." But when things go wrong - and they always do- they do not blame others.

        (Managing for the Future - Peter Drucker - p.121 )

 

                                    The Terror of Publicity 

     Saying "no" has never been a strong point with me, but in my present distress I am at last gradually learning the art. Since flood of newspaper articles, I have been so swamped with questions , invitations and challenges, that I dream that I am burning in Hell and that the postman is the devil eternally roaring at me, throwing new bundles of letters at my head because I have not yet answered the old ones.

             ( Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein- p.305 ) 

 

                               Respecting and Idealising 

     Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit of my own.The course of this may  well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that it is necessary for the achievement of the objective of an organisation that one man should do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. 

              (Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein - p.10 )

 

                                          Philistinism

     The philistine element in life is not the failure to understand art. Charming people such as fishermen , shepherds , plough boys, peasants and the like know nothing about art, and are the very salt of the earth. He is philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical force of society and does not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or movement. 

                   ( De Profundis - Oscar Wilde - p.38 )

 

                                Understanding Einstein

     And that day in classroom when the first section was studying the space-time relationship later formulated by Einstein as his Theory of Relativity. The  text was complex and, being unable to comprehend it, I committed the pages to memory. When I was called upon to recite I solemnly reeled off almost word for word what the book said. Our instructor, Colonel Feiberger, looked at me somewhat quizzically and asked, " Do you understand this theory ? " It was bad moment for me, but I did not hesitete in replying, "No, Sir." You could have heard a pin drop. I braced myself and waited. And then the slow words of the proffessor. 'Neither do I, Mister Mac Arthur. " Section dismissed. I still do no understand the theory.

              (Reminiscences _ Douglas Mac Arthur - p.34 ) 

                                     Chinese Cooking

     For Chinese are always gourmets. The appearance of a dish, its texture and its flavour are subjects for endless talk and comparison. A rich man will pay his cook a priest's salary, and yet he will humbly heed the criticism of his friends concerning a dish set before them, for in China cooking is a pure art in its most fundamental  and satisfying form, and when a dish is criticised by those who know all that it should be,none can take offense since there is nothing personal in criticising an art.

                  (My Several Worlds - Pearl S. Buck - p.25 )

 

                                                   Doubt

     ...Doubt is a thing that demands motives. People do not doubt without reasons in the same way that people believe withiout reasons in the same way that people believe without reasons.The was not doubted because it was repeated everywhere and, with the public ,to repeat is to prove. It was not doubted because people wished to believe what one wishes to believe. Finally, it was not doubted because the faculty of doubt is rare amongst men; very few minds carry in them its germs and these are not developed without cultivation. Doubt is singular, exquisite, philosophic, immoral, transcendent, monstrous, full of malignity, injurious to persons and to property, contrary to the good order of governments, and to the prosperity of empires, fatal to humanity, destructive to the gods, held in horror by heaven and earth. 

                    ( Penguin Island _ Anatole France- p. 

                             Evidence and Confessions

     Pyrot was tried  secretly and condemned.

     General Panther immeditely went to the Minister of War to tell him the result.

     " luckily" said he, "the judges were certain, for they had no proofs.

      " Proofs", muttered Greatauk, " proofs what do they prove? There is only one certain, irrefutable proof _ the confession of the guilty person. Has Pyrot confessed?".

     " No, General"

     " He will confess, he ought to. We must induce him; tell him it is to his interest. Promise him that, if he confesses, he will obtain favours, a reduction of his sentence, full pardon; promise him that if he confesses his innocence will be admitted, that he wil be decorated. Appeal to his good feelings. Let him confess from patriotism, for the flag, for the sake of order , from respect for the hierarchy, at the special command of the minister of war militarily.. But tell  me. has he not confessed already? There are tacit confessions' silence is a confession."

     " Bu General, he is not silent; he keeps on squealing like a pig that he is innocent."

     " The confessions of a guilty man sometimes result from the vehemence of his denials. To deny desperately is to confess. Pyrot has confessed; we must have witnesses of his confessions, justice requires them."

               (Penguin Island - Anatole France - p.175 )

 

                                             Doctors 

     Our moral ills are the result of prejudice, crime alone excepted, and that depend on ourselves; our bodily ills either put an end to themselves or to us. Time or death will cure them, but the less we know how to bear it, the greater is our pain, and we suffer more in our efforts to cure our deseases than if we  endure them. Live according to nature; be patient, get rid of doctors; You will not escape death, but you will only die once, while the doctors make you die daily through your deseased  imagination; their lying art, instead of prolonging your days, rob you of all delight in them. I am always asking what real good this art has done to mankind. True, the doctors cure some who would have died, but they kill millions who would have lived.If you are wise you will decline to take part in this lottery when the odds are so great against you. Suffer, die or get better; but whatever you do, live while you are alive.

                     (Emile - Jean Jacques Rosseau p.46 ) 

 

                                                 Scab

     After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which  He made a SCAB. a SCAB is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water-legged brain and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

     When a SCAB comes down the street men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to SCAB  as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in , or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. JudasIiscariot was  a gentleman compared with a SCAB. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang  himself. A SCAB HASN'T. 

     Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas Iscariot sold his saviour for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The modern strike-breaker sells his birthright, his country, his wife, children and his fellow-men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer, trust or corporation.

     Essau was a traitor to himself. Judas Iscariot was a traitor to his God. Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country. 

   A STRIKE_ BREAKER IS A TRAITOR TO HIS GOD< HIS COUNTRY< HIS FAMILY AND HIS CLASS.

  ( Jack London - American Rebel - edited by Philip S. Foner -pp.78/79) 

 

                                           Patriotism 

     There is one queer thing about patriotism: it is a sentiment that doesn't travel... To the inhabitants of ither countries it seemed improbable and faintly absurd that English people should sacrifice themselves to what they considered was their duty to their country. I have noticed the same thing in the war plays of the present time. Granted that their is a lot of hokum in all of them, American audiences will swallow it when it deals with the heroism and self-sacrifice of Americans, but the same heroism. and the same self-sacrifice in the English excite their ridicule rather than their sympathy. They are impatient with the courage of the English during the bombing of London; their discomfiture in Greece, a discomfiture expected by all who took part in the expedition, their hopeless stand in Crete, only excited their irritation...
    ( A Writer's Notebook - Somerset Maughham - pp.294/95)

 

                                      A Certain Method 

     I find myself in the position of Ibsen. His objection to adopt a party label is shared by those who have room in their heads for more than one political subject, and who took the trouble to find out how their views would take out in practice,. My method of examining any position is to take its two extremes, both of them impracticable; make a scale between them; and try to determine at what point on the scale it can be put in practice. A mother who has to determine the temperature of her baby's bath has two fixed limits to work between. The baby must not be boiled and must not be frozen. Within those limits she must proceed by trial and error. She dips her elbow in the water, and soon finds out that below 70 degrees Farenheit the water is too cold and above 100  it is too hot. Within these contracted limits bathing the baby is possible and effective. A statesman who has to provide baths for millions of children or soldiers has to face the same problem. 

   (Everybody's Political Whats What- Bernard Shaw - p.162) 

                                             Diplomacy

     Diplomacy is the method by which sovereign states reach agreement with each other... What makes international affairs so bewildering at present is that the methods are changing and that the basic assumptions are being challenged at the same time. The change in the methods can be exaggerated. It is true that things move faster nowadays. diplomats telephone and send telegrams where they used to write dispatches; They listen for the telephone bill where they used to wait for the arrival of the massenger. But what they say on the telephone is very much what they used to write in their dispatches; may be the style is a little less elegant. In any case, the essential job of the diplomat is personal contact with the rulers of other countries; and this job has changed very little... A good diplomat cannot make two countries agree if they do not want to agree, but he canmake their agreement easier if they want to agree...

     This suggest indeed one of the strangest objection to secret diplomacy: the suspicion that every deal will be dirty deal. and so in a sense it will.Arrangement by diplomacy implies compromise; and compromise implies that you will get less than you want, probably indeed less than you think right. The alternative, however, is not to reach agreement, that is, to get nothing at all....

     It would be tempting to add that those who dislike diplomacy want the impossible; it is less controversial to say that they want something different. To get back to the definition in the first sentence of this article, those who dislike diplomacy either want sovereign states to cease to exist or they want them not to agree. So far the only alternatives discovered to diplomacy are isolation or war...

     The United Nations was not a new method of diplomacy; it sprang from the belief that diplomacy was no longer necessary. as the assumption has not worked out, the nations are back at diplomacy with the added embarrasment of the United Nations on their hands. The delegates at the Security Council have to make fierce speeches against each other in public and then meet secretly in hotel bedrooms in order to get on with diplomacy, that is, with the task of reaching agreement. The only difference between the old diplomacy and the new is that nowadays the diplomats are ashamed of diplomacy and have to pretend that it is not happening. And of course it may not happen; in which case there is always the alternative of war.

  ( Europe- Grandeur and Decline - A.J.P. Taylor -pp.364/69)

 

                                          Nostalgia

     There are many travelers, who, in order to obey the urge that drives them south, abandon their own countries, whose delights and tourist attractions  are being advertised and celebrated all over the world. What do they seek that is better thanwhat they left behind? Not many Italians willingly travel abroad in any direction, north, south, east or west. They always feel more or less exiled and unhappy in alien lands, honestly believe the attractions of their homeland to be most satisfying. They are the first victims of famous charms of Italy, never satiated with her sights, climate, food, music ans life. familiarity never breed contempt in them. Neopolitans, for instance, after many thousand years, still gaze with the same rapture on their native landscape, eat SPAGHITTI ALLE VONGOLE  as if they have never tasted them before, and compose endless songsdedicated to the immortal beauty of their women and their bay. Those Italians who travel abroad are , as a rule, privileged-Milanese industrialists and Roman princess who have adopted foreign ways, cabinet ministers, diplomats, newly-weds - and the disinherited who go looking for work. They  are usually all equally homesick abroad; the rich and the poor look for CAFFE ESPRESSO , a good Italian restaurant, wherever they go, and sigh for the day of their return. 

                        (The Italians - Luigi Barzini  -p.2 )

 

                                      Scandals and Sleep

     It is pure unadulterated country life. They got up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood  since the time of Queen Elizabeth , and consequently they fall asleep after dinner. 

          (The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde - p.195 ) 

                        Lotteries- The Opium of Poverty 

     The passion for lotteries, so universally condemned, has never been studied.  No one has realised that it was the opium of poverty. The lottery was the most powerful fairy in the world: did it not nurture magical hopes? The spin of the roulette which flashed mountains of gold and enjoyment before the gamblers' eyes was as rapid as lightning; but the lottery gave five whole days of existence to this splendid lightning flash. Where is there today a social power that, for mere forty sous, can keep you happy for five days and provide you with all the delights of civilisation in an ideal form ? Tobacco, an addiction that is a thousand times more immoral than gambling, destroys the body, attacks the mind and stupefies a nation; where as the lottery did not cause the slightest misfortune of this kind. Moreover, the passion for lotteries was compelled to discipline itself, not only because of the distance in time between the draws but also because each gambler hadhis favourite wheel...

               (The Black Sheep - Honere de Balzac- p.88 )

                                               Nudity 

     .. Before British rule men as well as women moved about almost an a state of nudity. even now many do the same in the country. They cover their private parts with a piece ofskin. Some dispense even with this. But let not anyone infer from this that these people cannot control their senses. Where a large society follows a particular custom, it is quite possible that the custom is harmless even if it seems highly improper to the members of another society. These Negroes have no time to be staring at one another. When Shukadeva passed by the sideof women bathing in a state of nudity, so the author  of the BHAGAWATH GITHA  tells us, his own mind was quite unruffled; nor were the women at all agitated or affected by a sense of shame. I do not think there is anything supernatural in this account.If in India today, there should be none who would equally pure on a similar occasion, that does not set a limit to our strivingafter purity, but onlyargue our own degradation, It is only vanity which makes us look upon the Negroes as savages. They are not the barbarins we imagine them to be.

     (Selected Works of Mahathma Gandhi Vol.3 - pp.12/13)

     Javert was born in prison. His mother was a fortune-teller whose husband was in the galleys. He grew up to think himself without the pale of society, and despaired of ever entering it. He noticed that society closes its doors, without pity, on two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it;he could choose between these two classes only; at the same time he felt that he had an indescribable basis of rectitude, order and honesty , associated with an irrepressible hatred for the gypsy race to which he belongs. He entered the police. He succeeded. At forty he was an inspector.

                ( Les Miserable Victor Hugo - p.14)

 

                     Being Human and Being Animal 

     What does it mean to be human? Asked that question, most people respond with thoughts about the things that make us special- achievements in art or science, the trappings of so-called civilization - and mark us out from the other species that inhabit the Earth. That idea that humankind is special is so deeply ingrained that even people whose training ought to have opened their eyes can fall prey to the cosy assumption of human superiority...

     Being human simply means being one variety of animal on planet Eart. our similarities to other species, with whom we share a great deal of our genetic inheritance,turn out to be more remarkable than the differences. Impeccable modern chemical techniques show that the difference between the genetic material, the DNA, of a human being and a  Chimpanzee is just 1 per cent. Small wonder, then, that human beings conform very closely to the patterns of behaviour  of other animals.

     It is the 1 per cent difference in our DNA that has made human beings out of African Apes... 

           ( Being Human - Mary and John Gribbin- p.1 )

 

                               Irrational Vindictiveness 

     ... I hated John Claverhouse.  Not that he had done me what society would consider a wrong or ill turn.Far from it. The evil was deeper , subtle sort, so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear definite analysis of words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say, " I don't like that man." Why do we not like him, ah, we do not know why;  we know only that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that's all. And so I with John Claverhouse.

     What right had such a manto be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was always gleeful abd laughing. All things were always right, curse him! How it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to laugh myself, before I met Claverhouse.

     But his laugh! It irritated me , as nothing else under the sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, and would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking or sleeping, it was always with me, whirring and jarring across my heartstrings like an enormous rasp. At break of day it came whooping across  the fields to spoil my pleasant morning reverie. Under the aching noonday glare, when the green things drooped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all nature drowsed, his great  "ha! Ha!" and " ho! Ho!"  rose up to the sky and challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the lonely crossroads where he turned from town into his own place, came his plaguey cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and make me writhe and clench my nails into my palms...Had the gloom but rested, no matter how lightly , on his brow, or had his bovine countenance grown long and serious and less like the moon, or had he removed that smile but once from off his face, I am sure I could have forgiven him for existing. But no, he grew only more cheerful under the misfortune. 

     I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.

     "I fight you? why ? " he asked slowly. And then he laughed. " You are so funny! Ho! Ho! You'll be the death of me ! He! He! oh! Ho! Ho! Ho! "

 What would you? It was past endurance . By the blood of Judas, how I hated him. Then there was that name - clarehouse! Merciful Heaven, why Clarehouse? Again and again I asked myself that question. I should not have minded Smith, or Brown, or Jones - but Clarehouse ! I leave it to you. Repeat it to yourself- Clarehouse. Just listen to the ridiculous sond of it- Clarehouse! Should a man live with such a name? I ask you. " No, " you say. And 'no" said I.

            (The Sea-Wolf and Selected Stories -pp.330/32 )

 

             Socialists Entering a Bourgeois  Government

     The office of Public Works was given to a Socialist , Fortune La Personne. It was then a political custom and one of the most solemn, most severe, most rigorous , and if I may dare to say so, the most terrible and cruel of all political customs, to include a member of the Socialist party in each ministry intended to oppose socialism, so that the enemies of wealth and property should suffer the shame of being attacked by one of their own party, and so that they could not unite against these forces without turning  to someone who might possibly attack themselves in the future. Nothing but a profound ignorance of the human heart would permit the belief that it was difficult to find a Socialist to occupy these functions. Citizen Fortune la Personne entered  the Visire cabinet of his own free will and without any constrint; and he found those who approved of his action even among his former friends, so great was the fascination that power exercised over the Penguins. 

