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• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  She does, and then gasps as he paddles them into the cave. The cavern is huge and vast with no walls to be seen. The black waters trail off into the far distance, and stalactites and stalagmites form a forest of columns and stumps that emerge from the water and disappear into the darkness overhead, shadowy shapes painted yellow orange now by the lantern light. The cavern is full of them, and they fade off into the distance in a bewildering maze of pillars and arches. “What is this, Sheldon? What is this place?” “You remember Xanadu? ‘Where Alph the sacred river ran/ ‘Through caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea.’ ” “Tt rings a bell.” “This is the Cavern. The lake is fed by underground springs, very deep. They formed these caverns. Then, not that long ago by geologic time, the lake broke through and flooded them. The old dukes used this cave to supply the castle in times of war. The castle was replaced by the palace centuries ago, but some of the medieval stonework still remains. The hotel keeps the cave a secret, but they use part of the old landing stage for a wine cellar. That’s the dim light you see way up ahead. It’s too dangerous down here for the regular guests. Only a few of us even know about it.” The little boat glides along in its dome of yellow light, casting weird shadows on the columns. She cannot see the ceiling, she cannot see the walls. All there is is a forest of strangely shaped The Cavern 31 columns stretching away on either side as far as she can see, as if the whole island were hollow. Dominique is spellbound. Speaking in this place seems wrong. They’re in a deep and secret place, and the human voice isn’t welcome. She looks over the side but sees nothing but her face staring back at her from the ring of lamplight. The water is a perfect black mirror. “The water in this cave is very deep,” he says. “There are fish down there too, big fish, living at the bottom in the darkness.” The thought of fish there in the black water does something to her, brings up some primitive emotion of fear or reverence, and she unconsciously puts her hand to her chest as if to still her heart. “They're not dangerous. Some subspecies of catfish, blind and pale white. They won’t hurt you.” He paddles on. He tells her, “This is the lesson for today, Dominique.” She looks back at him. “The caverns?” “Just wait,” he says. ‘VII. They travel on, keeping the light of the landing stage ahead of them in the distance. The paddle is soundless in the water; the entire cavern is soundless, though Dominique can hear the slow drip of water when they pass certain spots. It is timeless; the deep unimaginable patience of nature, the black water in caves unseen.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  That railway journey to Lawrence, Kansas, is as vivid to me now as if it had taken place yesterday yet it all happened more than fifty years ago. It was a blazing hot day and in the seat opposite to me was an old grey-haired man who appeared to be much troubled by the heat: he moved about restlessly, mopped his forehead, took off his vest and finally went out probably to the open observation platform, leaving a couple of books on his seat. I took one of them up heedlessly—it was “The Life and Death of Jason”, by William Morris. I read a page or two, was surprised by the easy flow of the verse; but not gripped, so I picked up the other volume:—“Laus Veneris: Poems and Ballads” by Algernon Charles Swinburne. It opened at the Anactoria and in a moment, I was carried away entranced as no poetry before or since has ever entranced me. Venus, herself, spoke in the lines: “Alas! that neither rain nor snow nor dew Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through, Assuage me nor allay me, nor appease, Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease, Till Time wax faint in all her periods, Till Fate undo the bondage of the Gods To lay and slake and satiate me all through, Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew, And shed around and over and under me Thick darkness and the insuperable sea.” I haven’t seen the poem since and there may be verbal inaccuracies in my version; but the music and passion of the verses enthralled me and when I came to “The Leper”, the last stanzas brought hot tears to my eyes and in the “Garden of Proserpine”, I heard my own soul speaking with divine if hopeless assurance. Was there ever such poetry? Even the lighter verses were charming: “Remembrance may recover And time bring back to time The name of your first lover, The ring of my first rhyme: But rose-leaves of December, The storms of June shall fret; The day that you remember, The day that I forget. And then the gay defiance: In the teeth of the glad salt weather, In the blown wet face of the sea; While three men hold together, Their Kingdoms are less by three. And the divine songs to Hugo and to Whitman and the superb “Dedication”: the last verse of it a miracle: Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the Heavens have one; Though the stars be discrowned of the sunlight; And the earth dispossessed of the Sun: They have moonlight and sleep for repayment; When refreshed as a bride and set free; With stars and sea-winds in her raiment Night sinks on the sea.”

