Précis 2000-2010

2000
Besant describing the middle class of the 19th century wrote “In the first place it was for more a class
apart. In no sense did it belong to society. Men in professions of any kind (except in the Army and Navy)
could only belong to society by right of birth and family connections; men in trade – bankers were still
accounted tradesmen – could not possible belong to society. That is to say, if they went to live in the
country they were not called upon by the country families and in the town they were not admitted by
men into their clubs, or by ladies into their houses …… The middle class knew its own place, respected
itself, made its own society for itself, and cheerfully accorded to rank the deference due”. Since then,
however, the life of the middle classes had undergone great changes as their numbers had swelled and
their influence had increased. Their already well-developed consciousness of their own importance had
deepened. More critical than they had been in the past of certain aspects of aristocratic life, they were
also more concerned with the plight of the poor and of the importance of their own values of sobriety,
thrift, hand work, piety and respectability as examples of ideal behaviour for the guidance of the lower
orders. Above all they were respectable. There were divergences of opinion as to what exactly was
respectable and what was not. There were, nevertheless, certain conventions, which were universally
recognized: wild and drunker behaviour was certainly not respectable, nor were godlessness or avert
promiscuity, nor an ill-ordered home life, unconventional manners, self-indulgence or flamboyant
clothes and personal adornments.
2001
It was not from want of perceiving the beauty of external natural but from the different way of
perceiving it, that the early Greeks did not turn their genius to portray, either in colour or in poetry, the
outlines, the hues, and contrasts of all fair valleys, and bold cliffs and golden noons, and rosy lawns
which their beautiful country affords in lavish abundance. Primitive people never so far as I know, enjoy
what is called the picturesque in nature, wild forests, beetling cliffs, reaches of Alpine snow are with
them great hindrances to human intercourse, and difficulties in the way of agriculture. They are
furthermore the homes of the enemies of mankind, of the eagle, the wolf, or the tiger, and are most
dangerous in times of earthquake or tempest. Hence the grand and striking features of nature are at
first looked upon with fear and dislike. I do not suppose the Greeks different in this respect from other
people, except that the frequent occurrence of mountains and forests made agriculture peculiarly
difficult and intercourse scanty, thus increasing their dislike for the apparently reckless waste in nature.
We have even in Homer a similar feeling as regards the sea, - the sea that proved the source of all their
wealth and the condition of most of their greatness. Before they had learned all this, they called it “the
unvintagable sea” and looked upon its shore as merely so much waste land. We can therefore easily
understand, how in the first beginning of Greek art, the representation of wild landscape would find no
place, whereas fruitful fields did not suggest themselves as more than the ordinary background. Art in
those days was struggling with material nature to which it felt a certain antagonism. There was nothing
in the social circumstances of the Greeks to produce any revolution in this attitude during their greatest
days. The Greek republics were small towns where the pressure of the city life was not felt. But as soon
as the days of the Greek republics were over, the men began to congregate for imperial purposes into
Antioch, or Alexandria or lastly into Rome, than we seek the effect of noise and dust and smoke and
turmoil breaking out into the natural longing for rural rest and retirement so that from Alexander’s day
----- We find all kinds of authors ------ epic poets, lyricists, novelists and preachers ----- agreeing in the
praise of nature, its rich colors and its varied sounds

2002
The Official name of our species is homo sapiens: but there are many anthropologists who prefer to
think of man as homo Faber the smith, the maker of tools. It would be possible. I think to reconcile these
two definitions in a third. In order to be Faber and Sapiens, Homo must first be loquax, the loquacious
one. Without language we should merely be hairless chimpanzees. Indeed we should be some things
much worse. Possessed of a high IQ but no language, we should be like the Yahoos of Gulliver’s Travels…
Creatures too clever to be guided by instinct, too Self-centered to live in a state of animal grace, and
therefore, condemned forever, frustrated and malignant, between contented apehood and knowledge
and the broadcasting of information. It was language that permitted the expression of religious insight,
the formulation of ethical ideals, the codification of laws. It was language in a word that turned us into
human beings and gave birth to civilization.
2003
If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members
of a society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views
to particular professions on the one hand, not creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works
indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of
poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It
does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or
Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it
content on the other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer,
though such too it includes within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to a
great ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at
purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular
aspirations. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and
judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It
teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to
detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit,
and to master any subject with facility. (John H Newman)