                 (Penguin Island - Anatole France - p.241 )

 

                              Understanding Karl Marx 

     Nothing has ever been so badly understood as the influence of Marx. That he seized the minds of millions is, of course, agreed.  But it is widely supposed that Marx's influence ends with these faithful. In the conventional wisdom his ideas are a kind of infection like smallpox, Either men get it and are permanently scarred, or they escape it because of effective inoculation and are untouched. Nothing could be further from the truth.Marx profoundly affected those who least supposed they were subject to it.

     In part this was the result of breath-taking grandeur of Marx's achievement as an exercise in social theory. No one before, or for that matter since,  had taken so many strands of human behaviour and woven them together- socil classes, economic behaviour, the nature of the state, imperialism and war were all here and go on a great fresco which ren from deep in the past to far into the future. On class conflict or imperialism, or the causes of national war, Marx was bound to be influential, for he was the only man who had offered an explanation which was at all integrated with the rest of human experience. Thus all American  thoght has beendeeply influenced by a Marxist view of imperialism...

     Lastly, it was always possible to dismiss those who believed Marx wrong as being guilty of of a failure of understanding.  Marx is not easy to understand. Those who thought him wrong had failed to do so. 

        ( The Affluent Society - J.K. Galbraith - pp.62/66 ) 

                The True Nature of  British Liberalism 

     We are revolutionaries who have not swept anything. We are Tories loudly denouncing taxes and regulations chiefly invented by Tory ministers. We are socialists busy creating peers and cheering pretty princesses. We are are a dreary self-righteous people with a passion  for gin, tobacco, gambling and ballet.We are a nation of Sabbath-keepers who do not go to church. We toil to keep ourselves alive, with three tea-breakers, a five-day week and Wednesday afternoon off for the match. We spend so much time arguing about food we have no time  to cook it properly. We spend four Pence  on our culture, and several million Pounds a year advertising it. We get free  spectacles and false teeth and, for lack of spectacles, may die in a ditch. We have probably the best children and the dullest adults in Europe. We are Socialist-Monarch that is really the last monument of Liberalism.

( J.B. Priestly- Quoted by Robert Hewison Inhis book "in Anger )

 

                                                Priests

     The fundamental, secret and primal piece of astuteness of all priests, everywhere and at all times, whether Brahamin or Mohammeden  or Buddhist or Chritian , is as follows. They have recognized and grasped the enormous strength  and the ineradicability of the metaphysical needs of man; they then pretend to possess the means of satisfying it, in that the solution to the great enigma has, by extraordinary channels been directly communicated to them.Once they have persuaded men of the truth of this, they can lead and dominate them to their heart's content. The more prudent rulers enter into alliance with them; the others are themselves ruled by them. If, however, as the rarest of all exceptions, a philosopher comes to the throne,the whole comedy is disrupted an the most unseemly fashion. 

     (Essays and Aphorisms- Arthur Shopenhauer - p.181 ) 

 

                                  Philosophy and Faith 

     Philosophy, as a science, has nothing whatever to do with what should or  may be believed  , it has to do with what can be known. If this should turn out to be something quite other than what one is supposed to believe that is no advantage even for the belief, since it is the nature of belief to teach what cannot be known. if it could be known, belief would be ludicrous and useless: it would be, for instance, as if one should propound a theory to be held by faith in the field of mathematics.

     It can, on the other hand, be objected that faith can teach more, much more, than philosophy:yet it can teach nothing which could be combined with the conclusion of philosophy, because knowledge is of a harder stuff than faith, so that when they collide the latter is shattered.

     In any event,faith and knowledge are totally different things which fot their mutual benefit have to be kept strictly separate , so that each goes its own way without paying the slightest attention to the other. 

     (Essaya and Aphorisms - Arthur Shopenhauer - p.180 ) 

 

                                        Famous Men 

     .. Famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark them out; no, in foreign land also, not in any visible form, but inpeople's hearts, their memory abides and grows. It is for yoy to try to be like them. Make up your minds that hapiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.

              (The Peloponnesian War - Thucydides -P.121 ) 

 

                                The secret of a Tomb

     This same princess ( Nitocris ) was also the perpetrator of a grim practical joke. She had a tomb made for herself over one of the main gateways of the city, right high up above the actual entrance, and cause the following inscription to be cut on it: " If any king of Babylon hereafter isshort of money, let him open my tomb and take as much as he likes. But this must be done only in case of need. Whoever opens my tomb under any other circumstances will get no good of it." The tomb remained undisturbed till the reign of Darius, who resented being unable to use one of the city gates - for he never did use the one under the tomb because, had he done so, he would have had to drive directly under the corpse; moreover, he thought it was absurd, when treasure was lying there asking to be taken, not to take it. So he opened the tomb. He found, however, not a Penny inside it - but only the body of the queen and another inscription, which read: " If you had not been insatiably greedy and eager to get money  by the most despicable means, you would never have opened the tomb of the dead.

                     ( The Histories -  Herodotus - p.89 )

 

                                  Insulting a Dead Body 

     Lampon (said to Pausanias )... " When Leonidas was killed at Thermopylae,  Xerexs and Mardonius had his head cut off andstuck on a pike:have your revenge, then, render like for like, and you will win the praise not only of every man in Sparta, but of every man in Greece. Impale Mardonius' body, Leonidas, your father's brother will be avenged."

     Lampon really thought that this would be an acceptable suggestion: Pausania, however replied: " I thank you, my aeginetan friend, for your goodwill and concern for me; But, inregard to your judgement, you have failed to hit the mark, first, you exalt me and my country to the skies by your praise of my success; and then you would bring it all to nothing by advising me to insult a dead body, and by saying that my good name would be increased if I were to do a barbarous thing which no Greek could stoop to - a foul deed we shudder even savages commit. No, indeed; in this matter I hope I shall never please the Aeginethans, or anyone else who approves such beastliness. It is enough for me to please the Spartans, by reverence and decency both in word and deed...never come to me with such a proposal again, and be grateful that you are allowed to go unpunished."

                     (The Histories - Herodotus - pp.582/83)

 

                                From Faith To Blasphemy 

     Dante passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of cobscious innocence which is the sequence of hope.; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always  the last resource.Unfortunates, who ought to  begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance... 

     Dantes had Exhausted all human resources, and he then turned to God.

     All the pious ideas that had been so long forgotten, returned; he recollected the prayers his mother had taught him , and discovered a new meaning in every word; for prosperity prayers seem but mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven! He prayed, and prayed aloud, no longer terrified at the sound of his own voice, for he fell into a sort of ecstasy.He laid every action of his life before the Almighty, proposed tasks to accomplish, and at the end ofevery prayer introduced the entreaty oftner addressed to man than to God. " Forgive our trespasses as we forgive them that tresspasses against us." Yet in spite of his earnest prayers, Dantes remained a prisoner.

     Then gloom settled heavily upon him. Dantes was a man of great simplicity of thought, and without education; he could not , therefore , in the solitude of his dungeon, traverse in mental vision the history of the ages,  bring to life the nations that perished, and rebuild the ancient cities so vast and stupendous inthe light of the imagination, and that pass before the eye glowing with celestial colours in Martin's Babylonian pictures.. He clung to one idea....he considered and reconsidered this idea, devoured it (so to speak) as the implacable Ugolino devours the skull og Archbishop Roger in the Inferno of Dantes.

     Rage supplanted religious favour. Dantes uttered  blasphemies that made his jailer recoil with horror.

  ( The Count of Monte Christo- Alexander Duma -pp.91/92

 

         Patriotic Hatred TowardsOne's closest Neighbour 

     The philosopher , Gratien, traveled through Penginia  in the time of the later Draconides.One day as he passed through  a pleasant valley where the cow-bells tinkled in the pure air, he seated himself on a bench at the foot of an oak, close beside a cottage.At the threshold a woman was nursing her child; a little boy was playing with a big dog; a blind old man seated in the sun with his lips half-opened. drank in the light of day.

     The master of the house, a young and sturdy man, offered some bread and milk to gratien..

     The Porpoise philosopher having taken this rural repast: "Delightful inhabitants of a delightful country, I give you thanks," said he , "Everything here breathes forth joy, concord and peace. "

     As he said this a shepherd passed by playing a march upon his pipe. 

     " what is that lively air" asked Gratien.

     " It is the war-hymn agaist the Porpoise' , answeres the peasant. "everybody here sings it. Little children know it before they can speak. We are all good Penguins".

      "You don't like Porpoise then?"

     "We hate them."

     " For what reasons do you hate them".

     " Need you ask? Are not the Porpoise neighbours of the Penguins? "

      " Of course ."

     " Well, that is why the Penguins hate the Porpoise".

     "Is that a reason?"

     " Certainly, He who says neighbours says enemies. Look at the fields that borders mine. It belongs to the man I hate most in the world. After him my worst enemies are the people of the village on the other slope of the valley at the foot of that birch wood. in this narrow valley formed of two parts there are but that village and mine: they are enemies. Every time that our lads meet the others, insults and blows pass between them. And you want the Penguins not to be the enemies of the Porpoises! Don't you know what patriotism is.? For my part there are two cries that rise to my lips: " hurrah for the Penguins! Death to the Porpoise!"

              (Penguin Island - Anatole France - pp.x/xi) 

 

                    Foreign Policy and Foreign secretary 

     The great thing about foreign policy is that it is amatter of talk of general principles. In most public affairs, there comes a point when you proceed from talk to action.When you have talked about education, you go to build schools - though not to paying school teachers enough: and when you talk about socialism, you end up by nationalising steel. But foreign policy is essentially a matter of saying what you are going to do. When you do it, it becomes something else. If you go to war, it becomes a matter for the war office and admiralty; if you co-operate  economically, the Treasury or the Board of Trade see to it. The only action that a Foreign Secretary ever takes is to sign treaties;and treaties ( though people often forget this) are not action- they are only promises to act like this or that in a given set of circumstances. 

    (Europe - Grandeur and Decline - A.J.P.Taylor -p. 233 )

 

                                                 Love

     There are moments in life which photograph themselves indelibly on the brain. This was such a moment- what the French call the coup de foudre . I have been in one of the worst earthquakes  in Japan. I have seenTsarrist ministers shot before my eyes as premonitory example of what my own fate was to be. if I did not speak the truth. I have had the roof lifted of my house by a "sumathra. " But none of these cataclysms was as tremendous or shattering as the first explosion of love in my heart when I saw Amali.... I had been living for six months in splendid isolation from my fellow countrymen. i had not spoken to a white woman for over a year. Steeped in an unhealthy romanticism , I was ripe for temptation......

     When a man is infatuated with a woman. there are almost no limit to the baseness of his conduct. In the eyes of other men my conduct was base and sordid- but not in my own. To keep Amali I was prepared to embrace Mohammedanism. It is not an episode in my life of which I  am proud or for which I seek to make my youth and my loneliness an excuse, but at the time it was - in the literal sense of the word - dead serious... I was playing a lone hand against the world and I was determined to play it to the last trick.

 (Memoirs of a British Agent- Bruce Lockhart- pp.19& 23 )

 

                                          Anglomaniacs 

     The adoption of English ways  (or what the Continentals wanted to believe were English ways ) was in the end so widespread as to go practically unnoticed and unquestioned. People automatically chose the best and the best was British. Only a few were so insanely ardent in their pursuit as to be noticed. They were known as "Anglomaniacs"  or "dandys"... Tailors naturally considered London their holy city. My grandfather, the best tailor in Orvieti, ironed his trousers like everybody else, with reverse creases at the sides, but added some horizontal creases too because he had noticed English travelers always wore them that way. He did not realize the horizontal creases appeared because travelers had to fold the trousers to pack them in trunks and suitcases. AnItalian count, who prided himself on the meticulous perfection of his English elegance, once went to London accompanied by his manservant. He sent him out the the first morning to see how the natives were dressed  in the street. The man came back perplexed. "Signor Conte" he said, " there is nobody in London dressed like an Englishman except you and me".

                        (Europeans - luigi Berzini -pp. 38/39 )

                        The Importance of Being a White

       Out of the blackest part of my soul, across zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white.

      I wish to be acknowledged not as black but white.

     Now- and this is form of recognition that Hegel  had not envisaged- who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I amloved like a white man.

      I am a white man.

    Her love takes me into the noble road that leads to total realization.

     I marry whit culture, white beauty, white breasts.

    When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization , and dignity and make them mine

          (Black Skin White Masks - Frantz Fanon- p.63 )

                                    Reason and Passions

     ... In particular, you observe how wisely Mother Nature, the parent and creator of the human race, has seen to it that some spice of folly shall nowhere be lacking. By stoic definition wisdom means nothing else but being ruled by reason: and folly, by contrast, is being swayed by the dictates of the passions. So Jupiter, not wanting man's life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason - you could reckon the ratio as twenty to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions. Then he set up two raging tyrants in opposition to reason's solitary power: anger which holds sway in the breast and so controls the heart, the very source of life , and lust whose empire spreads far and wide, right down to the genitals. How far reason can prevail against the combined forces of these two, the common life of man makes quite clear. She does the only thing she can, and shouts herself hoarse repeating formula of virtue, while the other two have only to bid her to go hang herself and intensify their hateful opposition until at last their ruler is exhausted, gives up and surrenders.

                     ( Praise of Folly- Erasmus -p. 87 )

                                    National Pride

     Now, just as Nature has implanted his personal self-lovein each individual person, I can see she has put a sort of communal variety in every nation and city. Consequently, the British think  they have a monopoly, amongst other things, of good looks, musical talents and fine food.The Scots pride themselves on their nobility and the distinction of their royal connections as much as on theit sublety in dialectic. The Frech lay claim to polite manners, the Parisians demands special recognition for their theological acumen which they think exceeds nearly everyone else's. the Italians usurp culture and eloquence, and hence they are all happy congratulating themselves on being the only civilized race of men. In this kind of happiness the Romans takes first place, still blissfully dreaming of the past glories of Rome, while the vVanetians have their own opinions of their noble descent to keep them happy. Meanwhile the Greeks, as originators of the arts, imagine they should still share the honours of the illustrious heroes of their past: while the Turks and all the real barbarian riff-raff actually demand recognition for their religion and our scorn on Christians for their superstition. The Jews go even further, still faithfully awaiting their Messiah and clinging fast to their Moses to this very day. The Spaniards admit no rival in the glories of war, while the Germans boast of their height and their knowledge of the magic arts.

                    ( Praise of Folly- Erasmus - p.133 )

 

                                        What is Right

     Each type of government enact laws that are in its own interests, a democracy democratic laws, a tyranny of tyrannical ones and so on; and in enacting these laws they make it quite plain that what is 'right' for their subjects is what is in the interest of themselves, the rulers, and if anyone deviates from this he is punished as a lawbreaker  and 'wrong doer .'  That is what I mean when I say that 'right' is the same thing in all states, namely the interest of the established government; and government is the strongest  element in each state, and so if we argue correctly we see that 'right' is always the same, the interest of the stronger party. 

                           ( The Republic  - Plato - p.78 ) 

                            The Way of a Greedy Guest

     ... I am like a greedy guest who grabs a taste of the next course before he has properly finished the last. For we started off to inquire what  justice is, but gave up before we had found the answer , and went onto ask whether it was excellence and knowledge or their opposites, and then when we stumbled on the view that injustice pays better than justice, instead of letting it alone off we went in pursuit, so that I still know nothing after all our discussion. For so long as I don't know what justice is I am hardly likely to find out whether it is an excellence or not, or whether it makes a man happy or unhappy.

                          (The Republic - Plato - p.101 )

                                   Heal the World

     Recently I read an article by Harlow Shapley  in which he discusses the chances of there being other worlds inhabited by intelligent life.Figuring the probabilities on a mathematical basis , he says, there should exist a hundred million inhabited planets, large and small. How I would like to visit them- and some day I may, since both Kant and Einstein have told us that space and time are forms of our thinking. 

     And then there is the infinitely small universe which science has discovered in the nucleus of the atom. Apparently there are as manynuclear particles in a drop of water as there are stars in the heavens; and who can guess what may turn up inside a proton? We already have found within the atom the power to destroy a city; any day now we may develop the power to heal the world.