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  In the eighteen months prior to my wife’s death in March 1979, there were a series of experiences in which Helen and I and a number of friends were all involved, which decidedly changed my thoughts and feelings about dying and the continuation of the human spirit. The experiences were intensely personal, and some day I may write fully about them. For now, I can only hint. The following story is mostly about Helen, but I will concentrate on my portion of the experience. Helen was a great skeptic about psychic phenomena and immortality. Yet, upon invitation, she and I visited a thoroughly honest medium, who would take no money. There, Helen experienced, and I observed, a “contact” with her deceased sister, involving facts that the medium could not possibly have known. The messages were extraordinarily convincing, and all came through the tipping of a sturdy table, tapping out letters. Later, when the medium came to our home and my own table tapped out messages in our living room, I could only be open to an incredible, and certainly non-fraudulent experience. Helen also had visions and dreams of her family members, which made her increasingly certain that she would be welcomed “on the other side.” As death came closer, she “saw” evil figures and the devil by her hospital bed. But when it was suggested by a friend that these might be creations of her own mind, she dismissed them, finally dismissing the devil by telling him he had made a mistake in coming, and she was not going with him. He never reappeared. Also in these closing days, Helen had visions of an inspiring white light which came close, lifted her from the bed, and then deposited her back on the bed. In this chapter, I mentioned that in these last years the distance between us had grown increasingly great. I wanted to care for her, but I was not at all sure that I loved her. One day, when she was very near death, I was in an internal frenzy which I could not understand at all. When I went to the hospital as usual to feed her her supper, I found myself pouring out to her how much I had loved

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  There in Athens I learned new sex-secrets which may perchance interest even the Philistines though they can be learned in Paris as well, and will be set forth simply in the second volume of these “Confessions”, which will tell the whole “art of love” as understood in Europe and perhaps contain my second voyage round the world and the further instruction in the great art which I received from the Adepts of the East—unimaginable refinements, for they have studied the body as deeply as the soul. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EUROPE AND THE CARLYLES. Chapter XV. I returned to Europe touching at Bombay and getting just a whiff of the intoxicating perfume of that wonder-land with its noble, though sad, spiritual teaching which is now beginning through the Rig Veda to inform the best European thought. I stopped too at Alexandria and ran up to Cairo for a week to see the great Mosques: I admired their splendid rhetoric; but fell in love with the desert and its Pyramids and above all with the Sphinx and her eternal questioning of sense and outward things. Thus by easy, memorable stages that included Genoa and Florence and their storied palaces and churches and galleries, I came at length to Paris. I distrust first impressions of great places or events or men. Who could describe the deathless fascination of the mere name and first view of Paris to the young student or artist of another race! If he has read and thought, he will be in a fever; tears in his eyes, heart thrilling with joyful expectancy, he will wander into that world of wonders! I got to the station early one summer morning and sent my baggage at once by fiacre to the Hotel Meurice in the rue Rivoli; the same old hotel that Lever the novelist had praised, and then I got into a little Victoria and drove to the Place de la Bastille. The obvious café life of the people did not appeal to me; but when I saw the Glory springing from the Column of July, tears flooded my eyes, for I recalled Carlyle’s description of the taking of the prison. I paid the cocher and wandered up the rue Rivoli, past the Louvre, past the blackened walls with the sightless windows of the Tuileries palace—a regret in their desolate appeal, and so to the Place de la Gréve with its memories of the guillotine and the great revolution, now merged in the Place de la Concorde. Just opposite I could distinguish the gilt dome of the Church of the Invalides where the body of Napoleon lies as he desired: “On the banks of the Seine, in the midst of that French people I have loved so passionately!” And there were the horses of Marly ramping at the entrance to the Champs Elysées and at the far end of the long hill, the Arch! The words came to my lips:

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  Then, much farther down the scale, I would put what is often regarded as a major source of learning, the printed page. Reading, I fear, has most of its value for me in buttressing my views. I realize I am not a scholar, gaining my ideas from the writings of others. Occasionally, however, a book not only confirms me in what I am tentatively thinking, but lures me considerably further. Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, and Michael Polanyi, for example, would fall in that category. But I must confess that when I wish to be scholarly, serendipity plays a very important part. Serendipity, in case you have forgotten, is “the faculty of making fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident.” I have an eerie feeling that I have that faculty. Let me give you the latest example. In preparing a current paper, “The Emerging Person: A New Revolution,” I was aware of a few of the writers who were presenting similar views. But then Fred and Anne Richards (1973) sent me a copy of their book Homonovus, just off the press. It was most timely. John D. Rockefeller III (1973) likewise sent me a copy of his book The Second American Revolution, which was also highly pertinent. Then I was talking with a friend from northern California about my fantasies for my APA paper and he said, “Did you read the article by Joyce Carol Oates in the Saturday Review?” I had to confess complete ignorance not only of the article but of the author. His Xerox copy of the essay not only gave support to my view, but opened my eyes to a whole new facet of modern fiction. So, while one section of that paper may make it appear that I spent days or weeks researching in the library, at least half of that impression is due to serendipity. It has been a very frequent aid in my life.