The Self Is The Modern Substitute For

The Self Must Be A Tense Bow. It Must Struggle With Opposites Rather Than Harmonize Them, Rather Than Turn The Tension Over To The Great Instruments Of Last Manhood The Skilled Bow Unbenders And Jesuits Of Our Days, The Psychiatrists, Who, In The Same Spirit And As Part Of The Same Conspiracy Of Modernity As The Peace Virtuosos, Reduce Conflict.

A Serious Life Means Being Fully Aware Of The Alternatives, Thinking About Them With All The Intensity One Brings To Bear On Life-and-death Questions, In Full Recognition That Every Choice Is A Great Risk With Necessary Consequences That Are Hard To Bear.

We Are Like Ignorant Shepherds Living On A Site Where Great Civilizations Once Flourished. The Shepherds Play With The Fragments That Pop Up To The Surface, Having No Notion Of The Beautiful Structures Of Which They Were Once A Part.

There Is A Perennial And Unobtrusive View That Morality Consists In Such Things As Telling The Truth, Paying One's Debts, Respecting One's Parents And Doing No Voluntary Harm To Anyone. Those Are All Things Easy To Say And Hard To Do; They Do Not Attract Much Attention, And Win Little Honor In The World.

Education In Our Times Must Try To Find Whatever There Is In Students That Might Yearn For Completion, And To Reconstruct The Learning That Would Enable Them Autonomously To Seek That Completion.