                (The Cup of Fury - Upton Sinclair - p.101 )

                      Varying Reactions to Religious Sermons

     ... Finally, man's mind is so formed that it is far from susceptible to falsehood than to truth, if anyone wants an immediate clear example of this he has only to go to church at sermon time, where everyone is asleep or yawning or feeling       whenever some serious argument is expounded , but if the preacher starts to rant ( I can beg your pardon, I mean orate ) on some old wives' tale as they often do, his audience sits up and takes notice, open-mouthed. And again, if there 's some legendary saint somewhat celebrated in fable,... you will see that he receives far more devout attention than Peter or Paul or even Christ himself.

                     ( Praise of Folly - Erasmus - pp.135/36 )

 

                             "Biggest Fraud in the World "

     All the beliefs and ideas that they had instilled him since childhood had shriveled. Rather, they had simply paled away in his heart. If they discussed at a general Kibbutz meeting repeated violations of the egalitarian ethic, or the need for collective authority, or even for plain honesty, Jonathan, sitting by himself at the farthest table in the dinning room, ... would sketch naval destroyer on the paper napkins. If the discussionsturned into a particular long one, he would proceed to aircraft carriers, ship he had never seen except in the movies and illustrated magazines.Whenever he read in the paper of the growing threat of war, he would say to Rimona, nonsense, that's all these idiots ever do, and turn to the sports section.

     " Hey, Udi , what's the biggest fraud in the world?."

     Those meatballs Fagya cook for lunch three times a week.. Nothing but stale bread with a little meat seasoning."

      " No"  Yonathan persisted. "I mean really. The most collosal fraud that ever was."

     "All right" said Udi enthusiastically. "I guess it's religion. Or Communism . Or both."

      "No" said Yonathan. It's the stories we were told when we were children.'

                    (A Perfect Peace - Amos Oz - pp.10/11)  

                                  Earthquakes and Gandhi

     On 15th January 1934, a huge earthquake struck Bihar.... there were high casualties and massive destruction... On 24th  January, after calm reflection, Gandhi stated publicly that the earthquake and untouchability were linked." You may call me superstitious  if you like. A man like me cannot but believe that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins. "

 Rabindranath Tagore wrote. " If we associate ethical principles  with cosmic phenomena, we shall have to admit that human nature is morally superior to Providence that preaches its lessons in good behaviour  in orgies of the worst behaviour possible. For, we can never imagine any civilized ruler of men making indiscriminate examples of casual victims, including children and members of the untouchable community, in order to impress others dwelling at a safe  distance who possibly deserve severe condemnation... The law of gravitation does not in the least respond to the stupendous load of callousness that accumulate till the moral foundation of our society begins to show dangerous cracks and civilizations are undermined... We feel perfectly secure in the faith that our own sins and errors, however enormous, have not enough force to drag down the structure of creation to ruins. we can depend upon it, sinners and saints, bigots and breakers of convention"

     Gandhi replied. " Knowledge of the tallest scientist or the greatest spiritualist is like a particle of dust... I have not faith which Gurudev( Tagore ) has that 'our sins and errors, however enormous, have not enough force to drag down structure of creation to ruins," On the contrary, I  have the faith that our own sins have more force to ruin that structure than any mere physical phenomenon....

     Nehru read Gandhi's response to the earthquake "with a great shock ."  He called it a staggering remark".  "anything more opposed to the scientific outlook it would be difficult to imagine"...

      Gandhi suffered villification in India after his statement, though for reasons far more to do with his unflinching criticism of Hindu or orthodoxy than for his unscientific outlook... 

  (Rabindranath Tagore - Krishna Dutta & Andrew Robinson -pp.312/14 ) 

 

                                                 Desert

     To its denizen the desert is more than  a habitat: it is the custodian of his sacred tradition, the preserver of the purity of his speech and blood and his first and foremost line of defense  against encroachment from the outside world. Its scarcity of water, scorching heat, trackless roads lack of food supply - all enemies in normal times - prove staunch allies in time of danger.  Little wonder that the Arabianhas rarely bent his neck to a foreign yoke. 

     The continuity, monotony and aridity of his desert habitat are faithfully reflected in the Bedouin physical and mental make up. Anatomically he is a bundle of nerves, bones and sinews. The leanness and barrenness of his land show themselves in his physique> His daily food is dates and a mixture of flour, or roasted corn, with water or milk. His raiment is as scanty as his nourishment: a long shirt (thawb) with a belt and a flowing upper garment ("aba" ) which pictures have made familiar. The head is covered by a shawl 9'kufiyah') held by a cord ('iqua'). Trousers are not worn and footwear is rare. Tenacity, endurance seems to be his supreme virtue, enabling himto survive where almost everything else perishes. Passivity is the obverse of this same virtue. Passive endurance is to him preferable to any attempt to change the state in which he finds himself, no matter how hard his lot. Individualism, another characteristic trait, is so deeply ingrained that the Bebouin has never been able to raise himself to the dignity of a social bieng of the international type, much less todevelop ideals of devotion to the common good beyond that which pertains to the tribe. Discipline, respect for order and authority, are no idols in desert life." O Lord " prayed a Bedouin, " have mercy upon me and upon Muhammed, but upon no one else besides! Since the days of Ishmael the Arabian's hand has been against every man and every man's hand against him.

        ( History of the Arabs - Philip K. hitti- pp.24/25 ) 

 

                                            Hospitality 

     The principle of hospitality, however, mitigates in some measure the evils of ghazw (a sport ). However dreadful  as an enemy he may be , the Bedouin ia also within hia laws of friendship a loyal and generous friend. Pre-Islamic poets, the journalist of their day, never tired of singing the praises of diyafah ( hospitality )which, with hamasah  (fortitude and enthusiasm ) and muru-ah  ( manliness ) is considered one of the supreme virtues of the race. The keencompetition for waterand pasturage, on which the the chief cause of conflict, splits the desert populace into warring tribes; but the common consciousness of helplessness in the face of a stubborn and malignant nature develops a feeling for the necessity of one sacred duty: that of hospitality. To refuse a guest such a courtesy in a land where no inns or hotels obtain, or to harm him after accepting him as a guest, is an offense , not only against the established mores and honour but against God himself, the real protector.

         ( History of the Arabs - Philip K. Hitti - pp.25/26 ) 

                       How Mahavira Came into Being

     Mahavira completed his penultimata birth in one of the heavens as a god prior to being born as the twenty-fourth fordmaker. He was then transported in embryo form by the general of the army of  Indra, the king of the gods, initially to the womb of a Brahaman woman, a mistake explained by reference to some bad Karma which Mahavir had acquired in his birth as Marici. He was then taken to the only womb appropriate for a fordmaker, that of a woman of the warrior caste whose name was Trishala, the wife of a king, Siddhartha.

                       ( The Jains - Paul Dundas -p. 19 )

           How Can Terrible Transport System Helps Art

      "Every day I give thanks to our Government for our terrible transportation system" , she (Bella ) told me, barely containig her fury.  'It takes me an hour to get to work -first on bus, then on the subway, and finally on the trolley. I live pretty close to the centre of the city. But I have three  transfers, so it's a terrible struggle. I never find a seat. but I thank god, because it puts me into a fighting mood. You cant make great art if you are completely satisfied. You only get great art when there's a sense of crisis."

 ( The New Russians - Hedrick Smith - p.150 ) 

 

                                       Dialectics 

     Dialectics, in fact, is the only procedure which proceed by the destruction of assumptions to the very first principle, so as to give itself a firm base. When the eye of the mind gets really bogged down in a morass of ignorance, dialectic gently pulls it out and leads it up , using the studies we have described to help it in the process of conversion.

                          ( The Republic - Plato - p.346 )

                                           Open Society

     ... But the attitude of the west disappointed and disconcerted me. At first I thought that people in the open societies of the West were just slow to recognize   a historic opportunity; eventually I had come to the conclusion that they genuinely did not care enough about open society as a universal idea to make much of an effort to help the formally communist countries. All the talk about freedom and democracy had been just that: propaganda.

     After the collapse of the soviet system, the appeal of open society as an ideal started to fade, even in the formerly closed society...

     This induced me to reconsider the concept of open society. Yet in the end, I concluded that the concept is more relevant than ever. We cannot do without universal ideas. ( The pursuit of self-interest is also a universal idea, even if it is not recognized as such . ) Universal ideas can be very dangerous, especially if they are carrid to their logical conclusions... in my new formulation open society no longer stands in opposition to close society but occupies a precarious  middle grond where it is threatened from all sides by universal ideas that have been carried to their logical conclusions, all kinds of extremism, including market fundamentalism.

   (The Crisis of Global Capitalism - George Soros - pp.86/87 )

 

                                           Market Values 

     On the political level, our contemporary society seems to be suffering from an acute deficiency of social values. Of course, people have bemoaned the decline of morality throughout history, but there is one factor at play that makes the present different from the earlier times. It is the spread of market values. Market values have  penetrated into areas of society that were previously governed by non- market considerations. I have in mind personal relations, politics and professions such as law and medicine. Moreover, there has been a subtle and gradual  , but nevertheless profound, transformation in the way the market mechanism operates. First, lasting relationships have been replaced by individual transactions. The general store where owner and customer are familiar with each other has yielded to the supermarket  and more recently to the Internet. Second, national economies have been superseded by an international economy, but the international community, in so far as it exists , share few social values... a transactional market economy is anything but a community. Everybody must look for his or her own interests  and moral scruples can become an encumbrance in a dog-eat-dog world. 

( the Crisis of Global Capitalism - George Soros-pp.73& 75)

 

                           Saint Paul and Jesus Christ 

     ...Paul did more than take Chrstianity away from the Jews. Slowly he changed early Christianity into a new Pauline Christology. 

     To the early Christians , Jesus had been human with divine attributes conferred upon him after resurrection. To Paul. Christ was divine even before birth. To the early Christians, Jesus had been the son of God. To Paul Christ was co-equal and co-substantial with God. Jesus had taught that one learned to love God by lovin man. Paul taught that one learned to love Christ by incorporating him into oneself. Paul also shifted the early emphasis from Jesus the Messiah to Christ the redeemer of sin. Paul's thinking was dominated by the concept of original sin. 

   (JEws, God and History - Max I.Dimont - p.143 )

 

                The Assassination of  Mahathma Gandhi 

     The assassination  of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi moved and troubled me as much as any tragedy brfore or since. It was the only time I ever saw a whole nation lose a father and mourn with the contrition of a son who had done the killing. Once more I learned that great men are not slain by their peers but by young fools convinced that they are instruments of good, not evil, just as fine causes are lost for trivial, irrelevant reasons. The sad young fanatic from Poona who fired the fatal shots believed that Gandhi was evil incarnate because he had accepted Pakistan and partition rather than civil war. The assassin could not see that to martyr Gandhi would only increase his size and cause, just as nations cannot see that ideas cannot be killed by violence but can only be modified by time and betterment of ideas.

     Of course it was obvious enough after the event that Gandhi had to be killed. It was his "theophantic moment" as Jimmy Sheen put it: the precise time had arrived for him to enter the pantheon. But I knowthat I had no :premonition" whatever about it because my diary of the days before shows how completely out of touch I was with the dark angel.

             ( Journey to the Beginning - Edgar Snow - p.398 )

                                                Pure Race

     There is a special absurdity in applying racial theories to the various populations of Europe. There is not in Europe any such thing as a pure race. Russians have an admixture of Tartar blood, Germans are largely Slavonic, France is a mixture of Celts, Germans and people of Meditarranian race, Italy the same thing with the addition of the descendants  of slaves imported by the Romans. The English are perhaps the most mixed of all. There is no evidence that there is any advantage in belonging to a pure race.The purest races now in existence are either Pygmies, the Hottentots , and the Australian aborigines; The Tasmanians, who were probably even purer, are extinct.

           (Unpopular Essays - Bertrand Russell- p. 101)

 

                                  " You Are Under Arrest " 

     ... Arrest!  Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? that it is an unassailable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity? 

     The universe has as  many different centres as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a centre of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: You are under arrest.

     If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm.

     But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these displacements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience can gasp out only: "Me? What for ?"

     And this is the question which, though repeated  millions and millions of times before, has yet to receive and answer. 

      Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another.

  (Gulag Archipelago- Vol.1 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn -pp.3/4) 

 

 

     .. An eyewitness from the group around Gorky, who was close to Yagoda at the time, reports that in the vestibule of the bathhouse  on Yagoda's estate near Moscow,  icons  were placed so that Yagoda and his comrades, after undressing, could use them as targets for revolver practice before going in to take their baths.

     Just how are we to understand that? As the act of an evildoer?  What sort of behaviour is it ? Do such people really exist ?

     We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there are not any. It is permisable to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past - Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens - inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcial and clumsy to our contemporary perception. The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers pictured,. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black. And they reason : " I cannot live unless I do evil. So i'll set my father against my brother! I'll drink the victim's suffering until I'm drunk with them!" Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and motives as being black and born of hate.

     But no: that's not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he is doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. fortunately , it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

      Macbeth's self justifications were feeble - and his conscince devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because had no ideology. 

     Ideology - that is what gives evildoing it's long -sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honours. That is how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis,by race; and the Jacobins (early and late ) by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

     Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor supressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago...

     That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his ryes remain dry and clear. 

(The Gulag Archipelago- Alexander Solzhenitsyn -PP>173/74 )

 

         Why They Were Executioners and We Were Not

     I credited myself with unselfish dedication. But meanwhileI had been thoroughly prepared to be an executioner. And if I had gotten into an NKVD school under Yezhov, may be I would have matured just in time for Beria. 

     So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its covers shut right now.

 If only it were all all so simple!  If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.

     During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At time he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name does not change , and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

     Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were, the executioners and we weren't.(The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 1 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn- p.168 )

 

 

     From the most ancient times justice has been a two-part concept: virtue triumph, and vive is punished.

     We have been fortunate enough to live at a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented  by attak dog.. Beaten down, nsickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice. 

     however , no one dares say a wordabout vice. Yes, theydid mock virtue, but there is no vicein that. Yes, so-and-so many millions did get mowed down - but no one was to blame for it.And if someone pipes up: what about those who... ". the answer comes from all sides, reproachfully and amicably at first. " What are you talking about, comrade! Why open the wounds?" Then they go after you with an oak club: "Shut up! Haven't you have enough yet? You think You've been rehabilitated! "

     In that same period, by 1966, eighty-six thousand  Nazi criminals had been convicted in West Germany. And still we choke with anger here> We do not hesitate to devote to the subject page after newspaper page and hour after hour of Radio time.We even stay after work to attend protest meeting ans vote:TOO FEW! EIGHTY-SIX thousand are too few. And twenty years is too little:it must go on and go on.

      And during the same period, in our own country ( according to the reports of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court ) about TEN MEN have been convicted...

     ...if we translate  86000 West Germans into our own terms, on the basis of comparative population figures, it would become one-quarter of a million. 

     But in a quarter-century we have not tracked down anyone. We have not brought anyone to trial. It is their wounds we are afraid to reopen. And as a symbol of them all, the smug and stupid Molotov lives on at Granovsky No.3, a man who has learned nothing at all, even now, though he is saturated with our blood and nobody crosses the sidewalk to seat himself in his long, wide automobile.

     Here is a riddle not for us contemporaries  to figure out: Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not? What kind of disastrous path lies ahead of us if we do not have the chance to purge ourselves of that putrefaction rotting inside our body?Well can Russia teach the world...

     What are we to do? Someday our descendants will describe our several generations as generations of driveling do-nthings. First we submissivelyallowed them to massacre us by the millions, and then with devoted concern we tended the murderers in their prosperous old age.

     It is clear enough that those men who turned the handle of the meat grinder even as late as 1937 are no longer young.They are fifty to eighty years old. They have lived the best years of their lives prosperously, well nourished and comfortable, so that it is too late for any kind of equal  retribution as far as they are concerned.