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The second unsuspected experience was also a direct result, I believe, of my sex-awakening with Lucille and the intense sex-excitement. At all events it came just after the love-passages with her that I have described and post hoc is often propter hoc. [Illustration] I had never yet noticed the beauties of nature; indeed whenever I came across descriptions of scenery in my reading, I always skipped them as wearisome. Now of a sudden, in a moment, my eyes were unsealed to natural beauties. I remember the scene and my rapt wonder as if it were yesterday. It was a bridge across the Dee near Overton in full sunshine; on my right the river made a long curve, swirling deep under a wooded height, leaving a little tawny sandbank half bare just opposite to me: on my left both banks, thickly wooded, drew together and passed round a curve out of sight. I was entranced and speechless—enchanted by the sheer color-beauty of the scene—sunlit water there and shadowed here, reflecting the gorgeous vesture of the wooded height. And when I left the place and came out again and looked at the adjoining cornfields, golden against the green of the hedgerows and scattered trees, the colors took on a charm I had never noticed before: I could not understand what had happened to me. It was the awakening of sex-life in me, I believe, that first revealed to me the beauty of inanimate nature. A night or two later I was ravished by a moon nearly at the full that flooded our playing field with ivory radiance, making the haystack in the corner a thing of supernal beauty. Why had I never before seen the wonder of the world? the sheer loveliness of nature all about me? From this time on I began to enjoy descriptions of scenery in the books I read and began, too, to love landscapes in painting. Thank goodness! the miracle was accomplished, at long last, and my life enriched, ennobled, transfigured as by the bounty of a God! From that day on I began to live an enchanted life; for at once I tried to see beauty everywhere, and at all times, of day and night caught glimpses that ravished me with delight and turned my being into a hymn of praise and joy. Faith had left me and with faith, hope in Heaven or indeed in any future existence: saddened and fearful, I was as one in prison with an undetermined sentence; but now in a moment the prison had become a paradise, the walls of the actual had fallen away into frames of entrancing pictures. Dimly I became conscious that if this life were sordid and mean, petty and unpleasant, the fault was in myself and in my blindness. I began then for the first time to understand that I myself was a magician and could create my own fairyland, ay and my own heaven, transforming this world into the throne-room of a god!

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I said “Good-bye!” at the hotel and went on board the steamer by myself: my eyes set on the Golden Gate into the great Pacific and the hopes and hazards of the new life. At length I was to see the world: what would I find in it? I had no idea then that I should find little or much in exact measure to what I brought and it is now the saddest part of these Confessions that on this first trip round the world, I was so untutored, so thoughtless that I got practically nothing out of my long journeying. Like Odysseus I saw many cities of men; but scenes seldom enrich the spirit: yet one or two places made a distinct impression on me, young and hard though I was: Sidney Bay and Heights, Hong Kong, too; but above all, the old Chinese gate leading into the Chinese City of Shanghai so close to the European town and so astonishingly different. Kioto, too, imprinted itself on my memory and the Japanese men and girls that ran naked out of their hot baths in order to see whether I was really white all over. But I learned nothing worth recalling till I came to Table Bay and saw the long line of Table Mountain four thousand feet above me, a cliff cutting the sky with an incomparable effect of dignity and grandeur. I stayed in Cape Town a month or so, and by good luck I got to know Jan Hofmeyr there who taught me what good fellows the Boers really were and how highly the English Premier Gladstone was esteemed for giving freedom to them after Majuba: “we look on him with reverence” said my friend, Hofmeyr, “as the embodied conscience of England”; but alas! England could not stomach Majuba and had to spend blood and treasure later to demonstrate the manhood of the Boers to the world. But thank God, England then gave freedom and self-government again to South Africa and so atoned for her shameful “Concentration Camps.” Thanks to Jan Hofmeyr I got to know and esteem the South African Boer even on this first short acquaintance. When I went round the world for the second time twenty years later, I tried to find the Hofmeyrs of every country and so learned all manner of things worthful and strange that I shall tell of, I hope, at the end of my next volume. For the only short cut to knowledge is through intercourse with wise and gifted men. Now I must confess something of my first six months of madness and pleasure in Paris and then speak of England again and Thomas Carlyle and his incomparable influence upon me and so lead you, gentle render, to my later prentice years in Germany and Greece.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  To farm successfully, people must organize their lives around the seasons; they are dependent on the sun, winds, and storms located in Heaven ( Tian ), a the transcendent realm of the sky. So the Yellow Emperor established human society in the “Way” ( Dao ) of Heaven by processing annually across the world, visiting each of the four compass points in turn—a ritual that maintained the regular cycle of the seasons and would be imitated by all future Chinese kings. 3 Associated with storm and rain, the Yellow Emperor, like other storm gods, was a great warrior. When he came to power, the arable land was desolate, rebels were fighting one another, and there was drought and famine. He also had two external enemies: the animal-warrior Chi You, who was harassing his subjects, and the Fiery Emperor, who was scorching the cultivated land. The Yellow Emperor, therefore, drew on his great spiritual “potency” ( de ) and trained an army of animals—bears, wolves, and tigers—that managed to defeat the Fiery Emperor but could make no headway against the brutality of Chi You and his eighty brothers: “They had the bodies of beasts, the speech of men, bronze heads, and iron brows. They ate sand and stones, and created weapons such as staves, knives, lances, and bows. They terrorized all under Heaven and slaughtered barbarically; they loved nothing and nurtured nothing.” 