Your favorite quote/passage

[Ulf]

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology to-day without the aid of posterity

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The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.

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I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

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The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

[MarcvSS]

"People better fear you, then to respect you"

[Aemma]

...A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write...
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At any rate, where books are concerned, it is notoriously difficult to fix labels of merit in such a way that they do not come off. Are not reviews of current literature a perpetual illustration of the difficulty of judgement? 'This great book', 'this worthless book', the same book is called by both names. Prais eand blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his lseeve, is the msot abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

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Even allowing a generous margin for symbolism, [ ] five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate, [ ] a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself....

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Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for teo hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedoms than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own.

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Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.

...............................

...[W]hen I ask you to earn money and have a room of your own, I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not.

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A thousand pens are ready to suggest what you should do and to what effect you will have.

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[Psychonaut]

What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.

Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly

[Ulf]

[Ulf]

From Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity.

CHRIST is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released from all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding the world, and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all the heart's wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent to heaven of the imagination: – Christ therefore is the distinction of Christianity from heathenism.

In Christianity, man was concentrated only on himself, he unlinked himself from the chain of sequences in the system of the universe, he made himself a self-sufficing whole, an absolute, extra- and supra-mundane being. Because he no longer regarded himself as a being immanent in the world, because he severed himself from connection with it, he felt himself an unlimited being – (for the sole limit of subjectivity is the world, is objectivity), – he had no longer any reason to doubt the truth and validity of his subjective wishes and feelings.

The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Nature by retreating within themselves, limited their subjectivity by the contemplation of the world. Highly as the ancients estimated the intelligence, the reason, they were yet liberal and objective enough, theoretically as well as practically, to allow that which the distinguished from mind, namely, matter, to live, and even to live eternally; the Christians evinced their theoretical as well as practical intolerance in their belief that they secured the eternity of their subjective life only by annihilating, as in the doctrine of the destruction of the world, the opposite of subjectivity – Nature. The ancients were free from themselves, but their freedom was that of indifference towards themselves; the Christians were free from Nature, but their freedom was not that of reason, not true freedom, which limits itself by the contemplation of the world, by Nature, – it was the freedom of feeling and imagination, the freedom of miracle. The ancients were so enraptured by the cosmos, that they lost sight of themselves, suffered themselves to be merged in the whole; the Christians despised the world; – what is the creature compared with the Creator? What are suns moon, and earth compared with the human soul?

[“How much better is it that I should lose the whole world than that I should lose God, who created the world, and can create innumerable worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than innumerable worlds For what sort of a comparison is that of the temporal with the eternal... One soul is better than the whole world.” – Luther (Th. XIX. P. 2 I).]

The world passes away, but man, nay, the individual, personal man, is eternal. If the Christians severed man from all community with Nature, and hence fell into the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which stigmatised the remotest comparison of man with the brutes as an impious violation of human dignity; the heathens, on the other hand, fell into the opposite extreme, into that spirit of depreciation which abolishes the distinction between man and the brute, or even, as was the case, for example, with Celsus, the opponent of Christianity, degrades man beneath the brute.

But the heathens considered man not only in connection with the universe; they considered the individual man, in connection with other men, as member of a commonwealth. They rigorously distinguished the individual from the species, the individual as a part from the race as a whole, and they subordinated the part to the whole. Men pass away. but mankind remains, says a heathen philosopher. “Why wilt thou grieve over the loss of thy daughter?” writes Sulpicius to Cicero. “Great, renowned cities and empires have passed away, and thou behavest thus at the death of an homunculus, a little human being! Where is thy philosophy?” The idea of man as an individual was to the ancients a secondary one, attained through the idea of the species. Though they thought highly of the race, highly of the excellences of mankind, highly and sublimely of the intelligence, they nevertheless thought slightly of the individual. Christianity, on the contrary, cared nothing for the species, and had only the individual in its eye and mind. Christianity – not, certainly, the Christianity of the present day, which has incorporated with itself the culture of heathenism, and has preserved only the name and some general positions of Christianity – is the direct opposite of heathenism, and only when it is regarded as such is it truly comprehended, and untravestied by arbitrary speculative interpretation; it is true so far as its opposite is false, and false so far as its opposite is true. The ancients sacrificed the individual to the species; the Christians sacrificed the species to the individual. Or, heathenism conceived the individual only as a part in distinction from the whole of the species; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the individual only in immediate, undistinguishable unity with the species.