     But let us be generous. We will not shoot them, nor bury them bedbugs, nor bridle them into a "swan dive" , nor keep them on sleepless " stand up " for a week, nor kick them with jack boots, nor beat them with rubber truncheons, nor squeeze their skulls in iron rings, nor push them into a cell so that they lie atop one another like pieces of baggage - we will not do any of the things they did! But for the sake of our country and our children we have the duty to seek them , all of them out and bring them all to trial ! Not to put them on trial so much as their crimes. And to compel each one of them to announce loudly:

     "Yes, I was an executioner and a murderer."...

     WE have to condemn publicly the very IDEA that some people's right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of appears on the surface, we are implanting it. and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. when we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new new generations... Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.

      It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!

 ( The Gulag Archipelago - Vol.1- Alexander Solzhenitsyn -pp.175/78) 

 

Origin of the World and human Beings -The Buddhist Concept 

     There comes a time after   a very long period when the world goes into dissolution.

     At the time when the process of disintegration is taking place the life wave ceases, and living beings transmigrate and are born in the ABHASSARA BRAHAMLOKA , the heaven of the radiant gods.

     Those who are born there have no material body, they eat no solid food, in joy they live, and their spiritual bodies are radiant, emitting rays of glory, and they require no other light. They travel through space. In happiness they live for a long peiod.

     There comes a time after a very long time after a very long period, when this world begins to re-evolve again. Slowly the world begins to re-integrate, and cosmic activity commenses.

     When this world is fit to re-peopled, the beings of the Radiant world cease to exist there and are born here.     

     And the incarnated beings are mind born, self-evolved; they live a life of joyousness. Their spiritual bodies are effulgent; perfect in symmetry, beautiful to look at.

     In this state of blessedness they exist for a long period of period. The eart is yet in a liquid form, water preponderate. Darkness impenetrable alone exists. 

     The sun and moon remain hidden. They are not visible. The spiritual beings have no idea of the starry space. THe stars are not visible.

     There is no night and no day,  and time hath not. They know  not of  the day and of the night, and of the season and of years...

     In this condition of no-sex they live for a very long period. Slowly and gradually the watery form that covers the earth disappear , leaving a surface of milky cream, in colour like unto gold.

    And from this creamy surface of the earth there began to rise a perfume ofdivine sweetness. 

     The creamy surface gave the taste of divine ambrosia. It was like unto a sweet honey comb bereft of larva. 

     Inhaling the sweet perfume, illuminated by the glory of ther own spiritual effulgent bodies, they traversed the skies, and there arose in them a curious desire to know what this creamy honey like substance was.

     And they to satisfy the desire took a little of the creamy earth at the tip of their fingers, and applied it to their tongues.

     And instantaneously the tongue felt the sweet taste ofthe fragrant earth, and desire arose in them.

     In this tasting of the sweet earth there arose a desire in man.

     When they began to eat the sweet earth the divine effulgence of their bodies disappeared.

     When the effulgence of their bodies vanished they felt darkness all around, and fear came over them. And they all willed and cried ' let there be light' ; and they saw the light of the sun.

      And when the light  of the sun disappeared , they were afraid and they cried again and said' let there be light'' , and they saw the light of the moon. Both these lights appeared synchronously. 

     And they saw the stars and the constellations, and now they came to know of the Day and of the night. They came to know of the changes in the seasons and of the year. 

     For a very long period man continued to eat the sweet creamy earth, and the development of the earth continued on.

     Some human beings began to lose the beautiful complexion of their bodies; and the differentiation of colour arose.

     And those that did not lose their complexion began to despise those that had lost their colour. And thereupon appeared in man Pride.

     And when pride appeared in man the sweet fragrance of the earth was lost.

     And when they witnessed  the earth had lost the sweetness, they assembled in one place, and they began to express their grief in uttering the words, "oh , we have lost the sweetness, oh, we have lost the sweetness."

     And man found that he had no more sweet earth to eat, and he then found a kind of fungi springing up from earth.

     And when the fungi appeared on the earth, the watery nature of the earth had entirely disappeared.

     And the earth was dry ground, and for a long time man lived eating the fungi which sprouted from the ground.

     And there was a second disappearance of colour, and the beauty of their complexion vanished.

     And those that had lost their colour were despised by those whose colour was not lost.

     With the continued increased of pride in man there disappeared also the self-serving eatable fungi.

     and the man found in the place of fungi, a kind of rice that grew on dry ground, and they began to eat this rice which was sweet scented.

     With increased desire and pride and eating the rice of the hill paddy, there came signs of femininity, and masculinity.

     And then came in both a desire and they continued gazing at each other in ab unusual manner, and the woman began to look at the man, and the man began to look at the woman.

     And this mutual gazing brought forth in the heart of man and woman passion.

     And this passion grew, and the desire came in them to have sexual inter course, and the desire was fulfilled.

     And this intercourse was held not in private and when others saw the act, they threw at them earth mud, handful of ashes, and a cow dung, and said how can a human being commit such an act on another? 

     And as time went on they forgot the unrighteousness of the act, and to commit the act they began to build houses...

(Return to Righteousness - Anagarika Dharmapala - pp.429/431)  

 

           If the Price of Honestly  Disbelieving is HELL

                                       Let It Be So 

     ... It had never struck him before that religion was a matter upon which discussion was possible. To him it meant the Church of England, and not to believe its tenant was a sign of wilfulness which could not fail of punishment here or hereafter. There was some doubt in his mind about the chastisement of unbelievers. It was possible that a merciful judge , reserving the flames of hell for the heathen - Mohomammedans, Buddhists, and the rest- would spare Dissenters and  Roman Catholics ( though at the cost of how much humiliation when they were made to realize their error! ), and it was also possible that he would be pitiful those who had no chance of learning the truth - this was reasonable enough... but if the chance had been theirs and they had neglected it( in which category were obviously Roman Catholics and Dissenters ) the punishment was sure and merited. It was clear that the miscreant was in a parlous state. Perhaps Philip had not been taught it in so many words, but certainly the impression had been given him that only members of the church of England had any real hope of eternal happiness.

     One of the things that Philip had heard definitely stated was that the unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious man; but Weeks, though he believed in hardly anything that Philip believed, led a life of Christian purity. Philip had received little kindness in his life and he was touched by the American's desire to help him; once when a cold kept him in bed for three days, Weeks nursed him like a mother. There was neither vice nor wickedness in him, but only sincerity and loving-kindness. It was evidently possible to be vituous and unbelieving.

     Also Philip had been given to understand that people adhered to other faiths only from obstinacy or self-interest; in their hearts they knew they were false; they deliberately sought to deceive  others. Now, for the sake of his German he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to attend the Lutheran service, but when Hayward arrived he began instead to go to him to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the Protestant church was nearly empty and the congregation had a listless air, the Jesuit on the other hand was crowded and the worshipers seemed to pray with all their hearts. They had not the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at the contrast; for he knew of course that the Lutherans, whose faith was closer to that of the Church of England, on that account were nearer to yhe truth than the Roman Catholics. Most of the men  -it was largely a masculine congregation - were South Germans;and he could not help saying to himself that if he had been born in south Germany he would certainly have been a Roman Catholic. He might just as well have been born in a Roman Catholic country  as in England; and in England as well in a Wesleyan, Baptist, or Methodist family as in one that fortunately belonged to the Church by law established.He was a little breathless at the danger he had run. Philip was on friendly terms with the little Chinaman who sat at the table with him twice each day. His name was Sung, He was always smiling, affable and polite. It seemed strange that he should frizzle in hell merely because he was a Chinaman; but if salvation was possible whatever a man's faith was, there did not seem to be any particular advantage in belonging to the Church of England....

     Drunk with pride in his intelligence and in his fearlessness, Philip entered deliberately upon a new life. But his loss of faith made less difference in his behaviour than he expected. Though he had thrown on one side the Christian dogmas it never occurred to him to criticise the Christian ethics; he accepted the  Christian virtues, and indeed thought it fine to practice them for for their own sake, without a thought of reward or punishment...

     ..At last he would say to himself desperately:

      " After all, it is not my fault. I can't force myself to believe. If there is a God after all, and He punishes  me because I honestly don't believe in Him , I can't help it.

     ( Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham - pp.114/19 )

 

            When to  Praise & when to Hate Your Country

     I have a yearning for my beautiful country, and I love its people because of their misery. But if my people rose, stimulated by plunder and motivated by what they call " patriotic spirit "  to murder, and invaded my neighbour's country, then upon the committing of any human atrocity I would hate my people and my country.

     I sing the praise of my birthplace and long to see the home of my childhood; but if the people in that home refused to shelter and feed the needy wayfarer, I would convert my praise into anger and longing into forgetfulness. My innervoice would say , | The house that does not comfort the needy is worthy of naught but destruction."

                      ( A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran - p.4/5 )  

 

                                  Passion For Whiteness

     Yet the strange human passion for whiteness possessed the Chinese too , and when a poor man became rich, which he did as often as among other men, immediately he took to eating white polished rice and flour and white imported cane sugar and wondered why he did not feel as well as he used to feel in his days of poverty. And though I was pitied for my blue eyes and yellow hair, my white skin was always praised, and it was counted a misfortune if a daughter in a Chinese family  was born with brown skin instead of with a skin of light cream colour .... i find thissame desire for whiteness here in my present world, where a darker Negro will try to marry a fairer one, and where  I am told the gentleman naturally prefer blondes. a friend explained it the other day by saying that desire of all people is towards the brightness of the sun and their fear is towards the night and darkness. I doubt it as a matterof such profound anthropological meaning, but it may be

              ( My Severald Worlds - Pearl S. Buck ) 

 

                                           Theater 

     I was much attracted by the theater , because the plays reflected my own unhappy plight and were tinder to my fire. Why is that men enjoy feeling sad at the sight of vtragedy and suffering on the stage, although they would be most unhappy if they had to endure the same fate themselves? Yet they watch the playe because they hoped to be made to feel sad, and the feeling of sorrow is what they enjoy. What miserable delirium this is ! The more a man is subject to such suffering himself, the more easily he is moved by it in the theater. Yet when he suffers himself, we call it misery, and when he suffers out of sympathy with others, we call it pity. Because what sort of pity can we really feel for an imaginary scene on the stage? The audience is not called upon to offer help but only to feel sorrow , and the more they are pained the more they applaud the author. Whether this human agony is based on fact or is simply imaginary, if it is acted so badly that the audience is not moved to sorrow, they leave the theater in a disgruntled and critical mood; whereas, if they are made to feel pain, they stay to the end watching happily.

                   ( Confessions- Saint Augustine - p.56 ) 

 

                                  Curse of Kinsfolk 

     He (Napoleon  Bonaparte ) has loaded them with money and honour, but they gave him littlt  thanks, and are incessant  in their demands for more. There is Elsie. She and Lucien, her favourite brother, vie with one another in escapades that are the talk of Paris. At amateur theatricals, they disport themselves in pink tights, andthe Consul ( Napoleon ) thunders: "disgraceful behaviour! While I am wearing myself out trying to make people moral and respectable once more, my brother and my sister appear before the footlights almost naked!." But  as soon as his back is turned, they laugh merrily and follow their own bent....

     ... He is the dictator of France, and yet every time his mother opens her mouth she reminds all the nationalists of his foreign birth. Here is the sister of a man who ranks with kings, and she plays the maddest pranks before the eyes of the monarchs of Europe, who naturallly delight in pointing the finger of scorn at the ill-breedingof the upstart's relatives. His brothers willow inthe practice of corrupt methods which it was a primary aim of the revolution to abolish. All this occurs in Paris, where irony has ever been the fundamental tone of criticism!

     Yet he does not merely tolerate these embarrasing  kingsfolk; he is continually showering honours on them, promoting them to high office, making them his representatives abroad. 

                   ( Napoleon - Emil Ludwig -pp. 184/85 )

 

                           Eight Ways of Viewing History 

     There are eight basic ways of  viewing history. Generally, a historian selects a face of history to his liking, thus stressing the viewpoint which seems best to him. We will make use of all of these faces of history except the first one, the 'unhistoric'  or 'Henry Ford" way. It was Henry Ford who once declared that "history is bunk'" , and if he wanted to know anything he could always hire a professor who would tell him. This view sees all events as unrelated occurences,  a mishmash of dates , names and battles, from which nothing can be learned or divined.

     The second way of looking at history might be termed the "political interpretation " .  Here, history is looked upon as a succession of dynasties, laws , battles. Kings are strong or weak, wars won or lost, laws good or bad, and all events are presented in neat order from A to Z from 2000 BC to 2000 AD. This, as a rule, is the type of history taught in schools.

     A third face is the geographic one. According to this school, climata and soil determine the formationof character. The idea originated with the Greeks.

     The fourth way to interpret hoistory is an economic one. This is the Marxian school...

    The fifth is an even newer concept than the economic interpretation of history. Founded by Professor Sigmond Freud at the beginning of the twentieth century, this school holds that social institutions and human history are the result of a process of repressing unconscious hostilities. Civilizations, says the psychoanalytic historian, can be obtained only at the price of giving up the lusts that lurk in our unconscious - unbridled sexual gratification, murder , incest, sadism, violence. Only when man has mastered his impulse can he turn his energies into creative, civilizing channels. Which impulses man represses , hoe severely he represses and what methods he uses for this repression will determine his culture and his art forms, says the psychoanalyst.

     the sixth is the philosophical one. .. Each  civilization, they hold, follows a more or less predictable pattern. They think of each civilization as a living thing, which, like a human being, has an infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age , and finally death. Hoe long a civilization lasts, they say, depends upon the ideas and ideals by which that civilization lives. The philosophical interpreters of history try to discover these forces within civilizations in order to find their common element.

     Since the history of Jews did not fit into either Spengler's or Toynbee's system, Spengler ignored them and Toynbee reduced them to an occasional footnote, describing the Jews as fossils of history.

     The "cult of personality " is the seventh face of history. Proponents of this school hold that events are motivated by the dynamic force of great men. If nor for Washington, they say, there would have been no American Revolution; if  not for Robespierre, there would have been no French revolution; if not for Lenin, there would have been no Russian revolution...

     The eighth face of history, the religious, is both the oldest and the newest concept. the Bible is the best example of this type of historical writing in the past. This way of viewing history looks upon events as a struggle between good and evil, between morality and immortality. 

        (Jews, God and History - Max I Dimont - pp18/21 )

 

                    Politicians Way of Keeping Promises

     ... He announced that the conspiracy would not be investigated, that no one would be prosecuted, and that the Congress designated for the coming year would meet without delay to elect another President of the Republic.

     "After that "  he concluded, 'I will leave Colombia for ever.'

     Nevertheless, the investigation took place, the guilty were judged with an iron hand, and fourteen were shot in the main square. The constituent Congress of January 2 did not meet for another sixteen months, and no one spoke again of his resignation. But during that time there was no foreign visitor, or chance companion, or casual acquaintance, to whom he did not say: " I will go where I am Wanted. "

(The General In His Labyrinth -Gabriel Garcia Marques- -p.15)

 

                                               Feuds

      " did you want to kill him Buck."

      "Well, I bet I did it." 

     "What did he do to you."

     "Him? He never done anything to me."

     " Well  then, What did you want to kill him for.?

     "Why, nothing - only it's on account of the feud."

     " What's a Feud? '

     "Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?

     " never heard of it before - tell me about it."

     " well" says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; Then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers on both sides, goes for another; then the cousins chip in - and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. but it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."

     " Has thi one been going on long, Buck?"

     " Well , I should reckon! It started thirty years ago, or somersalong there. There was trouble about something, and then agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit - whichhe would naturally do, of course. Anybody would."

     "What's the trouble about, buck?  land ?

     " I reckon may be- I don't know."

     " Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson ?"

     " Laws, how do I know?"

     "Don't anybody know?"

      " Oh, yes, Pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place. 

 ( Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain - p. 