4 The Yellow Emperor tried to help his suffering people, but because “he practiced love and virtuous potency [ de ],” he could not overpower Chi You with force. So he cast up his eyes to Heaven in silent appeal, and a celestial woman descended bearing a sacred text that revealed the secret art of warfare. The Yellow Emperor could now instruct his animal soldiers in the proper use of weaponry and military conduct, and as a result they defeated Chi You and conquered the entire world. While Chi You’s savage violence turned men into beasts, the Yellow Emperor transformed his army of bears, wolves, and tigers into human beings by teaching them to fight according to the rhythms of Heaven. 5 A civilization founded on the twin pillars of agriculture and the organized violence of warfare could now begin. By the twenty-third century BCE, two other sage kings, Yao and Shun, had established a golden age in the Yellow River Plain, which was known forever after as “the Great Peace.” But during Shun’s reign, the land was devastated by floods, so the king commissioned Yu, his chief of public works, to build canals, drain the marshes, and lead the rivers safely to the sea. Because of Yu’s heroic labors, the people could grow rice and millet.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Over immense departments of our thought we are still, all of us, in the savage state. Similarity operates in us, but abstraction has not taken place. We know what the present case is like, we know what it reminds us of, we have an intuition of the right course to take, if it be a practical matter. But analytic thought has made no tracks, and we cannot justify ourselves to others. In ethical, psychological, and æsthetic matters, to give a clear reason for one's judgment is universally recognized as a mark of rare genius. The helplessness of uneducated people to account for their likes and dislikes is often ludicrous. Ask the first Irish girl why she likes this country better or worse than her home, and see how much she can tell you. But if you ask your most educated friend why he prefers Titian to Paul Veronese, you will hardly get more of a reply; and you will probably get absolutely none if you inquire why Beethoven reminds him of Michael Angelo, or how it comes that a bare figure with unduly flexed joints, by the former, can so suggest the moral tragedy of life. His thought obeys a nexus, but cannot name it. And so it is with all those judgments of experts, which even though unnoticed are so valuable. Saturated with experience of a particular class of materials, an expert intuitively feels whether a newly-reported fact is probable or not, whether a proposed hypothesis is worthless or the reverse. He instinctively knows that, in a novel case, this and not that mill be the promising course of action. The well-known story of the old judge advising the new one never to give reasons for his decisions, "the decisions will probably be right, the reasons will surely be wrong," illustrates this. The doctor will feel that the patient is doomed, the dentist will have a premonition that the tooth will break, though neither can articulate a reason for his foreboding. The reason lies imbedded, but not yet laid bare, in all the countless previous cases dimly suggested by the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion, which the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows not how or why.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  four-hundredth anniversary, brought to me by a special emissary from this ancient Dutch seat of learning. There have been the dozens of highly personal letters from those whose lives have been touched or changed by my writings. These never cease to amaze me. That I could have had an important part in altering the life of a man in South Africa or a woman in the “outback” of Australia still seems a bit incredible—like magic, somehow. THOUGHTS REGARDING DEATH And then there is the ending of life. It may surprise you that at my age I think very little about death. The current popular interest in it surprises me. Ten or fifteen years ago I felt quite certain that death was the total end of the person. I still regard that as the most likely prospect; however, it does not seem to me a tragic or awful prospect. I have been able to live my life—not to the full, certainly, but with a satisfying degree of fullness—and it seems natural that my life should come to an end. I already have a degree of immortality in other persons. I have sometimes said that, psychologically, I have strong sons and daughters all over the world. Also, I believe that the ideas and the ways of being that I and others have helped to develop will continue, for some time at least. So if I, as an individual, come to a complete and final end, aspects of me will still live on in a variety of growing ways, and that is a pleasant thought. I think that no one can know whether he or she fears death until it arrives. Certainly, death is the ultimate leap in the dark, and I think it is highly probable that the apprehension I feel when going under an anesthetic will be duplicated or increased when I face death. Yet I don’t experience a really deep fear of this process. So far as I am aware, my fears concerning death relate to its circumstances. I have a dread of any long and painful illness leading to death. I dread the thought of senility or of partial brain damage due to a stroke. My preference would be to die quickly, before it is too late to die with dignity. I think of Winston Churchill. I didn’t mourn his death. I mourned the fact that death had not come sooner, when he could have died with the dignity he deserved. My belief that death is the end has, however, been modified by some of my learnings of the past decade. I am impressed with the accounts by Raymond Moody (1975) of the experience of persons who have been so near death as to be declared dead, but who have come back to life. I am impressed by some of the reports of reincarnation, although reincarnation seems a very dubious blessing indeed. I am interested in the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the conclusions she has reached about life after death. I find definitely appealing the views of Arthur Koestler that individual consciousness is but a fragment of a cosmic consciousness, the fragment being reabsorbed into the whole upon the death of the individual. I like his analogy of the individual river eventually flowing into