To Christianity the individual was the object of an immediate providence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine Being The heathens believed in a providence for the individual only through his relation to the race, through law, through the order of the world, and thus only in a mediate, natural, and not miraculous providence; [It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the Stoics (see eg. J. Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. 1. i. diss. xi.), believed that the divine providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the particular, – the individual; but they identified providence with Nature, law, necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of heathenism, did indeed believe in miracles wrought by providence (Cie. de Nat. Deor. 1. ii. and Do Divinat. 1. i.); but their miracles had no such supra-naturalistic significance as those of Christianity, though they also appealed to the supra-naturalistic axiom: “Nihil eat quod Dens efficere non possit.”] but the Christians left out the intermediate process, and placed themselves in immediate connection with the prescient, all-embracing, universal Being; i.e., they immediately identified the individual with the universal Being,.

But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of humanity. All divine attributes, all the attributes which make God God, are attributes of the species – attributes which in the individual are limited, but the limits of which are abolished in the essence of the species, and even in its existence, in so far as it has its complete existence only in all men taken together. My knowledge, my will, is limited; but my limit is not the limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind; what is difficult to me is easy to another; what is impossible, inconceivable, to one age, is to the coming ace conceivable and possible. My life is bound to a limited time. not so the life of humanity. The history of mankind consists of nothing else than a continuous and progressive conquest of limits, which at a given time pass for the limits of humanity, and therefore for absolute insurmountable limits. But the future always unveils the fact that the alleged limits of the species were only limits of individuals. The most striking, proofs of this are presented by the history of philosophy and of physical science. It would be highly interesting and instructive to write a history of the sciences entirely from this point of view, in order to exhibit in all its vanity the presumptuous notion of the individual than he can set limits to his race. Thus the species is unlimited; the individual alone limited.

But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the individual frees himself from it by the contemplation of the perfect Being; in this contemplation he possesses what otherwise is wanting to him. With the Christians God is nothing else than the immediate unity of species and individuality, of the universal and individual being God is the idea of the species as an individual – the idea or essence of the species, which as a species, as universal being, as the totality of all perfections, of all attributes or realities, freed from all the limits which exist in the consciousness and feeling of the individual, is at the same time again an individual, personal being. Ipse suum esse est. Essence and existence are in God identical; which means nothing else than that he is the idea, the essence of the species, conceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The highest idea on the standpoint of religion is: God does not love, he is himself love; he does not live, he is life; he is not just, but justice itself; not a person, but personality itself, the species, the idea, as immediately a concrete existence. Because of this immediate unity of the species with individuality, this concentration of all that is universal and real in one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing to the imagination; whereas, the idea of humanity has little power over the feelings, because humanity is only an abstraction; and the reality which presents itself to us in distinction from this abstraction is the multitude of separate, limited individuals. In God, on the contrary, feeling, has immediate satisfaction, because here all is embraced in one, i.e., because here the species has an immediate existence, – is an individuality. God is love, is justice, as itself a subject; he is the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite extension of the species as an all-comprehending unity. But God is only man's intuition of his own nature; thus the Christians are distinguished from the heathens in this, that they immediately identify the individual with the species – that with them the individual has the significance of the species, the individual by himself is held to be the perfect representative of the species – that they deify the human individual, make him the absolute being.