 

                            Perfect Positive Thinking 

     Everything about the Krupps was remarkable: their way of life (secretive ), their appearance (vulpine ). their empire 9international ) and their customers (chiefs of state) , but nothing was quite so phenomenal as this habit of matching the Teuton mood of the moment... Nowhere in American industry- or that of any other country - can you find a match for the ties that have bound German governments to the Krupp family. For a century the two were inseparable partners, often acting as instruments of one another. Andnever has the parallel been more striking than in the appaling spring of 1945, when it appeared to have become deadly...

     Efficiency was his ( Gustav Krupp's )religion.One of his oddest hobbies was reading train timetables, looking for typographical errors. When he found one, he would seize his telephone and denounced the railroad. Leaving for office each morning, he expected his chauffeur to have the engine running; he didn't want to hang around all those seconds while the key was turned in the ignition...

     More significant to the world outside Essen was Gustav's absolute loyalty to the leaders of his country. Itdidn't much matter who the leader was. After the Kaiser's exile in i918 he had remained KAISERTREU writing down each year on Wilhelm's birthday to reaffirming his loyalty. Yet at the same time he would leave a room rather than hear a slur against  the President of the Weimar Republic. With the rise of Hitler he became what a fellow industrialist called  a " Super Nazi." He was quite  prepared to accept the ultimate consequences of his new faith. When Claus's plane crashed in the Eifel Hills a friend offered condolences. The father replied icily: "My son had the honour  to die for Fuhrer."

    ( The Arms of Krupp - William Manchester - pp.2,6&7) 

 

         US Way of Waging Wars to  'liberate" Countries

                 Not Knowing Anything  About  Them

      None of this made me anything close to an expert, however. I had never visited Indochina, nor did I understand or appreciate its history, language, culture or values. The same must be said, to varying degrees, about President Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security adviser McGeorge Bundy, Military adviser Maxwell Taylor, and many others. When id came to Vietnam, we found ourselves setting policy for a region that was terra  incognita.

     Worse, our government lacked experts for us to consult to compensate for our ignorance.. There were no senior officials in the Pentagon or State Department with comparable knowledge of Southeast Asia.

                 (In Retrospect - Robert S. McNamara - p.32 )

 

                        When a Country  Goes  Mad !        

     .. The country (France ) was shocked when on January 17th, 1920, the National Assembly sitting in Versailles elected  not Clemenceau but Paul Deschanel, an elegant, urbane deputy who was President of the Chamber and who had few political enemies because he had few convictions. There was a further irony. Deschanel was on the verge of insanity and soon passed over the line. One night not long after his election the President of the Republic jumped off a Presidential train steaming through the Countryside and clad only in pyjamas, presented himself, after a short walk in the dark through the brush along the rails, to the guardian of a forlorn level-crossing  draw bar. When the President identified himself , the guardian took him for a lunatic and called gendarmerie. A little later the President was discovered floundering about like a wounded carp in the pond near the Presidential Chateau at Rambouillet and near to drowning. Finally on September 21st,nine months after defeating Clemenceau for the Presidency, Deschanel was forced to resign his high office because of incapacity.... Notwithstanding his mental condition, Deschanel was promptly elected to the Senate from the district of Eure-et-Loire.

 ( The Collapse of the Third Republic - William L. Shire- pp.174/75 ) 

 

                           Japanese Education System

     Schools dominate the life of young Japanese. Students spend 240 days at school each year- a third longer than their American counterparts. late afternoons are spent at cram schools, working to pass the examinations that begin in kinder garten. Nights are spent doing homework. The system has helped breed a generation of nerds, of technically literate , highly knowledgeable young people who lack basic social skills and have little understanding of the world outside.

     Young, talented people are grounded through a system that pounds originality out of its people. The emphasis is on fitting in, on following rules, and on rote memorization. Students are not encouraged to analyze or challenge; questions are not asked in Japanese classrooms. They are there only to swallow facts and spit out answers on exam after exam, like human computers uploaded with gigabytes of data. It is possible to go through high school in Japan without a single class on ethics, philosophy, or religion....

     One can understand why, then, the Japanese say they prefer to cultivate inner space - the inside of their homes, inside of their minds. And Aum offered the ultimate inner space, one that would take its followers on a direct line to outer space.

 ( The Cult at the End of the World - David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall  -p.27)

 

       *********************************************

      With the founding  of Aum Supreme Truth , Shoko Asahara's bloated ego had finally gone supernova. Drinking the Guru's blood was one of the twenty so-called 'initiations"  the cult now offered. Holy Hair Initiation was a bizzare variation on the  traditional Japanese tea ceremony, wherein snippets of Asahara's locks were brewed in boiling water and then drunk. His beard clippings were also on sale.( $375 per half-inch) Just as he has once peddled tangerine peel in alcohol as "almighty Medicine", Asahara now repackaged  his dirty bathwater as " Miracle Pond and sold it for nearly $800 per quart. Then there was   nectar water" - tap water blessed by Asahara which supposedly glowed in the dark. "Jesus changed water into wine"he wrote in a later book  "Declaring Myself the Christ."" I changed ordinary water to the water that emits light."

                                        (ibid - pp.17/18)

                                    Narcissim and Dictators

     " Narcissism"  is a concept originally formulated by Freud in relation to early infancy, but one which is now accepted more broadly to describe a personality disorder in which the natural development of relationships to the external world has failed to take place. Anyone so affected becomes withdrawn from his work, finding fantasy more real than reality. In such a state only the person himself, his needs, feelings and thoughts, everything and everybody as they relate to him  are experienced  as fully real, while everybody and everything otherwise lacks reality or interest.

     (Erich K Fromm argues that some degree of narcissism can be considered an occupational illness among political leaders in propotion to their conviction of a providential mission and their claim to infallibility of judgement and a monopoly of power. When such claims are raised to the level demanded by a Hitler or a Stalin at the height of their power, any challenge will be perceived as a threat to their private image of themselves as much as to their public image, and they will react by going to any length to supress it. 

                 ( Hitler and Stalin -Allan Bullock- p.12)

      The Only Reason  Why the World Remembers  Him

     In 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assasinated at Sarajevo, and little of the Europe he had known survived him. His wife, his titles -even his country - vanished in the red madness of the time. The assassins  had unhinged the world, which is the only reason we remember their victim.

           ( The Arms of Krupp -William Manchester - p.1) 

                                         The Mind's Eye

     The mind's eye can nowhere find anything more dazzling nor more dark  than in man; it can fixitself upon nothing which is more awful, more complex , more mysterious or more infinite. There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

      To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a  superior and a final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideal which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of passions. At certain of ours, penetrate the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There , beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, Melees of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps  that infinite which each man bears with himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and action of his life.  

                  ( Les Miserable - Victor Hugo p.148 )

 

                      Literature and Personal Prejudices 

     Forgive me, dear reader, you have probably long ago guesses the aim of this diatribe; but I happen to be a German, and cannot rid myself  of my German nature which always starts with the egg. Now, however,  I will be all the more direct: it is a question of the dissensions in modern literature, the justification of the parties and especially the dispute at the root of all the rest, the dispute between GUTZKOV and Mundt...This dispute has now been going on for two years in the midst of our literary developments and could not but have open them an influence partly favourable, partly unfavourable. Unfavourable because the smooth course of development is always disturbed when literature lets itself becomes the arena of personal sympathies, antipathies and idiosyncrasies; favourable because, to speak in Hegelian terma, it stepped out from the one-sidedness in which it found itself as a party, and proved its victory through its very destruction; and also because, contrary to the expectations of many, the 'young generation' did not take sides, but used the opportunity to free itself from all alien influences and to devote itself to independent development. If then a few have taken sides, they prove thereby how little confidence they have in themselves and of what little consequence they are to literature.

    (Engels - Marx/Engels Collected Works - Vol. 2 - p.83 ) 

                                     Mother Tongue

     That I wrote the book ( on Bach ) in French at a time when I was also lecturing and  preaching in German was an effort for me. It is true that ever since my childhood I had spoken French as freely as German; but I never feel French to be my mother tongue, although in my letters to my parents I always used French, because that was customary in the family. German is my mother tongue, because the Alsatian dialect, which is my native language, is Germanic.

     My own experience makes me think it only self-deception if any believes that he has two mother-tongues. He may think  that he is equally master of each, yet it is invariably the case that he actually thinks only in one, and is only in that one is really free and creative. If anyone assures me that he has two languages , each has thoroughly familiar to him as the other, I immediately ask him in which of them he counts and reckons, in which he can best give me the names of kitchen utensils and tools used by carpenter or smith, and in which of them he dreams. I have not yet come across  any one who, when tested, had not to admit that one of the languages occupied only a second place... 

     The difference between the two languages, as I feel it, I can best describe by saying that in French I seem to be strolling along the well-kept paths in a fine park, but in German to be wondering at will in a magnificent forest.

     When in the Summer of 1906..... I turned to the German edition of of the Bach, I soon became conscious that it was impossible for me to translate myself into another language, and that if it was to produce anything satisfactory , I must plunge anew into the original materials of my book. So I shut the French Bach with a bang, and resolved to make a better German one. Out of the book of 455 pages there sprang, to the dismay of the astonished publisher, one of 844. 

    ( My Life and Thought - Albert Schweitzer  - pp.56/58 )  

                         Despising One's Own Language 

     The middle class in the Antilles never speak Creole except to their servants. In schools the children of Martinique are taught to scorn the dialect. One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid the use of Creole, and mothers ridicule their children for speaking it.  

     My mothe wanting a son to keep in mind

     If you do not know your history lesson    

     You will not go to Mass on Sunday;

     Your Sunday clothes

     That child will be a disgrace to the family

     That child will be our curse

     Shut up I told you you must speak French

    The French of France 

     The Frenchman's France 

     French French

          ( Black Skin White Masks - Franz Fanon - p.20 )

 

                                    Life After Death

     ....Itis not that I wish we had a life after death.In fact I would prefer not to foster such ideas. Still, I must state, to give reality its due, tat, without my wishing and without my doing anything about it, thoughts out of this nature move about within me, I can't say whether these thoughts are true or false, but I do know they are there, and can be given utterance, if I do not repress them out of some prejudice. Prejudice cripples and injure the full phenomenon of psychic life. And I know too little about psychic life to feel that i can set it right out of superior knowledge. Critical rationalism has apparently eliminated, along with so many other mythic conceptions, idea of life after death....

 (Memories, Dreams and Reflections - Carl G. Jung - p.330 )

                                      A Funeral Rite

     A few days later Mr, Liu senior suddenly died. In those days a spectacular funeral was very  important, particularly if  the dead person had been the head of the family. A funeral which failed to meet the expectations of the relatives and of society would bring disapproval of the family. The luis wanted an elaborate ceremony, not simply a procession from the house to the cemetry. Monks were brought in to read the Buddhist Sutra of ''putting the head down'' in the presence of the whole family. Immediately after this, the family members burst out crying. From then to the day of the burial, on the forty-ninth day after the death, the second day of weeping and wailing was supposed to be heard non-stop from early morning until midnight, accompanied by the constant burning of artificial money for the deceased to use in the  other world. Many families could not keep up this marathon. and hired professionals to do the job for them....

     On the forty-second day after his death the corpse which had been put in a beautifully carved sandalwood coffin was placed in a marque in the courtyard. On each of the last seven nights before his internment the dead man was supposed to ascend a high mountain in the other world and looked down on his whole family; he would only be happy if he saw that every member of his family was present and taken care of. Otherwise, it was believed, he would never find rest. 

                       ( Wild Swans- Jung Chang - p.111)

                                           Lawyers

     Among the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything  which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes. Let's group with them the Sophists and dialecticians, a breed of men which can rattle on better than one of Dodona's copper pots. anyone of them could be a match for twenty picked women in garrulity , but they would be happier if they were only talkative and not quarrelsome as well- they are so stubborn in their fights to the death about things like goat's wool, and they generally lose sight of the truth in the heat of the argument. However, their self-love keeps them happy, and three syllogisms arm them enough to go straight to battle on any subject and with any man. 

                   (Praise of Folly -Erasmus - pp.150/51 )

 

               Russian Way of Conducting  Benevolent Societies

     In the council which met on this occasion one essential thing was most palpably lacking:  what among simple folk is called horse sense. In general, we Russians, are not really made for official meetings. All our meetings, from humblest gathering of villagers to every kind of scholarly and other committees, unless there is one person who has full control of everyone, are characterized by the utmost chaos and disorder. their is really no telling why this should be so; apparently, we are simply that kind of people who only make a success of those meetings, which are called for the purpose of feasting and dining, for example: social clubs and pleasure gardens in the German manner. But we are ready to undertake anything at all this very minute. According to hoe the wind blows we will suddenly set up benevolent societies, societies for the encouragement of something or other, and every other manner of society. The aim will be achieved. May be because we feel contended with the very idea and imagine that everything has been done. For example, if we set up a charity society to aid the needy, constituting considerable sums to it, we begin by giving a dinner to mark this praiseworthy undertaking for all the senior dignitaries of the town, naturally consuming half the monies contributed: with what remains we rent a magnificent suite of offices for the committee, with heating and watchmen, and all that is left for the needy is about five and a half Rubles, the question of how to distribute this sum, causes discord among the committee members , each one claiming it for some relative of his own.

                 ( Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol - p.218 ) 

                                    Russian Character

     But the author feels somewhat ashamed to be occupying his readers at such length with people of low rank. knowing from experience how loath they are to acquint themselves with the lower classes. For such is the Russian character: a passionate longing to rub shoulders with those who are if only one notch higher on the scale of ranks, and nodding acquaintance with a count or a prince is worth more than any number of intimate friendships.

                       (Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol -p.33)

             *****************************************

Just as in enlightened Europe, so too in enlightened Russia , there are now a great many distinguished people who simply cannot dine in an inn without striking up a conversation with his waiter, and sometimes even pulling his leg.

     The gentleman's manner was that of a man of substance, and he blew his nose extremely loudly. It is unclear how he did it, but his nose sounded like a trumpet. This seemingly quite innocent distinction did, however, earn him the considerable respect of the waiter.

                                                (ibid- p.25 )

 

                                          Prostitution 

     What is this history of Fantine? It is a society buying a slave.

     From whom? from misery.

    From hunger from cold, from loneliness, from abandonment, from privation. Melancholy barter, A soul for a bit of bread. Misery make the offer, society accepts.

    The Holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet permeats it; it is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs now only upon women, and it is called prostitution.

    At the stage of this mournful drama at which we have arrived, Fantine has nothing left of what she had formerly been. She has become marble in becoming corrupted. Whoever touches her feels a chill. She goes her ways , she endures you and she knows you not; she wears a dishonoured and severe face. Life and social order have spoken their last word to her. All that can happen to her has happened. She has endured all, borne all, experienced all, suffered all, lost all, wept for all. She is resigned , with that resignation that resembles indifference  as death resembles sleep. She shuns nothing now. She fears nothing now. Every cloud falls upon her and all the ocean sweeps over her! What matters to her! The sponge is already drenched. 

     She believed so at last, but it is a mistake to imagine that mancan exhaust his detiny, or can reach the bottom of anything whatever. 

     Alas! What are all these detinies thus drive pell-mell? Whither go they? Why are they so ? 

     He who knows that, see all the shadow. he is alone. His name is God.

                  ( Les Miserable - Victor Hugo - p.126/27 )

 

                          How to Avoid the  Jealousy of gods

     Amasis (said) to Polycrates: ......as I know that the gods aer jealous of success, I cannot rejoice at your excessive prosperity. My own wish, both for myself and for those I care for, would be to do well in some things and boldly in others, passing through life with alternate success and failure; for I have never yet heard of a man who after an unbroken run of luck was finally brought to complete ruin. Now I suggest that you deal with the danger of your continual success in the following way: think of whatever it is you value most - whatever you would most regret the loss of - and throw it away; throw it right away, so that nobody can ever see it again. If after that you do not find the success alternate with failure, then go on using the remedy I have advised. 