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Pure sensations can only be realized in the earliest days of life. They are all but impossible to adults with memories and stores of associations acquired. Prior to all impressions on sense-organs the brain is plunged in deep sleep and consciousness is practically non-existent. Even the first weeks after birth are passed in almost unbroken sleep by human infants. It takes a strong message from the sense-organs to break this slumber. In a new-born brain this gives rise to an absolutely pure sensation. But the experience leaves its 'unimaginable touch' on the matter of the convolutions, and the next impression which a sense-organs transmits produces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of feeling and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence; and the complication goes on increasing till the end of life, no two successive impressions falling on an identical brain, and no two successive thoughts being exactly the same. (See above, p. 230 ff.) The first sensation which an infant gets is for him the Universe. And the Universe which he latter comes to know is nothing but an amplification and an implication of that first simple germ which, by accretion on the one hand and intussusception on the other, has grown so big and complex and articulate that its first estate is unrememberable. In his dumb awakening to the consciousness of something there, a mere this as yet (or something for which even the term this would perhaps be too discriminative, and the intellectual acknowledgment of which would be better expressed by the bare interjection 'lo!'), the infant encounters an object in which (though it be given in a pure sensation) all the 'categories of the understanding' are contained. It has objectivity, unity, substantiality, causality, in the full sense in which any later object or system of objects has these things. Here the young knower meets and greets his world; and the miracle of knowledge bursts forth, as Voltaire says, as much in the infant's lowest sensation as in the highest achievement of a Newton's brain. The physiological condition of this first sensible experience is probably nerve-currents coming in from many peripheral organs at once. Later, the one confused Fact which these currents cause to appear is perceived to be many facts, and to contain man qualities.[10] For as the currents vary, and the brain-paths are moulded by them, other thoughts with other 'objects' come, and the 'same thing' which was apprehended as a present this soon figures as a past that, about which many unsuspected things have come to light. The principles of this development have been laid down already in Chapters XII and XIII, and nothing more need here be added to that account. "THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE."

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  At this moment the model emerged with a sheet about her and probably because of my praise Alexander introduced me to Mlle. Jeanne and said I was a distinguished American writer. She nodded to me saucily, flashing white teeth at me, mounted the estrade, threw off the sheet and took up her pose—all in a moment. I was carried off my feet; the more I looked, the more perfections I discovered. For the first time I saw a figure that I could find no fault with. Needless to say I told her so in my best French with a hundred similes. Alexander also I conciliated by begging him to do no more to the sketch but sell it to me and do another. Finally he took four hundred and fifty francs for it and in an hour had made another sketch. My purchase had convinced Mlle. Jeanne that I was a young millionaire and when I asked her if I might accompany her to her home, she consented more than readily. As a matter of fact, I took her for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne and from there to dinner in a private room at the Café Anglais. During the meal I had got to like her: she lived with her mother, Alexander had told me; though by no means prudish, still less virginal, she was not a _coureuse_. I thought I might risk connection; but when I got her to take off her clothes and began to caress her sex, she drew away and said quite as a matter of course: “Why not _faire minette_?” When I asked her what she meant, she told me frankly: “We women do not get excited in a moment as you men do; why not kiss and tongue me there for a few minutes, then I shall have enjoyed myself and shall be ready....” I’m afraid I made rather a face for she remarked coolly: “Just as you like, you know. I prefer in a meal the _hors d’oeuvres_ to the _pièce de résistance_ like a good many other women: indeed I often content myself with the _hors d’oeuvres_ and don’t take any more. Surely you understand that a woman goes on getting more and more excited for an hour or two and no man is capable of bringing her to the highest pitch of enjoyment while pleasing himself.” “I’m able”, I said stubbornly, “I can go on all night if you please me, so we should skip appetizers.” “No, no!” she replied, laughing, “let us have a banquet then, but begin with lips and tongue!” The delay, the bandying to and fro of argument and above all, the idea of kissing and tonguing her sex, had brought me to coolness and reason. Was I not just as foolish as Bancroft if I yielded to the—an unknown girl.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Automatically I took down the volume and it opened of itself at the last page of Emerson’s advice to the scholars of Dartmouth College. Every word is still printed on my memory: I can see the left-hand page and read again that divine message: I make no excuse for quoting it almost word for word: “Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these considerations upon the scholar’s place and hope, because I thought that standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this College, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admonished of those primary duties of the intellect whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your new companions. You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. ‘What is this Truth you seek? what is this beauty!’ men will ask, with derision. If nevertheless God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season’;—then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history, and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. It is this domineering temper of the sensual world that creates the extreme need of the priests of science.... Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men’s affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.” The truth of it shocked me: “then perish the buds of art and poetry and science in you as they have perished already in a thousand, thousand men!” That explained why it was that there was no Shakespeare, no Bacon, no Swinburne in America where, according to population and wealth there should be dozens. There flashed on me the realization of the truth, that just because wealth was easy to get here, it exercised an incomparable attraction and in its pursuit “perished a thousand, thousand” gifted spirits who might have steered humanity to new and nobler accomplishment.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Most people have probably had dreams which it is hard to imagine not to have been glimpses into an actually existing region of being, perhaps a corner of the 'spiritual world. 'And dreams have accordingly in all ages been regarded as revelations, and have played a large part in furnishing forth mythologies and creating themes for faith to lay hold upon. The 'larger universe,' here, which helps us to believe both in the dream and in the waking reality which is its immediate reductive, is the total universe, of Nature plus the Super-natural. The dream holds true, namely, in one half of that universe; the waking perceptions in the other half. Even to-day dream-objects figure among the realities in which some ' psychic-researchers' are seeking to rouse our belief. All our theories, not only those about the supernatural, but our philosophic and scientific theories as well, are like our dreams in rousing such different degrees of belief in different minds. [313] Distinguishes realities from unrealities. the essential from the rubbishy and neglectable. [314] Inquiry concerning Hum. Understanding, sec. v. pt. 2 (slightly transposed in my quotation) [315] Note to Jas. Mill's Analysis, I. 394. [316] Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Müller, 11, 515-17. Hume also: " When, after the simple conception of anything, we would conceive it as existent, we in reality make no addition to, or alteration of, our first idea. Thus, when we affirm that God is existent, we simply form the idea of such a being as He is represented to us; nor is the existence which we attribute to Him conceived by a particular idea, which we join to His other qualities, and can again separate and distinguish from them. ... The belief of the existence joins no new idea to those which compose the ideas of the object. When I think of God, when I think of Him as existent, and when I believe Him to be existent, my idea of Him neither increases nor diminishes. But as 'tis certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the facts or compositions of the idea which we conceive, it follows that it most lie in the manner in which we conceive it." (Treatise of Human Nature. pt. iii. sec. 7.) [317] I use the notion of the Ego here, as common-sense uses it. Nothing is prejudged as to the results (or absence of results) of ulterior attempts to analyze the notion. [318] Griesinger, Mental Diseases, §§50, 98. The neologism we so often hear, that an experience 'gives us a realizing sense' of the truth of some proposition or other, illustrates the dependence of the sense of reality upon excitement.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The habit of separating religion and politics is now so routine in the West that it is difficult for us to appreciate how thoroughly the two co-inhered in the past. It was never simply a question of the state “using” religion; the two were indivisible. Dissociating them would have seemed like trying to extract the gin from a cocktail. In the premodern world, religion permeated all aspects of life. We shall see that a host of activities now considered mundane were experienced as deeply sacred: forest clearing, hunting, football matches, dice games, astronomy, farming, state building, tugs-of-war, town planning, commerce, imbibing strong drink, and, most particularly, warfare. Ancient peoples would have found it impossible to see where “religion” ended and “politics” began. This was not because they were too stupid to understand the distinction but because they wanted to invest everything they did with ultimate value. We are meaning-seeking creatures and, unlike other animals, fall very easily into despair if we fail to make sense of our lives. We find the prospect of our inevitable extinction hard to bear. We are troubled by natural disasters and human cruelty and are acutely aware of our physical and psychological frailty. We find it astonishing that we are here at all and want to know why. We also have a great capacity for wonder. Ancient philosophies were entranced by the order of the cosmos; they marveled at the mysterious power that kept the heavenly bodies in their orbits and the seas within bounds and that ensured that the earth regularly came to life again after the dearth of winter, and they longed to participate in this richer and more permanent existence. They expressed this yearning in terms of what is known as the perennial philosophy, so called because it was present, in some form, in most premodern cultures. 11 Every single person, object, or experience was seen as a replica, a pale shadow, of a reality that was stronger and more enduring than anything in their ordinary experience but that they only glimpsed in visionary moments or in dreams. By ritually imitating what they understood to be the gestures and actions of their celestial alter egos—whether gods, ancestors, or culture heroes—premodern folk felt themselves to be caught up in their larger dimension of being. We humans are profoundly artificial and tend naturally toward archetypes and paradigms. 12 We constantly strive to improve on nature or approximate to an ideal that transcends the day-to-day. Even our contemporary cult of celebrity can be understood as an expression of our reverence for and yearning to emulate models of “superhumanity.” Feeling ourselves connected to such extraordinary realities satisfies an essential craving.