Especially characteristic is the difference between Christianity and heathenism concerning the relation of the individual to the intelligence, to the understanding, to the nous. The Christians individualised the understanding the heathens made it a universal essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the intelligence, was the essence of man; to the Christians, it was only a part of themselves. To the heathens therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the Christians, the individual, was immortal, i.e., divine. Hence follows the further difference between heathen and Christian philosophy.

The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol of this immediate identity of the species and individuality in Christianity is Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ is the ideal of humanity become existent, the compendium of all moral and divine perfections to the exclusion of all that is negative; pure, heavenly, sinless man, the typical man, the Adam Kadmon; not regarded as the totality of the species, of mankind, but immediately as one individual, one person. Christ, i.e., the Christian, religious Christ, is therefore not the central, but the terminal point of history. The Christians expected the end of the world, the close of history. In the Bible, Christ himself, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms of our exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the world. History rests only on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where this distinction ceases ' history ceases; the very soul of history is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the contemplation and appropriation of this realised Ideal, and the spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend the prevalence of a fixed belief, – the preaching that God has appeared, and that the end of the world is at hand.

Since the immediate identity of the species and the individual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed of course that this universal, ideal individual was declared to be a transcendent, supernatural, heavenly being. It is therefore a perversity to attempt to deduce from reason the immediate identity of the species and individual, for it is only the imagination which effects this identity, the imagination to which nothing is impossible, and which is also the creator of miracles; for the greatest of miracles is the being who, while he is an individual, is at the same time the ideal, the species, humanity in the fullness of its perfection and infinity, i.e., the Godhead. Hence it is also a perversity to adhere to the biblical or dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust aside miracles. If the principle be retained, wherefore deny its necessary consequences?

The. total absence of the idea of the species in Christianity is especially observable in its characteristic doctrine of the universal sinfulness of men. For there lies at the foundation of this doctrine the demand that the individual shall not be an individual, a demand which again is based on the presupposition that the individual by himself is – a perfect being, is by himself the adequate presentation or existence of the species.

[It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute – in the phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But in so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single, and, as such, a finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the abstraction of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is perfect, and only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he can be.]

Here is entirely wanting the objective perception, the consciousness, that the thou, belongs to the perfection of the I, that men are required to constitute humanity, that only men taken together are what man should and can be. All men are sinners. Granted; but they are not all sinners in the same way; on the contrary, there exists a great and essential difference between them. One man is inclined to falsehood, another is not; he would rather give up his life than break his word or tell a lie; the third has a propensity to intoxication, the fourth to licentiousness; while the fifth, whether by favour of Nature, or from the energy of his character, exhibits none of these vices. Thus, in the moral as well as the physical and intellectual elements, men compensate for each other, so that, taken as a whole, they are as they should be, they present the perfect man.

Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates; involuntarily and without disguise, man is different in intercourse from what he is when alone. Love especially works wonders, and the love of the sexes most of all. Man and woman are the complement of each other, and thus united they first present the species, the perfect man.

[With the Hindus, (Inst. of Menu) he alone is “a perfect man who consists of three united persons, his wife, himself, and his son. For man and wife, and father and son, are one.” The Adam of the Old Testament also is incomplete without woman; he feels his need of her. But the Adam of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam, the Adam who is constituted with a view to the destruction of this world, has no longer any sexual impulses or functions.]

Without species, love is inconceivable. Love is nothing else than the self-consciousness of the species as evolved within the difference of sex. In love, the reality of the species, which otherwise is only a thing of reason, an object of mere thought, becomes a matter of feeling a truth of feeling; for in love, man declares himself unsatisfied in his individuality taken by itself, he postulates the existence of another as a need of the heart; he reckons another as part of his own being; he declares the life which he has through love to be the truly human life, corresponding to the idea of man, i.e., of the species. The individual is defective, imperfect, weak, needy; but love is strong, perfect, contented, free from wants, self-sufficing, infinite; because in it the self-consciousness of the individuality is the mysterious self-consciousness of the perfection of the race. But this result of love is produced by friendship also, at least where it is intense, where it is a religion as it was with the ancients. Friends compensate for each other; friendship is a mean,. of virtue, and more: it is itself virtue, dependent however on participation. Friendship can only exist between the virtuous, as the ancients said. But it cannot be based on perfect similarity; on the contrary, it requires diversity, for friendship rests on a desire for self-completion. One friend obtains through the other what he does not himself possess. The virtues of the one atone for the failings of the other.