                    ( The Histories - Herodotus - p.192 ) 

 

                                          Western Bias

     At last, Dwarkanth yielded, played a piece on the piano and sang; but  Max Muller could find in the music neither melody, nor rhythm, nor harmony. When he said so, Dwarkanth replied:

     "You all are alike; if anything seems strange to you and do not please you at once, you turn away. When I first heard Italian music, it was no music to me at all; but I went on and on, till I began to like it, or what you call understand it. It is the same with everything else. You may see our religion is no religion, our poetry is no poetry, our philosophy is no philosophy. We try to understand and appreciate whatever Europe has produced, but do not imagine that therefore we despise what India has produced. If you studied our music as we do yours, you would find that there is melody , rhythm and harmony in it, quite as much as in yours. And if you would study our poetry, our religion, and our philosophy, you would find that we are not what you call heathens or miscreants, but know as much of the unknowable as  you do, and have seen perhaps even deeper into it than you have. "

(Rabindranath Tagore - Krishna Dutta & Andrew Robinson - p.7 )

 

                                          Simplicity 

     How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for the brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes think he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exist for other people - first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of labour of my fellow men. I regard class distinctions as unjustified and, in the last resort, based on force. I also believe that a simple and unassuming life is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

           ( Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein - p.8 )

                           Universities and Research

     ".... Let's face the facts", Hammond said. " universities are no longer the intellectual centers of the country. The idea is very preposterous. Universities are backwater. Don't look so surprised. i am not saying anything you don't know. Since world war ii, and all the really important discoveries have come out of private laboratories. The laser, the transistor, the polio vaccine, the microchip, the hologram, the personal computer, magnetic resonance imaging, the CAT scan - the list goes on and on. Universities simply are not where it's happening  any more. And theyhaven't been for forty years. if you want to do something important in computers or genetics, you don't go to universities."

     Wu found he was speechless.

     " good heavens'', Hammond said, ''what must you go through start a new project?  How many grant applications, how many forms, how many approvals ? The steering Committee? How do you get more work space if you need it? More assistants if you need them? How long does all that take ? A brilliant man can't sqander precious time with form and committees. Life is so short, and DNA too long. You want to make your mark. If you want to get somethin done, stay out of universities."

        ( Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton- pp.123/24 ) 

 

                                  Cosmos -  Hindu View

     Vasishta said, Here, o lord of the earth, as to how this universe is destroyed. and, of that which was never destroyed and which will never be destroyed at anytime. Twelve thousand years  (according to the measure of the celestials ) make a Yuga, four such Yugas taken athousand times, make a Kalpa, which measures one day of Brahman. Brahman's night also, o king is of the same measure. When Brahman himself is destroyed. Sambu of formless soul and to whom the Yuga attributes of Anima, Lagima &c., naturallu inhere, awakes, and once more creates that First or the Eldest of all creatures, possessed of vast propotions of infinite deeds, endued with form, and identifiable with the universe. That Sambu is otherwise called Isana ( the Lord of everything ). He is pur Effulgence, and transcends all deterioration, having his hands and feet stretching in all directions, with eyes and head and mouth everywhere, and with ears also inevery place. That Being exists, overwhelming the entire universe. The eldest-born is called Hiranya garbha. 

      (Mahabaratha - Ganguli's Translation - pp.10/11 )

 

                                                 

                                                 Mafia

     ....The eelusive technique developed through the ages to acquire status by scaring and intimidating an ever larger number of people are loosely known as the ' way of the Mafia.' The word Mafia notoriously means two things, one, which should be spelled with lower-case 'm', being the mother of the second, the capital letter Mafia. 

     The lower-case mafia is a state of mind, a philosophy of life, a conception of society, a moral code, a particular susceptibility, prevailing among all  Sicilians. They are taught in the cradle, or are born already knowing, that they must aid each other, side with their friends and fight the common enemies even when the friends were wrong and enemies are right; each must defend his dignity at all costs and never allow the smallest slights andinsults to go unanswered; they must keep secrets, and always beware of official authorities and laws. these principles are shared by all Sicilians.

     Mafia, in the second and more specialized meaning of the word, is the world-famous illegal organisation. .. It is a spontaneous formation like an ant-colony or a beehive, a loose and haphazard collection of single men and heterogenous groups, each man obeying his entomological rules, each group uppermost in its tiny domain, independent, submitted to the will of its own leader, each group locally imposing its own rigid form of primitive justice. Only in rare times of emergency does the Mafia mobilize and become one loose confederation.

           ( The Italians- Luigi Barzini - pp.253/54

 

                                        "Civilization" 

     "Civilization'' is gradually making headway among the Negros.... but many who, being illiterate and therefore strangers to civilization, were so far free from many vices, have now become corrupt. Hardly any Negro who has come in contact with civilization has escaped the evil of drink. And when his powerful physique is under the influence of liquor, he becomes perfectly insane and commits all manner of crimes. That civilization must lead to the multiplication of wants is as certain as that two andtwo makes four. In order to increase the Negro's wants or to teach him the value of labour, a poll-tax and hut-tax have been imposed upon him. If these imposts were not levied, this race of agriculturalists living on their farms would not enter mines hundreds of feet deep in order to extract gold or diamonds, and if their labour were not available for the mines, gold as well as diamonds would remain in the bowels of the earth. Likewise , Eropeans would find it difficult to get any servants, if no such tax was imposed. 

( Sathyagraha in South Africa - the Selected Works of Mahathma Gandhi - Vol.3 p.16 ) 

                                      Military Justice

     The ex-attorney Goby never speak of military justice without shedding tears. The oldest of them. Laprat-Teulet, a Republican who had taken part in the great conflicts of the heroic days, spoke of the Army in such loving and impassioned terms that, at any other period, his hearers would have judged his expressions more applicable to some poor orphan girl than to an institution so strong in men and in millions. 

      (Monsieur Bergeret in Paris- Anatole France- p.185 )

 

                 Submissiveness of Turkish Soldiers

     The (Turkish) conscripts took thei fate unquestioning: resignedly, after the custom of Turkish peasantry. They were like sheep, neutrals without vice or virtue. Left alone, they did nothind, or perhaps sat dully  on the ground. Ordered to be kind, and without haste, they  were as good friends and as generous enemies as might be found. Ordered to outrage their fathers and  disembowel their mothers , they did it as calmly as they did nothing, or did well. There was about them the most biddable, most enduring , and least spirited soldiers in the world.

          ( Seven Pillars of Wisdom - T.E. Lawrence- p.54 )

                                                     Prison

     A prison taint was on everything there. The Imprisoned air, the imprison life, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb , the prison had no knowledge of brightness outside, would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of the spice islands of the Indian  ocean.

                    (Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens -p.6 )

                                            New York

     ... New York, a place where speculation and individualism  are carried to the very highest level, where the brutality of self interest reaches the point of cynicism, and where a man, fundamentally isolated from the rest of mankind, finds himself compelled to rely upon his own strength and at every instant to be the self-appointed judge of his own actions, a city in whichpoliteness does not exist.

           ( The Black Sheep - Honere De Balzac - -p 62 ) 

                                Erotic Biographies

    Every man has two erotic biographies. Usually people talk only about the first: the list of affairs and of one-night affairs.

     The other biography is sometimes more interesting: the parade of women we wanted to have, the women who got away. It is a mournful history of opportunities wasted.

     but there is also a third, mysterious, unsettling category of women: the women we could never have had. We liked them, they liked us, but it didn't take long for us to see that they were out of reach, that for them we were on the other side of the border.

(The Book of Laughter and Forgetting -Milan Kundera - p.207)

                                               Laughter

     " Laughter? Does anyone ever care about laughter? I mean real laughter - beyond  joking, jeering, ridicule laughter - delight  unbounded, delight delectable, delight of delights.

     I said to my sister or she said to me, come let's play laughter together. We stretched out side by side on the bed and started in.  At first we just made believe, of course. Forced laughs. Laughable laughs. Laugh  so laughable they made us laugh. then it came - real laughter, total laughter - sweeping us all in unbounded effusion. Burst of laughter, laughter rehashed, jostled laughter, laughter defleshed, magnificent laughter, sumptuous  and wild... and we laugh to the infinity of the laughter of our laughs.. o laughter! Laughter of delight, delight of laughter. Laughing deeply is living deeply

 (ibid - p.56 - Quoted from a book called '' Woman's Word )

                              Prerogatives of a Cook

     Old Dina, the head cook, and principal of all rule and authority in the kitchen department, was filled with wrath at what she considered an invasion of privilege. no Federal baran in Magna Carta times could have more thoroughly resented some incursion of the crown....

     Like a certain classof philosophers. Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was better than her own, or that the course she had pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified.

     Dinah was mistress of the whole art  and mystery of excuse making, in all its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do no wrong; and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and shoulders on which to lay off every sin and fraility, so as to maintain her own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a failure, there were fifty indisputably goog reason for it; and it was the fault undeniably of fifty othe people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing zeal. 

   ( Uncle Tom's Cabin- Harriet Beecher Stow-pp.216/17)

 

                             The God of the Desert

The Beduin  could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within the god. He could not conceive anything  which was or was not God, who alone was great; yet there was a homeliness, an everyday-ness of his climat God, was their eating and their fighting and their lusting, the commonest of their familiar resource and companion, in a way impossible to those whose God is so wistfully veiled from them by despair of their carnal unworthiness of Him and by the decorum of formal worship. Arabs felt no incongruity in bringing God into the weaknesses and appetites of their least creditable causes. He was the most familiar of their words; and indeed we lost much eloquence when making Him the shortest  and ugliest of our monosyllables.

     This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought. It was easily felt as an influence and those who went into the desert long enough to forget its open spaces and its emptiness were inevitably thrust upon God as the only refuge and rhythm of being. 

        ( Seven Pillars of Wisdom- T.E. Lawrence - p.39 ) 

                              British  Superstitions

     It was in the time of Charles ii that scientific rejection of traditional superstitions became common among educated men. Charles ii perceived that science could be an ally against the 'fanatics'

.', as those who regretted Cromwell were called. He founded the Royal Society, and made science fashionable. Enlightenment  spread gradually downwards from the court. The House of Commons was as yet by no means as modern in outlook as the king. After the plague and the Great Fire , the House of Commons inquired into the causes of those misfortunes, which were generally attributed to Divine displeasure, though it was not clear to what the displeasure was due. The Committee  decided that what most displeased the Lord was thw works of Mr. Thomas Hobbs. It was decreed  that no work of his should be published in England. This measure proved effective: there has never been a plague or a Great Fire in London. But Charles, who liked Hobbs because Hobbs had taught him Mathematics, was employed. He, however, was not thought by Parliament to be on intimate terms with Providence.

(The Impact of Science on Society - Bertrand Russell -p.14 )

 

                           " Innocent Superstitions " 

   There are innocent superstitions. On feast days you dance in honour of Diana or Pomona or one of the secondary gods with whom your calender is filled. Capital! Dancing is very agreeable, it is useful to the body, it rejoices the soul , it does not anybody harm; but don't conclude that Pomona and Vertumnus are much obliged to you for having leaped in their honour, and that they will punish you failing to do so. There is not other Pomona nor other Vertumnus than the gardner's spade and mattock. Do not be so idiotic to believe that your garden will be damaged by hail if you fail to the Pyrrhic or the Codaxion.

     There is one superstition that is perhaps pardonable and even encouraging to virtue: that of placing among the gods the great men who have been the benefactors of mankind. It would no doubt be better to content ourselves with regarding them simply as venerable men,  and above all to try to imitate them.Venerate a Solon, a Thales, a Pythagoras without making it into a cult, but do not worship Hercules because he cleaned the Augean stables, and because he lay with fifty girls in one night.

     Above all take care not to establish a cult of rascals who have no merit but ignorance, hysteris and dirt, who have made a duty and a glory of idleness and menda city.

            ( Philosophical Dictionary - Voltaire - p.383 )

                                            Animal in Man

     It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes we should distinctly see this strange fact that each individual of the human species correspond to some one of the species of the animal creations; and we should clearly recognize the truth, hardly perceived  by thinkers, thatfrom the oyster to the eagle, vfrom the swine to the tiger, all animals are in man, that each of them in a man, sometimes even, several of them at once.

 Animals are but the forms of one virtues and vices, wondering before our own eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us to make us reflect. Only , as animals are but shadows.

                  ( Les Miserables -Victor Hugo -p.114 )

 

                                   Indians and Animals 

     Here in India the line between human and non-human was finely drawn, if indeed it were drawn at all. His people were wise, he believed, in their acceptance of animals as part of the living family upon the globe. The animals reciprocated. Cows, sauntering along the streets of cities, fancied themselves human, and gray monkeys, swinging over the rooftops, knew no difference between themselves and man. Even the lesser creatures -mice, chipmunks, squirrels, and such minute varieties of life - deserved the respect and tenderness they were given,although they could be annoying in their truthfulness, taking over anything as their possession if it suited their convenience. His own father has once given up sitting on his gold throne for days until a mongoose had reared her family upon the crimson velvet cushions. In the face of this self- confidence on the part of creatures never harmed, his people had come, through ages, to accept them at their own value.

                    ( Mandala - Pearl S. Buck -pp.13/14 )

                                           The  Camel

     If the horse is the most noble of the conquests of man, the camel is certainly from the Nomad's point of view the most useful. Without it the desert could not be conceived as a hospitable place. The caml is the Nomad's nourisher, his vehicle of transportation and his medium of exchange. The dowry of the bride, the prince of blood, the profit of MAYSIR (gambling), the wealth of a Shiek, are all compound in terms of camels. It is the Bdouin's constant companion, his alter ego , his foster parent. He drinks its milk instead of water ( which he spares for the cattle ); he feasts on its flesh; he covers himself with its skin; he makes his tent of its hair. Its dung he uses as fuel, and its urine as a hair tonic and medicine. to him the camel is more than ''the ship of the desert ''; it is specific gift of Allah.. To quote the striking phrase of Sprenger, the Bedouin is '' the parasite of camel.'' The Bedouin of our day take delight in referring to themselves as ahl al-ba'ir , the people of the camel. Musil states that there is hardly a member of the Ruwali tribe who has not on some occasion drunk water from a camel' paunch. In times of emergency either an old camel is killed or a stick is thrust down its throat to make it vomit water. If the camel has been watered within a day or two, the liquid is tolerably drinkable. The part which the camel has played in the economy of Arabian life is indicated by the fact that the Arabian language is said to include some one thousand names for the camel in its numerous breeds and stages of growth, a number rivalled only by the number of synonyms used for the sword. The Arabian camel can go for about twenty-five days in winter and about five days in Summer without water. 

       ( History of the Arabs - Philip K. Hitti -pp.21/22) 

          ******************************************

     The camel frame was unique, a skeleton built like the hull of a ship but resting on four angular legs ending in enermous pads of feet, the fetlocks  a clever shock-proof device that served equally well for soft desert sand or rocky passed through the hills. The low-swung neck balanced the high,humped back, and at the end of the neck sat the small melancholy head, the mouth loose, the lower lip mobile and hanging, the eyes heavy-lidded and sad. From these eyes a strange caml soul peered out at a world it did not care to understand, and which it could accept only to a degree. Were the camel too heavily loaded, or were its feelings hurt by some indifference on the part of its driver, the beast was capable of lowering itself gently to the earth and remaining  there immobile in protest until it died. Yet camels were not all soul and gentleness. In sudden wrath a camel could blow out its foul breath at the offender, until a mam fainted with the stench.

                     ( Mandala - Pearl S. Buck - p.53 )

 

                                        Great Men

      Great men, like great epochs, are explosive material in whom tremendous energy has been accumulated; their prerequisite  has always been, historically and physiologically, that a protracted assembling, accumulating and preserving has preceded them- that there has been no explosion for a long time.If the tension in the mass has grown too great the merest  accidental stimulus suffice to call the 'genius', the 'deed', the great destiny, into the world... Take the case of Napoleon. The France of of the Revolutuion , and even more pre-Revolution France, would have brought forth the type antithetical to Napoleon; it did bring it forth, moreover. And because Napoleon was different , the heir of a stronger, longer, older civilization than that which was going up in dust and smoke in France, he became master here, he alone was master here. Great human beings are necessary, the epoch in which they appear is accidental; that they almost always become master of their epoch is only because they are stronger, because they are older, because a longer assembling of force has preceeded them. The relationship between a genius and his epoch is the same as that between strong and weak, and as that between old and young.