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  He even sponsored a new Latin script to produce easily readable texts reproduced with relative speed; it is now known as ‘Carolingian minuscule’, a direct ancestor of the typeface employed in modern printed books such as this. [54] This mammoth task, which saved the collective memory of the Latin West from further loss, would absorb the time of countless professional scribes, and the most readily available source of such specialist labour was the monastery, or indeed the nunnery. Anglo-Saxon monastic life as created by 700 was at the height of its self-confidence and creativity and provided a model for the new monastic culture in mainland Europe. It is remarkable that such a latecomer to Latinity as the Anglo-Saxon Church should become one of the chief energies behind the recovery of idiomatic high-level Latin for speaking and writing, and one of the most honoured scholars of the Carolingian court was a late product of that energy, Alcuin of York (c.735–804), who is likely to have been the source of the Emperor’s interest in Bede. With initiatives from Pippin and Charlemagne, duly imitated by their leading noblemen, monasteries were founded or expanded with generous new endowments to spread across the growing imperial dominions; the Emperor followed the recommendation of his officials that these institutions adopt the Rule of St Benedict. That decision was clearly encouraged by the benevolent presence of the saint himself at the heart of Francia, having put up no apparent resistance to his kidnapping from Monte Cassino by the monks of Fleury. The appropriation of his Rule might seem almost as surprising, because, instead of the simple communities of ascetics for which it had been written, the artful and flexible simplicity of its provisions now governed Carolingian monasteries that were more like contemporary towns, though a good deal better administered. [55] Carolingian monks followed their increasingly elaborate monastic observance in worship, prayer and scholarship amid a bustle of lay servants, craftsmen, labourers and guests, in stately architectural settings which could outdo most of the secular palaces of Western Christendom. These were indeed cities of God on earth: the ordered splendour of their life was an awe-inspiring image of heaven in a world distressingly short of order or regulation. To see their monks as like the angelic courtiers of God was a natural embodiment of those potent metaphors drawn from Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysios (whose voice was suddenly directly available, since a copy of his writings arrived in ninth-century Francia from the East). [56] A striking feature of these holy cities was that among the swarm of inhabitants were a great many children: products of a newly popular pious custom known as oblation, by which parents gifted their young offspring to the monastic life. Oblation was not a complete novelty. In the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt, the tradition of Pachomian monasticism had produced communities of similar elaboration supported by lavish endowments, like later Carolingian practice.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  imported slaves or other servile people. Thus, though we call this Greek system ‘democracy’, we need to remember its limited character by twenty-first- century Western standards. Greek democracy had many resonances for the future of Christian ethics and self-identity. Christians took up the word for the citizen decision-making assembly of a democratic polis and applied it to their own collective existence: ekklēsia, a word which has descended into many languages to denote ‘Church’. To govern a community in this way was an intimidating, perhaps terrifying, responsibility. Literally, it needed thinking about. Probably for that reason, two characteristic activities of Mediterranean society newly evolved in Hellas: drama and philosophy. Drama was the foundation of the Western tradition of theatre, which is still designed to help us contemplate and draw lessons from the world around us, in tragic or comic mode: a useful way of clarifying important life-decisions. Drama began as part of public religious ceremonies, and in time it infiltrated the thought and even the liturgy of Christianity, despite Christians ruthlessly abandoning the spectacular open-air theatres which had become one of the marks of a proper city in Greek and Roman antiquity. Through an astonishingly brief period of little more than a century, from the fifth to fourth centuries BCE, Athenian theatre created what survive as the classic works of this theatrical tradition. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides explored the depths of human tragedy and folly; in the second half of the same period, the comedies of Aristophanes often mocked the very Athenian audiences watching and enjoying them. They may have reflected that they needed to laugh at themselves to remain sane. In philosophy, Greeks did have precedents for their adventures. Across the world that they knew, from Mesopotamia to Shetland, people had long brooded on the movements of stars and planets which governed farming practice and shaped religious observances. Greeks considered that the learning of a race as ancient as the Egyptians must conceal wisdom needing to be shared more widely, and when they eventually encountered the Hebrew Scripture, they were likewise impressed by the antiquity of its texts. But they were not afraid to turn from the past to seek wisdom for themselves. They called those who did so ‘lovers of wisdom’: philosophers. Greek philosophy, compulsively questioning, classifying, speculating, was far more all-encompassing than anything now preserved from earlier intellectual explorations. Notable was Greek philosophy’s willingness to detach itself, if it chose, from structures of traditional religion, just as theatres evolved an architecture separate from that of the temple. Philosophers involved themselves intimately in the debate about what society should be like, and how it should govern itself. The most original and fruitful minds gathered circles of admirers in their lifetimes and afterwards. These became known as ‘schools’ – the word scholē means at root ‘leisure’, and what better use for leisure than disputation, or even the lecture-room in which the leisure activity takes place? Eccentricity might form part of the philosopher’s instruction.