Friend justifies friend before God. However faulty a man may be, it is a proof that there is a germ of good in him if he has worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself perfect, I yet at least love virtue, perfection in others. If therefore I am called to account for any sins, weaknesses, and faults, I interpose as advocates, as mediators, the virtues of my friend. How barbarous, how unreasonable would it be to condemn me for sins which I doubtless have committed, but which I have myself condemned in loving my friends. who are free from these sins!

But if friendship and love, which themselves are only subjective realisations of the species, make out of singly imperfect beings an at least relatively perfect whole, how much more do the sins and failings of individuals vanish in the species itself, which has its adequate existence only in the sum total of mankind, and is therefore only an object of reason! Hence the lamentation over sin is found only where the human individual regards himself in his individuality as a perfect, complete being not needing others for the realisation of the species, of the perfect man; where instead of the consciousness of the species has been substituted the exclusive self-consciousness of the individual; where the individual does not recognise himself as a part of mankind, but identifies himself with the species, and for this reason makes his own sins, limits and weaknesses, the sins, limits, and weaknesses of mankind in general. Nevertheless man cannot lose the consciousness of the species, for his selfconsciousness is essentially united to his consciousness of another than himself. Where therefore the species is not an object to him as. a species, it will be an object to him as God. He supplies the absence of the idea of the species by the idea of God, as the being, who is free from the limits and wants which oppress the individual, and, in his opinion (since he identifies the species with the individual), the species itself. But this perfect being, free from the limits of the individual, is nothing else than the species, which reveals the infinitude of its nature in this, that it is realised in infinitely numerous and various individuals. If all men were absolutely alike, there would then certainly be no distinction between the race and the individual. But in that case the existence of many men would be a pure superfluity; a single man would have achieved the ends of the species.

In the one who enjoyed the happiness of existence all would have had their complete substitute.

Doubtless the essence of man is one, but this essence is infinite; its real existence is therefore an infinite, reciprocally compensating variety, which reveals the riches of this essence. Unity in essence is multiplicity in existence. Between me and another human being, – and this other is the representative of the species, even though he is only one, for he supplies to me the want of many others, has for me a universal significance, is the deputy of mankind, in whose name he speaks to me, an isolated individual, so that, when united only with one, I have a participated, a human life; – between me and another human being there is an essential, qualitative distinction. The other is my thou, – the relation being reciprocal, – my alter. eqo, man objective to me, the revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself. In another I first have the consciousness of humanity; through him I first learn, I first feel, that I am a man: in my love for him it is first clear to me that he belongs to me and I to him, that we two cannot be without each other, that only community constitutes humanity. But morally, also, there is a qualitative, critical distinction between the I and thou. My fellow-man is my objective conscience; he makes my failings a reproach to me; even when he does not expressly mention them, he is my personified feeling of shame. The consciousness of the moral law, of right, of propriety, of truth itself, is indissolubly united with my consciousness of another than myself. That is true in which another agrees with me, – agreement is the first criterion of truth; but only because the species is the ultimate measure of truth. That which I think only according to the standard of my individuality is not binding on another; it can be conceived otherwise; it is an accidental,. merely subjective view. But that which I think according to the standard of the species, I think as man in general only can think, and consequently as every individual must think if he thinks normally, in accordance with law, and therefore truly. That is true which agrees with the nature of the species, that is false which contradicts it. There is no other rule of truth. But my fellow-man is to me the representative of the species, the substitute of the rest, nay, his judgment may be of more authority with me than the judgment of the innumerable multitude. Let the fanatic make disciples as the sand on the sea-shore; the sand is still sand; mine be the pearl – a judicious friend. The agreement of others is therefore my criterion of the normalness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with perfect freedom and disinterestedness; but another has an impartial judgment; through him I correct, complete, extend my own judgment, my own taste, my own knowledge. In short, there is a qualitative, critical difference between men. But Christianity extinguishes this qualitative distinction; it sets the same stamp on all men alike, and regards them as one and the same individual, because it knows no distinction between the species and the individual: it has one and the same means of salvation for all men, it sees one and the same original sin in all.

Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity, knows nothing of the species, in which alone lies the redemption, the justification, the reconciliation and cure of the sins and deficiencies of the individual, it needed a supernatural and peculiar, nay, a personal, subjective aid in order to overcome sin. If I alone am the species, if no other, that is, no qualitatively different men exist, or, which is the same thing if there is no distinction between me and others, if we are all perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralised by the opposite qualities of other men: then assuredly my sin is a blot of shame which cries up to Heaven; a revolting horror which can be exterminated only by extraordinary, superhuman, miraculous means. Happily, however, there is a natural reconciliation. My fellow-man is per se the mediator between me and the sacred idea of the species. Homo homini – Deus est. My sin is made to shrink within its limits is thrust back into its nothingness, by the fact that it is only mine, and not that of my fellows.

[Ulf]

Something that has always stuck with me by DH Lawrence.

“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”

[lei.talk]

...that was your second mistake: men like you never realize
I can rule you - collectively,
because I can master you - individually.

- General Gurko Lanen

(the son of a stone-mason)

*

[Baron Samedi]

My signature.

Her words and actions will forever echo in time.....

[lei.talk]

When Cortez’s men came over the mountain pass and saw the Valley of Mexico spread out before them, with the great painted palaces and pyramid-temples, they exclaimed in wonder.

What they said specifically was:

"This is like something out of Amadis of Gaul !"

Which was a popular fiction of the time, with knights and damsels and wicked sorcerors and exotic kingdoms.

they named california after a queen in that book

much like orellana naming that river
after the tall white warrior-women
that led the battles against his journey down-stream.

As Orellana steered his ships towards the middle of the river, he questioned an Indian prisoner about the Amazon attackers. The Indian admitted he knew about the women because he took them tribute on his chieftain's behalf. His chieftain was called Couvnco and his land was a vassal state of the Amazons, who lived some seven days' journey inland. He also said the women were not married. Orellana wanted to know more. At last, they were nearing El Dorado. Through a language of general Indian words and signs, the prisoner explained all he knew of the land of the Amazons.

“The women were very numerous and dwelled in seventy villages,” recorded Fray Gaspar. “Their houses were built of stone and provided with doors. The roads from one village to another were fenced on both sides and guarded at regular intervals so no one could approach without paying toll.”

“But who is the father of these women’s children?” asked Orellana.

“The women make war against a great lord nearby,” replied the Indian, “and bring back warriors as captives and live with them in their villages. When a woman becomes pregnant, the prisoners are sent back to their land. When a son is born, he is killed and his body sent to the father. When a daughter is born, she is cared for and taught the ways of war.”

“Who is the lord of these women?”

“They are subject to a female chieftain called Conori,” said the Indian. “The Amazons possess great wealth in silver and gold. The household utensils of the most important Amazon women are made of precious metals. They have five great houses or temples dedicated to the sun, containing idols of gold and silver representing the figures of women. Their clothing is made of fine llama wool and it covers their bodies from breast to knee and is sometimes fixed by buttons, sometimes by laces. They have long hair and wear gold crowns two inches in width adorned with coloured designs.”

All these details Fray Gasper recorded. It was the high point of Orellana’s expedition and the reason why the mighty river was so named.

- Tim Newark

greed does not suffice,
but, dreams...
*