                 ( Twilight of the Idols - Nietzsche- p.97 )

                                 Insanity and Idiocy

     In Folly's opinion then, the more variety there is in a man's madness the happier he is, so long as he sticks to the form of insanity which is my own preserve, and which indeed is so widespread that I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind who is wise every hour of his life and doesn't suffer from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people. But when a husband swears that the wife he shares with her man lovers outdoes faithful Penelope, and congratulates himself on what is a happy delusion, no one calls him insane because this is seenhappening in marriages everywhere. 

                 ( Praise of Folly - Erasmus -pp.122/23 )

                           "I AM THE GREATEST"

     ..... And the Blessed one  (Buddha ) answered:

     " Ihave overcome all foes

     I am all wise

     Ia am free from all stains in every wa

     I have left everyting, and have obtained emanicipation 

     By the destruction of desire

     Having myself gained knowledge

     Whom should I call myself ?

     I have no teacher, no one is equal to me

     I am the holy one in the world 

     In the world of gods and men no being is like me 

     I am the highest teacher

     I alone am the supreme Buddha

 ( Return to Righteousness -Anagarika Dharmapala - p.136 )

                  Charge Sheet against Rev. Ananda

     Ananda was arraigned by the monks on several charges which he explaines as follows:

     1) He could not formulate the lesser and minor precepts as he was overwhelmed with grief at the imminent death of the master.

     2) He had totread upon the garment of the master while sewing it as there was no one to help him.

     3) He permitted women to salute first the body of the master, because he did not want to detain them. He also did this for their edification.

     4) He was under the influence of the evil one when he forget to request the master to enable him to continue his study for a Kalpa.

     5) he had to plead for the admission of women into the Order out of consideration for Mahaprajapathi Gauthami, who nursed the master in his infancy.

     The chages are differently framed in the other Vinayas. According to the Dulva, two other charges also seem to have being brought against Ananda, first  that he failed to supply drinking water to the Buddha though he had thriced asked for it , and secondly, that he showed the privy parts of the Buddha  to men and women of low character. His replies were 

      6)that the water of the river was muddy and

     7) that the exhibition of the privy parts would rid those concerned of their sensuality. These replies may be taken as having satisfied the Assembly. 

                 ( 2500 Years of Buddhism - pp.39/40 )

                               Animals and Humans

     If Descartes maintained,  in complete defiance of probability, that animals are machines, we must excuse him, for he was compelled to do so by his philosophy, and a philosopher always thinks more of his theories , which are part of himself, than he does of nathre, which is external to him. There are no Cartesians nowadays, but there may still be people who will tell you that animals possess instinct and men understanding. When I was a child that was the generally professed belief. It was an absurdity. Animals have understanding just as we have. It only differs from ours because their organs are different, and like ours, it contains the world. Like animals we possess that secret genius, that unconcious wisdom called instinct, which is far more precious than the understanding. Without it neither flesh worm, nor man could survive an instant.

     I hold that La Fontaine, who was a better philosopher than Descartes, that animals, particularly in their wild state, are full of art and ingenuity. By  taming them we diminish their spirits and cramp their intelligence. What capacity for thought would be left to men supposing them reduced to the condition to which we reduced dogs and horses, not to mention the denizens of the poultry yard?  when Zeus suffers a man to fall into  bondage, he deprives him of half his worth. In fine, whether domesticated or wild, the creatures of air, earth and water are one with us, in that, for down in the depths of their being, they unite to instinct, which is unerring reason, which is fallible. Like men, they are liable to go astray.. 

          ( Little Pierre - Anatole France - p. 216/17 )

 

                       The Illusion of Youth Happiness

     ...It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know that they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have been told are lies, lies, lies. And each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is that each one who has gone through that bitter disillusionment   adds to it in his turn, unconsciously , by the power within him which is stronger than himself.

    ( Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham -p.121 )

 

                                   Genaralities

     The whole trouble seems to lie in generalities.once you have made a generality you are stuck with it. You have to defend it. Let's say the British and/or American soldier is a superb soldier.The Brish and/or American officer is a gentleman. You  in with a lie. There are good ones and bad ones. You find out for yourself which is which if you can be let alone. When you see an American second lieutentant misbehaving in a London club, it is expected that you will deny it, Or if you meet an ill-mannered, surly popinjay of a  british officer , the British are expected to deny that he exists. But he doesexist, and they hate him as much as we do. The trouble with genaralities, particularly patriotic ones, is that they force people to defend things they  don't normally like at all.

     It must be a great shock to an Englishman who is convinced that Americans are boasters when he meets a modest one. His sense of rightness is outraged. Preconceived genaralities are bad enough without trying consciously to start new ones...we get along very well as individuals, but just the moment we become the Americans and they become British trouble is not far behind.

      ( Once There was a War - John Steibeck -pp.82/83 )  

                         Losing Faith in Religion

      In the end I lost faith not because of Robert Ingersoll's arguments, but because  one day I went with an older altar boy to collect the host or communion wafers,from a nearby convent.It struck me as strange when I saw that wafers were baked in ordinary coal stoves. On the way back the older boy opened one of the tins and consumed, on the spot, a handful of ''the body and blood of Christ.'' I expected to see him knocked flat, but nothing happened.

     Bill laughed.'' They ain't been blessed yet. They don't become the blessed sacrement till they been blessed.

     I thought of dear old Father Joseph Walsh, our parish priest, and all at once I didn't believe he could turn those flour and water wafers into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I derived no particular joy from the realization. "Easily may a man become an infidel but hardly can be converted to another faith.''

     For my mother's sake I continued to attend mass while I remained at home. By the time I entered college I wa indifferent to sectarian religion of any kind. Much later I became interested in Buddhism and Taoism as philosophies, but not in institutionalized worship cults. 

     The Scepticism driven into me by my father made me a rationalist in most things and caused me to shy away from dogma and absolutism in any form. Yet church teaching of my youthful mind had penetrated enough to set up a dichotomy between faith and reason which would persist for many years. The yearning to believe in an external and personal saviour , once inculcated in the child, rather than to accept personal responsibility, with all its agony mixed with its satisfactions, is not easily put aside.

          ( Journey to the Beginning - Edgar Snow- p.14 )

                              Kidnapping Philosophy

     The author believes that epistemology has kidnapped modern philosophy, and well nigh ruined it; he hopes for the time when the study of the knowledge-process will be recognized as the business of the science of psychology, and philosophy will again be understood as the synthetic interpretation of all experience rather than the analytic description of the mode and process of experience itself.  Analysis belongs to science, and gives us knowledge; philosophy must provide a synthesis for wisdom.

       ( The Story of Philosophy- Will Durant -p.xxiii)

 

     Recognizing  One's Own Son Through Mark Twain

 

  Mark twain my mother considered slightly coarse and though we had Tom Sawyer and Hucklebury  Finn, and I read them, they were unread to me. I had not seen such persons for myself. Now decades later, I can see welll enough that  Mark Twain caught something American and true that none other has , or so I think.Indeed, I have a son whose ways are so foreign to my ways that I would never have known what to make of him, I think, did I not have Mark twain on my shelves.I d Tom Sawyer  once a year or so, to help me understand this American boy  whi is my own.

 ( My Several World- Pearl S. Buck-

      

                

 Renaissance

   Modern western historians were apt thus to speak of the “Renaissance” under the spell of the same egocentric illusion that has prompted Homo Terricola in allsocieties  and ages to speak of the “earth”, the “Moon”,the  “Sun”. Such facons de parler were , of course, as unscientific as they were insidious,  as insidious as they were subjective. They were expressions of an unsophisticated observer’s uncritical assumption that his own ego is the center of the Universe and that panorama seen from his personal angle of vision is a  true picture of the Universe as it really is.

( A Study of History- Arnold Toynbee- Vol.ix-p.1)

 

   As soon as we have thus brought all the relevant phenomena in the view, we become aware that ,in using the word Renaissance as a proper name, we have being allowing ourselves to fall into the error of seeing a unique  occurrence in an event while in reality was no more than  one particular instance of a recurrent historical phenomenon. The evocation of a dead culture by the living representatives of a civilization that is still a going concern proves  to be a species of historical event for which the proper label is not the “Renaissance”, but ‘’renaissances”.(ibid – p.4)

 

 

   All things considered she was probably the most profoundly  intellectual woman that France has ever produced. And yet, strange as it may seem, when the state official came  to make out the death certificate of this eminent associate and co-worker of the most illustrious members of the French Academy of science, he designated her as rentier-annuitant ( a single woman with no profession )- not as a mathematician. Nor is this all. When the Eiffel Tower was erected, in which the engineers were obliged to give special attention to the elasticity of the materials used, there were inscribed on this lofty structure the names of seventy-two savants. But one will not find in this list the name of the daughter of genius, whose researches contributed so much towards establishing the theory of the elasticity of metals- Sophie Germain.
(H.G.Mozan- quoted in “ Fermat”s Last Theorem” – Simon Singh –p.119)

 

Mathematicians

   It is not unusual for brilliant young minds to burn out, a point noted by the mathematician Alfred Adler. “The mathematical life of a mathematician is short .Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by them, little ever be accomplished.

   “Young men should prove theorems, old men  should write books”, observed G.H.Hardy in his book “A Mathematicians Apology”. No mathematician should ever forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man’s game. To take a simple illustration, the average age of election to the Royal Society is lowest in mathematics”. His own most brilliant student Srinivasa Ramanujan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of thirty-one, having made a series of outstanding breakthroughs during his youth. Despite having received very little formal education in his home village of Kumbakonam in South India, Ramanujan was able to create theorem and solutions which have evaded mathematicians in the west. In Mathematics the experience that comes with age seems less important than the intuition and daring of youth. When he posted his results to Hardy, the Cambridge professor was so impressed that he invited him to abandon his job as a lowly clerk in South India and attend Trinity College, where he could interact with some of the world’s foremost number theorists. Sadly the harsh East Anglican winters were too much for Ramanujan who contracted tuberculosis and died at the age of thirty-three.

Other mathematicians have had equally brilliant but short careers. The nineteenth-century Norwegian Niels Henkik Abel made his greatest contribution to mathematics at the age of nineteen and died in poverty, just eight years later, also of tuberculosis. Charles Hermite said of him;“ He has left mathematicians something to keep them busy for five hundred years:, and it is certainly  true that Abel’s discoveries still have a profound influence on today’s number theorists. Abel’s equally gifted contemporary Galois also made his breakthroughs while still a teenager and then died aged just twenty-one.

   These examples are not intended to show that mathematicians die prematurely and tragically but rather that their most profound ideas are generally conceived while they are young, and Hardy once said: “”I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty.

(Fermat’s Last Theorem – Simon Singh –pp.214)

 

                  ARISTOCRATIC LIFE AND VILLAGE LIFE

   One has to be born into a cultivated society to be able to live in it all one’s life without longing to escape from the oppressive conventions and small insidious lies sanctioned by customs- from the conceit, sectarianism , hypocrisy of that society.; in a word, from vanity of vanities that dulls the senses and corrupts the minds. I was born and reared outside of it, and thanks to this favourable circumstance. I am unable to take big doses of civilization without feeling the necessity of breaking out of its bounds from time to time finding relief from its over-complexity and unwholesome refinement.

   Village life is almost as sad and insufferable as life among the intelligentsia. The best thing to do at such times is to go among the city slums, where, in spite of the dirt, life is very simple and sincere. Or to strike out down the roads and across the fields of your native land – an adventure that is greatly refreshing and demands no resources bot a pair of sturdy legs.

( Konavalov-Maxim Gorky – Selected Works – Vol. 1 – p. 254)

 

                         LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS

 

   I would have given two Franks for the chance of getting that book once into my hands, turning over the sacred yellow leaves, ascertaining the title, and pursuing with my own eyes the enormous figments which, as an unworthy heretic, it was only permitted me to drink in with my bewildered eyes. This book contained legends of the saints. Good God! ( I Speak the words reverently) What legends they were! What gasconding rascals those saints must have been, if they first boasted these exploits or invented these miracles. These legends, however, were no more than monkish extravagance , over which one laugh inwardly; they were, besides, priestly maters, and priestcraft of the book was far worse than its monkery. The ears burned on each side of my head as I listened, perforce, to tales of moral martyrdom inflicted by Rome; the dread boasts of confessors, who had wickedly abused their office trampling to deep degradation high-born ladies, making of countesses and princesses the most tormented slaves under the sun.

 (Villette- Charles Bronte- p.116)

 

   People are never satisfied. If they have a little they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction.

 ( The Winner Stands Alone – Paulo Coellho)

 

              PHILOSOPHERS, POETS AND HISTORIANS

    I have noticed that philosophers as a rule live on good terms with the poets. Philosophers know that poets do not think; that disarms, softens, and delights them. But they see the historians think, and that they think differently from the philosophers. That is what the philosophers do not forgive.

(Life and Letters – Second Series –Anatole France –p. 114)

 

   Philosophers, as a rule, have small liking for history. They are ready to cast on it the reproach of proceeding without method

and without an aim. Descartes held it in contempt. Malebranch used to say that he attributed no more importance to it than to the gossip of the neighborhood.. I was lucky enough to have a chat with M.Darlu, a philosopher whose conversation is always profitable  to me, and I had a great deal of trouble in defending history against him, for he regards it as least honourable  of the works of imagination.

(The Errors of History -Second Series –Anatole France – p.10)

                                           PLAGIARISM

 

   But our contemporaries are very touchy in this respect, and it is a matter of sheer good luck if, in our days, a well-known writer is not accused at least once a year of stealing ideas,

( An Apology for Plagiarism Fourth Series – Anatole fFrance p.149)

 

   I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once completed will have no imitator… I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but al least I am different. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me is a question which can only be resolved after the reading of my book.

 (The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau –p.17)

 

                                             INJUSTICE

   ..That first meeting with violence and injustice has remained so deeply engraved on my heart that any thought which recall it summons back this first emotion. The feeling was only a personal one in its origins, but it has since assumed such a consistency and has become so divorced from personal interests that my blood boils at the sight or the tale of any injustice, whoever may be the sufferer and wherever it may have taken place, in just the same way as if I were myself its victim. When I read of the cruelties of a fiercer tyrant, of the subtle machinations of a rascally priest, I would gladly go and stab the wretch myself, even if it were to cost my life hundred times  over.

 ( ibid-p.31)

Renaissance

   Modern western historians were apt thus to speak of the “Renaissance” under the spell of the same egocentric illusion that has prompted Homo Terricola in all societies  and ages to speak of the “earth”, the “Moon”,the  “Sun”. Such facons de parler were , of course, as unscientific as they were insidious,  as insidious as they were subjective. They were expressions of an unsophisticated observer’s uncritical assumption that his own ego is the center of the Universe and that panorama seen from his personal angle of vision is a  true picture of the Universe as it really is.

( A Study of History- Arnold Toynbee- Vol.ix-p.1)

 

   As soon as we have thus brought all the relevant phenomena in the view, we become aware that ,in using the word Renaissance as a proper name, we have being allowing ourselves to fall into the error of seeing a unique  occurrence in an event while in reality was no more than  one particular instance of a recurrent historical phenomenon. The evocation of a dead culture by the living representatives of a civilization that is still a going concern proves  to be a species of historical event for which the proper label is not the “Renaissance”, but ‘’renaissances”.(ibid – p.4)

 

 

   All things considered she was probably the most profoundly  intellectual woman that France has ever produced. And yet, strange as it may seem, when the state official came  to make out the death certificate of this eminent associate and co-worker of the most illustrious members of the French Academy of science, he designated her as rentier-annuitant ( a single woman with no profession )- not as a mathematician. Nor is this all. When the Eiffel Tower was erected, in which the engineers were obliged to give special attention to the elasticity of the materials used, there were inscribed on this lofty structure the names of seventy-two savants. But one will not find in this list the name of the daughter of genius, whose researches contributed so much towards establishing the theory of the elasticity of metals- Sophie Germain.
(H.G.Mozan- quoted in “ Fermat”s Last Theorem” – Simon Singh –p.119)

 

Mathematicians

   It is not unusual for brilliant young minds to burn out, a point noted by the mathematician Alfred Adler. “The mathematical life of a mathematician is short .Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by them, little ever be accomplished.