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  What’s most remarkable is that HubSpot pulled this off even though the company had come within a hair’s breadth of running out of money. Apparently this happens more often than I realized. “It’s called ‘Go public or go broke,’ and it’s not at all uncommon,” says Trip, a former investment banker and venture capitalist. “The one thing people do not appreciate is that these companies are incredibly fragile. There is so much less to them than people believe. The difference between success and failure is so much smaller than people recognize. The whole thing is based on companies trying to achieve escape velocity before they blow themselves up.” Trip says pulling off an IPO is “like a caper movie. You know they’re going to try to rob the place, but you don’t know how they’re going to do it, and you don’t know if they’ll get away with it. There’s the promised land, over there, but will they make it?” Halligan and Shah and their investors have pulled off the caper. HubSpot has gone public. The investors have made a fortune. On October 9, the first day of trading, Halligan and Shah and a team of top executives go to New York and ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. They all wear goofy orange HubSpot sunglasses, like a bunch of clowns. The rest of us gather in the big conference room in Cambridge, watching a live feed from the floor of the stock exchange. Two young women sitting in front of me have loaded the Yahoo Finance app on their iPhones and are trying to figure out how much their options are worth. Once the stock starts trading, the “reporters” (they’re actually PR people) on the stock exchange floor conduct interviews with the executives from HubSpot, asking them if they have anything to say to the folks back in the home office. The best comment comes from Dharmesh. He owns 7 percent of the company, more than any other individual. At a $30 stock price, his 2.3 million shares are worth nearly $70 million. This windfall has come to him thanks to a single daring bet, one that probably seemed crazy at the time: Back in 2006, he took $500,000 of his own money out of the bank and used it to start HubSpot. He was the only seed investor. Dharmesh holds the title of chief technology officer, and he wrote the HubSpot culture code, but he doesn’t seem to be around much. By October 2014, when the IPO takes place, he is mostly working on a new project, an online community for marketers, called Inbound.org. But now he’s the richest person at the company.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  When they were released in the early 1970s, they would bring Qutb’s ideas into mainstream society and try to implement them practically. After the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors in June 1967, the region experienced a religious revival not only in the Muslim countries but also in Israel. Zionism, we have seen, had begun as a defiantly secular movement, and the military campaigns of the Jewish state had had no religious content; their violent suppression of the Palestinian people had been the result of their secular nationalism rather than a religious imperative. Before the war, as they listened to Nasser vowing to throw them all into the sea, many Israelis had been convinced that yet another attempt would be made to exterminate them. They responded with lightning speed, achieving a spectacular victory in which they took the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan. Although religion had not figured in the action, many Israelis would experience this dramatic reversal of fortune as a miracle similar to the crossing of the Red Sea. 58 Above all, the conquest of the Old City of Jerusalem, closed to Israelis since 1948, was a numinous experience. When in 1898 the Zionist ideologue Theodor Herzl had visited the Western Wall, the last relic of Herod’s temple, he had been repelled by the sight of the Jewish worshippers clinging cravenly to its stones. 59 But in June 1967 tough paratroopers with blackened faces and their atheistic officers leaned against the Wall and wept, their secular ethos momentarily transformed by sacred geography. Nationalism, as we have seen, easily segues into a quasi-religious fervor, especially in moments of heightened tension and emotion. Devotion to Jerusalem had been central to Jewish identity for millennia. Long before people began to map their landscape scientifically, they had defined their place in the world emotionally and spiritually, drawn irresistibly to localities that they experienced as radically different from all others. The Israeli experience in 1967 shows that we have still not entirely desacralized the world. 60 The soldiers’ “beliefs” had not changed, but the Wall evoked in them something akin to the way others experienced the sacred—“something big and terrible and from another world,” yet also “an old friend, impossible to mistake.” Just as they had narrowly escaped destruction, they recognized the Wall as a survivor like themselves. “There will be no more destruction,” one soldier said as he kissed the stones, “and the Wall will never again be deserted.” 61 “Never again” had been a Jewish watchword since the Holocaust, and now generals and soldiers were using it once more.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  2Wanda’s chastened and temperate mood persisted for several weeks, and while it was on her she clung like a drowning man to Stephen, haunting the house from morning until night, dreading to be alone for a moment. It cannot be said that Stephen suffered her gladly, for now with the New Year she was working hard on a series of articles and short stories; unwilling to visualize defeat, she began once again to sharpen her weapon. But something in Wanda’s poor efforts to keep sober, in her very dependence, was deeply appealing, so that Stephen would put aside her work, feeling loath to desert the unfortunate creature. Several times they made a long pilgrimage on foot to the church of the Sacré Cœur; just they two, for Mary would never go with them; she was prejudiced against Wanda’s religion. They would climb the steep streets with their flights of steps, grey streets, grey steps leading up from the city. Wanda’s eyes would always be fixed on their goal—pilgrim eyes they would often seem to Stephen. Arrived at the church she and Wanda would stand looking down between the tall, massive columns of the porch, on a Paris of domes and mists, only half revealed by the fitful sunshine. The air would seem pure up there on the height, pure and tenuous as a thing of the spirit. And something in that mighty temple of faith, that amazing thrust towards the sublime, that silent yet articulate cry of a nation to its God, would awaken a response in Stephen, so that she would seem to be brushing the hem of an age-old and rather terrible mystery—the eternal mystery of good and evil. Inside the church would be brooding shadows, save where the wide lakes of amber fire spread out from the endless votive candles. Above the high altar the monstranced Host would gleam curiously white in the light of the candles. The sound of praying, monotonous, low, insistent, would come from those who prayed with extended arms, with crucified arms, all day and all night for the sins of Paris.