2004
We’re dealing with a very dramatic and very fundamental paradigm shift here. You may try to lubricate
your social interactions with personality techniques and skills, but in the process, you may truncate the
vital character base. You can’t have the fruits without the roots. It’s the principle of sequencing: Private
Victory precedes Public Victory. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationship
with others. Some people say that you have to like yourself before you can like others. I think that idea
has merit but if you don’t know yourself, if you don’t control yourself, if you don’t have mastery over
yourself, it’s very hard to like yourself, except in some shortterm, psych-up, superficial way. Real self-
respect comes from dominion over self from true independence. Independence is an achievement. Inter
dependence is a choice only independent people can make. Unless we are willing to achieve real
independence, it’s foolish to try to develop human relations skills. We might try. We might even have
some degree of success when the sun is shining. But when the difficult times come-and they will – We
won’t have the foundation to keep things together. The most important ingredient we put into any
relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come
from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core
(the character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won’t be able to create and sustain the
foundation necessary for effective interdependence. The techniques and skills that really make a
difference in human interaction are the ones that almost naturally flow from a truly independent
character. So the place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our Circle of
Influence, our own character. As we become independent – Proactive, centered in correct principles,
value driven and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity – we then
can choose to become interdependent – capable of building rich, enduring, highly productive
relationships with other people.

2005
Basically, psychoses and neuroses represent man’s inability to maintain a balance or equated polarity in
conducting his life. The ego becomes exclusively or decidedly one-sided. In psychoses there is a
complete collapse of the ego back into the inner recesses of the personal and collective unconsciouses.
When he is repressed toward fulfilling some life goal and where he is further unable to sublimate
himself towards another goal, man regresses into goal structures not actually acceptable to him or to
the society. Strong emotional sickness of the psychotic type is like having the shadow run wild. The
entire psyche regresses to archaic, animal forms of behaviours. In less severe forms of emotional
sickness there may be an accentuated and overpowering use of one of the four mental functions at the
expense of the other three. Either thinking, feeling, intuiting, or sensing may assume such a superior
role as to render the other three inoperative. The persona may become so dominant as to create a
totally one-sided ego, as in some forms of neurotic behaviour. All in all, whatever the type of severity of
the emotional disorder, it can be taken as a failure of the psyche to maintain a proper balance between
the polarities of life. Essentially, psychoses and neuroses are an alienation of the self from its true goal
of self-actualization. In this sense the culture is of no consequence. Emotional disorder is not a question
of being out of tune with one’s culture so much as it is of being out of tune with one’s self.
Consequently, neurosis is more than bizarre behaviour, especially as it may be interpreted by
contemporaries in the culture. This interpretation avoids the sociological question of what is a mental
disorder, since a form of behaviour which is acceptable in one culture may be considered neurotic in
another culture. To Jung, the deviation from cultural norms is not the point. The inability to balance out
personal polarities is.
2006
It was not so in Grece, where philosophers professed less, and undertook more. Parmenides pondered
nebulously over the mystery of knowledge; but the pre-Socratics kept their eyes with fair consistency
upon the firm earth, and sought to ferret out its secrets by observation and experience, rather than to
create it by exuding dialectic; there were not many introverts among the Greeks. Picture Democritus,
the Laughing Philosopher; would he not be perilous company for the dessicated scholastics who have
made the disputes about the reality of the external world take the place of medieval discourses on the
number of angles that could sit on the point of a pin? Picture Thales, who met the challenge that
philosophers were numskulls by “cornering the market” and making a fortune in a year. Picture
Anaxagoras, who did the work of Darwin for the Greeks and turned Pericles from a wire-pulling
politician into a thinker and a statesman, Picture old Socrates, unafraid of the sun or the stars, gaily
corrupting young men and overturning governments; what would he have done to these bespectacled
seedless philosophasters who now litter the court of the once great Queen? To Plato, as to these virile
predecessors, epistemology was but the vestibule of philosophy, akin to the preliminaries of love; it was
pleasant enough for a while, but it was far from the creative consummation that drew wisdom’s lover
on. Here and there in the shorter dialogues, the Master dallied amorously with the problems of
perception, thought, and knowledge; but in his more spacious moments he spread his vision over larger
fields, built himself ideal states and brooded over the nature and destiny of man. And finally in Aristotle
philosophy was honoured in all her boundless scope and majesty; all her mansions were explored and
made beautiful with order; here every problem found a place and every science brought its toll to
wisdom. These men knew that the function of philosophy was not to bury herself in the obscure retreats
of epistemology, but to come forth bravely into every realm of inquiry, and gather up all knowledge for
the coordination and illumination of human character and human life.