   “Young men should prove theorems, old men  should write books”, observed G.H.Hardy in his book “A Mathematicians Apology”. No mathematician should ever forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man’s game. To take a simple illustration, the average age of election to the Royal Society is lowest in mathematics”. His own most brilliant student Srinivasa Ramanujan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of thirty-one, having made a series of outstanding breakthroughs during his youth. Despite having received very little formal education in his home village of Kumbakonam in South India, Ramanujan was able to create theorem and solutions which have evaded mathematicians in the west. In Mathematics the experience that comes with age seems less important than the intuition and daring of youth. When he posted his results to Hardy, the Cambridge professor was so impressed that he invited him to abandon his job as a lowly clerk in South India and attend Trinity College, where he could interact with some of the world’s foremost number theorists. Sadly the harsh East Anglican winters were too much for Ramanujan who contracted tuberculosis and died at the age of thirty-three.

Other mathematicians have had equally brilliant but short careers. The nineteenth-century Norwegian Niels Henkik Abel made his greatest contribution to mathematics at the age of nineteen and died in poverty, just eight years later, also of tuberculosis. Charles Hermite said of him;“ He has left mathematicians something to keep them busy for five hundred years:, and it is certainly  true that Abel’s discoveries still have a profound influence on today’s number theorists. Abel’s equally gifted contemporary Galois also made his breakthroughs while still a teenager and then died aged just twenty-one.

   These examples are not intended to show that mathematicians die prematurely and tragically but rather that their most profound ideas are generally conceived while they are young, and Hardy once said: “”I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty.

(Fermat’s Last Theorem – Simon Singh –pp.214)

 

                  ARISTOCRATIC LIFE AND VILLAGE LIFE

   One has to be born into a cultivated society to be able to live in it all one’s life without longing to escape from the oppressive conventions and small insidious lies sanctioned by customs- from the conceit, sectarianism , hypocrisy of that society.; in a word, from vanity of vanities that dulls the senses and corrupts the minds. I was born and reared outside of it, and thanks to this favourable circumstance. I am unable to take big doses of civilization without feeling the necessity of breaking out of its bounds from time to time finding relief from its over-complexity and unwholesome refinement.

   Village life is almost as sad and insufferable as life among the intelligentsia. The best thing to do at such times is to go among the city slums, where, in spite of the dirt, life is very simple and sincere. Or to strike out down the roads and across the fields of your native land – an adventure that is greatly refreshing and demands no resources bot a pair of sturdy legs.

( Konavalov-Maxim Gorky – Selected Works – Vol. 1 – p. 254)

 

                         LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS

 

   I would have given two Franks for the chance of getting that book once into my hands, turning over the sacred yellow leaves, ascertaining the title, and pursuing with my own eyes the enormous figments which, as an unworthy heretic, it was only permitted me to drink in with my bewildered eyes. This book contained legends of the saints. Good God! ( I Speak the words reverently) What legends they were! What gasconding rascals those saints must have been, if they first boasted these exploits or invented these miracles. These legends, however, were no more than monkish extravagance , over which one laugh inwardly; they were, besides, priestly maters, and priestcraft of the book was far worse than its monkery. The ears burned on each side of my head as I listened, perforce, to tales of moral martyrdom inflicted by Rome; the dread boasts of confessors, who had wickedly abused their office trampling to deep degradation high-born ladies, making of countesses and princesses the most tormented slaves under the sun.

 (Villette- Charles Bronte- p.116)

 

   People are never satisfied. If they have a little they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction.

 ( The Winner Stands Alone – Paulo Coellho)

 

              PHILOSOPHERS, POETS AND HISTORIANS

    I have noticed that philosophers as a rule live on good terms with the poets. Philosophers know that poets do not think; that disarms, softens, and delights them. But they see the historians think, and that they think differently from the philosophers. That is what the philosophers do not forgive.

(Life and Letters – Second Series –Anatole France –p. 114)

 

   Philosophers, as a rule, have small liking for history. They are ready to cast on it the reproach of proceeding without method

and without an aim. Descartes held it in contempt. Malebranch used to say that he attributed no more importance to it than to the gossip of the neighborhood.. I was lucky enough to have a chat with M.Darlu, a philosopher whose conversation is always profitable  to me, and I had a great deal of trouble in defending history against him, for he regards it as least honourable  of the works of imagination.

(The Errors of History -Second Series –Anatole France – p.10)

                                           PLAGIARISM

 

   But our contemporaries are very touchy in this respect, and it is a matter of sheer good luck if, in our days, a well-known writer is not accused at least once a year of stealing ideas,

( An Apology for Plagiarism Fourth Series – Anatole fFrance p.149)

 

   I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once completed will have no imitator… I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but al least I am different. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me is a question which can only be resolved after the reading of my book.

 (The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau –p.17)

 

                                             INJUSTICE

   ..That first meeting with violence and injustice has remained so deeply engraved on my heart that any thought which recall it summons back this first emotion. The feeling was only a personal one in its origins, but it has since assumed such a consistency and has become so divorced from personal interests that my blood boils at the sight or the tale of any injustice, whoever may be the sufferer and wherever it may have taken place, in just the same way as if I were myself its victim. When I read of the cruelties of a fiercer tyrant, of the subtle machinations of a rascally priest, I would gladly go and stab the wretch myself, even if it were to cost my life hundred times over.

 ( ibid-p.31)

 

 THE GEOGRAPHICAL INTERPRETATION OF SOCIETY

   Te geographical interpretation of society is not,of course, original with him(Montesqueu) Indeed, it is as old as Hippocrates, and Bodin in the sixteenth century anticipated Montesquieu in the eighteenth century. Montesquieueu is not so extreme as Cousin will be in the nineteenth century, but his intent is clear. He wants to relate climate to temperament and temperament , in turn , to customs, laws , and forms of government.For eXample (Montesquieu)says:

   “ people are more vigorous in cold climates. Here the action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the fibres are better performed, the temperature of the humours is greater, the blood moves more freely towards the heart, and reciprocally the heart has more power. The superiority of strength must produce various effects;; for instance, a grater opinion of security, that is, more frankness, less suspicion, policy and cunning. In short, this must be productive of very different tempers..In cold countries, they have very little sensibility for pleasure; in in temperate countries, they have more; in warm countries, their sensibility is exquisite. As climates are distinguished by degrees of latitude, we might distinguish them also in some measures by those of sensibilities. I have been at the opera in England and in Italy, where I have seen the same pieces and the same performers; and yet same music produces such different effects on the two nations; one is so cold and phlegmatic, and the other so lively and enraptured, that it seems almost conceivable”

 (A History of Sociological Analysis- Tom Bottomore and  Robert  Nisbet –pp.10/11)

 

   Yes , gentlemen, give me the map of a country, its configuration , its climate, its waters, its winds, and all the physical geography; give me its  natural productions , its flora, its zoology and I pledge myself to tell you, a priori, what the man of that country will be and what part that country will play in history, not by accident, but of necessity; not at one epoch, but in all epochs.

( ibid- p.35- Note No.28)

 

 CULTURE  - A PROXY BATTLEGROUND FOR POLITICS

   Americans generally regard the culture as entertainment, a diversion, perhaps even  a source of individual development; culture rarely plays a central role in national political life, except perhaps at times of mass protest, such as the Vietnam war. Not so in Russia.Through much of Russian history , culture has been a  proxy battle-ground for politics. Russians have always turned to artists reveal the truth behind official lies. Poetry and fables have served as Aesopian  subterfuges when open political communication was impossible. So important was literature to Czar Nicholas that he was Puskin’s personal censor. Dostoyevsky was exiled and faced a firing squad before being spared at the last minute by order of the Czar One reason the biting nineteenth century               of Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Satikov ( Shchedrin ) have  played to enthusiastic modern audiences in Russia is that they mock the same political diktat and pretentious habits of rulers as modern underground balladiers. Under dictators, life and thought do not cease; art becomes the substitute  outlet for politics.
 ( The New Russian Hedrick Smith –P. 96)

 

    POVERTY IN PARIS

   In Paris , there are in fact three classes of pauperdom. First, there is the poverty of the man who keeps up appearances now but whose future is secure: the poverty of young men, artists and society people who are temporarily embarrassed. The signs of this poverty are only visible to the most practiced observer and even then a microscope is required. These people make up the equestrian class of paupers, they will go around in cabs. In the second class of the order are old men who have ceased to care about anything, and who wear the cross of the Legion f Honour over the alpaca coat  in June. Theirs is the poverty of old retired  people, aging clerks whose home is at Sainte-Perine, people who are hardly concerned any more about how they dress. Finally, there is the poverty that goes about in rags, the pauperdom  of the working class; this is the poverty  in its most poetical form, admired  and painted ( especially at carnival time) by Callot, Hogarth, Murillo, Charlet , Gavarni, Meissonier and artists generally.

( ( The Black Sheep- Honere de Balzac-p. 120)

 

NAPOLEON’S DIARIES ON POLYGOMY

    The proclamations and bulletins of Napoleon show  him to have been a propagandist of genius; so, too, was Goebbels. Yet the memoirs of the one are dreary as the Diaries of the other. In fact, the Memoires of Napoleon – undoubtedly a genuine product of his mind – convinced me that the Goebbels’ diaries were genuine: if Napoleon could write as boringly as this, Goebbels could also. Both works are, of course, full of lies: thar was to be expected. It is drabness, fatuity, commonplaceness of mind, that are surprising. What, for instance, could be more idiotic than Napoleon’s explanation of polygamy in his chapter on Egypt? It occurs, he says, in countries, inhabited by men of several colours and is The only means of preventing them persecuting each other”, since every man can have a black wife, a white one, copper-coloured one and one of some other colour. He proceeds to recommend it in the French colonies as the solution of the colour question, so that every man can have “ one white, one black, and one Mulatto wife, At the same Time.

 ( Europe –Grandeur and Decline – A.J.P.Taylor –P.11)

 

AMERICAN VENERATION OF THE PAST

   Since the American spirit works in an environment that is constantly changing, it lays great stress on the power to innovate  and adapt. It has a veneration of the past; there are few countries in the world where the past is so religiously commemorated as in the United States. But this veneration is wholly compatible not only with the right of each generation to experiment with itself, but more, with the right of each individual to make his own bargain with the fate.

 (The American Democracy – Harold J. Laski – p. 43)

 

                               PHILISTINISM AT WORK

   Being a true German philistine, Herr List, instead of studying real History, look for the secret, bad aims of individuals, and owing to his cunning, he is very well able to discover them (puzzle them out.)  He makes great discoveries, such as that Adam Smith wanted to deceive the world by his theory, and tha the whole world let itself be deceived by him until the great Herr List woke it from its dream, rather in the way that a certain Dusseldorf Counsellor of Justice made out that Roman history had been invented by medieval monks in order to justify the domination of Rome.

    But just as the German bourgeois knows no better way of opposing his enemy by casting a moral slur on him, casting aspersions on his frame of mind, and seeking bad motives for his actions, in short, by bringing him into bad repute and making him personally an object of suspicion, so Herr List also cast aspersions on the English and French economists, and retails gossips  about them. And just as the German philistine does not disdain the pettiest profit-making and swindling in trade, so Herr List does not disdain to juggle with words from the quotations he gives in order to make them profitable. He does not disdain to stick the trade-mark of his rival on to his own bad products, in order to bring his rival’s product into disrepute by falsifying them, or even to invent downright lies about his competitor in order to discredit him.

 (Marx-Engels – Collected Works – Vol.4 pp. 267/68)

 

WRITERS

    When a writer is twenty, something we might call his initial experience of the world usually begins to ripen  within him, and becomes a source  he will draw on for a long time to come. It is about this age, after a lot of initial groping, that he comes to a more serious understanding of himself, looks about the world with his own eyes, and discovers his own way of bearing witness to it, and to himself. Then it takes roughly ten years for him to investigate, think through, and exhaust this initial experience of the world from all angles. It is an important ten years:  a time of getting under way, of heroic self-discovery, a time of relative bravery and relative optimism.

   I do not belong to that fortunate class of authors who write constantly, quickly, easily, and always well, whose imaginations are by nature open to the world. Whatever they touch, it is always right. That I do not belong in such company, of course, bothers me , and sometimes even upset me. I am ambitious and I am angry with myself for having so few ideas, for finding it so difficult to write, for having so little faith in myself, and for thinking so much about everything that I often feel crippled by it.

 (Open letters – Selected Writing – Vaclav Hael – p.3)

 

BEAN-COUNTERS

   In the business world, financial men are often referred to as bean-counters.. In the days before computers these guys were the computers. By their very nature, financial analysts tend to be defensive, conservative and pessimistic. On the other side of the fence are the guys in sales and marketing –  aggressive , speculative  and optimistic. They are always saying: “Let’s do it.” While the bean-counters are always cautioning you on why you shouldn’t do it. In any company you need both sides of the equation, because natural tension between the two groups creates its own system of checks and balances.

 (Talking Straight – lee Iacocca –p.43)

 

MOTHERS’DAY

   Of course Mothers’ Day is an ingenious device of the manufacturers to sell their goods but they surely wouldn’t  buy costly spaces in the newspapers to advertise this occasion for giving unless the public response were satisfactory. They are tending on a sentiment. I have a notion that family affection is a great deal stronger in America than with us. People are expected to feel it and doubtless do. I was surprised to hear that a busy man in a busy office was to be away for a week because he had gone with his wife to bury her mother in some place no further from New York than Bristol is from London. In England he might have gone to the funeral, but would have come back at the latest next day. What surprised me was not only that he felt it necessary to absent himself for so long from his urgent affairs to support his wife in the distress which for all I know she felt, but that his employer, notwithstanding the inconvenience it cause him, looked upon it as right and proper. During this war I have seen instances of the passionate affection that exists between son and mother and mother and son.

((A Writers’ Notebook- Somerset Maugham – p.298)

 

                         PHILOSOPHERS AND THE TRUTH

   I cannot understand how anyone can be a skeptic sincerely and on principle. Either such philosophers do not exist or they are the most miserable of men. Doubt with regard to what we ought to know is a condition too violent for the human mind; it cannot long be endured: in spite of itself the mind decides one way or another, and it prefers to be deceived rather than to believe nothing.

   My perplexity was increased by the fact that I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest: as I could not accept absurd decisions, I was deprived of those which were not absurd. When I was told to believe everything, I could believe nothing, and I knew not where to stop.

   I consulted the philosophers, I searched their books and examined their various theories: I found them all alike proud, assertive, dogmatic, professing, even in their so-called skepticism, to know everything, proving nothing, scoffing at each other. This last trait, which was common to all of them, struck me as the only point in which they were right. Braggarts in attack, they are weaklings in defense. Weigh their arguments, they were all destructive; count their views, everyone speaking for himself: they are only agreed in arguing with each other. I could find no way out of my uncertainty by listening to them.

   If the philosophers were in a position to declare the truth, which of them would care to do so? Every one of them knows that his own system rests on no surer foundations than the rest, but he maintains it because it is his own. There is not one of them who, if he chanced to discover the difference between truth and falsehood, would not prefer his own lie to the truth which another had discovered. Where is the philosopher who would not deceive the whole world for his own glory? If he can rise above the crowd, if he can excel his rivals, what more does he want? Among believers he is an atheist: among atheist he would be a believer.

    I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any of them.

 ( Emile- Jean-jacques Rousseau- pp.230/31)

 

SEX

   …Even those embraces that are not mentioned in the KAMA SHASTRA should be practiced at the time of sexual enjoyment, if they are are in any way conducive to the increase of love or passion. The rules of the SHASTHRA  apply as long as  the passion of man is middling, but when the wheel of love is once set in moton, there is no Shastra and no order.

 ( The Kama Suthra – Vatsayana _ p. 45)