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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Meno, by Plato

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Title: Meno

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Release Date: September 21, 2008 [EBook #1643]
Last Updated: January 15, 2013

Language: English

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MENO


by Plato


Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Contents

INTRODUCTION.

ON THE IDEAS OF PLATO.

MENO

INTRODUCTION.

This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks, 'whether virtue can be taught.' Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what virtue is, and has never known anyone who did. 'Then he cannot have met Gorgias when he was at Athens.' Yes, Socrates had met him, but he has a bad memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said. Will Meno tell him his own notion, which is probably not very different from that of Gorgias? 'O yes—nothing easier: there is the virtue of a man, of a woman, of an old man, and of a child; there is a virtue of every age and state of life, all of which may be easily described.'

Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the virtues and not a definition of the notion which is common to them all. In a second attempt Meno defines virtue to be 'the power of command.' But to this, again, exceptions are taken. For there must be a virtue of those who obey, as well as of those who command; and the power of command must be justly or not unjustly exercised. Meno is very ready to admit that justice is virtue: 'Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are other virtues, such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round is a figure, and black and white are colours, and yet there are other figures and other colours. Let Meno take the examples of figure and colour, and try to define them.' Meno confesses his inability, and after a process of interrogation, in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a 'simile in multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.' But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word 'colour;' and if he is a candid friend, and not a mere disputant, Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition, into which no disputed word is allowed to intrude: 'Figure is the limit of form.' Meno imperiously insists that he must still have a definition of colour. Some raillery follows; and at length Socrates is induced to reply, 'that colour is the effluence of form, sensible, and in due proportion to the sight.' This definition is exactly suited to the taste of Meno, who welcomes the familiar language of Gorgias and Empedocles. Socrates is of opinion that the more abstract or dialectical definition of figure is far better.

Now that Meno has been made to understand the nature of a general definition, he answers in the spirit of a Greek gentleman, and in the words of a poet, 'that virtue is to delight in things honourable, and to have the power of getting them.' This is a nearer approximation than he has yet made to a complete definition, and, regarded as a piece of proverbial or popular morality, is not far from the truth. But the objection is urged, 'that the honourable is the good,' and as every one equally desires the good, the point of the definition is contained in the words, 'the power of getting them.' 'And they must be got justly or with justice.' The definition will then stand thus: 'Virtue is the power of getting good with justice.' But justice is a part of virtue, and therefore virtue is the getting of good with a part of virtue. The definition repeats the word defined.

Meno complains that the conversation of Socrates has the effect of a torpedo's shock upon him. When he talks with other persons he has plenty to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates, his thoughts desert him. Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity in others, because he is himself perplexed. He proposes to continue the enquiry. But how, asks Meno, can he enquire either into what he knows or into what he does not know? This is a sophistical puzzle, which, as Socrates remarks, saves a great deal of trouble to him who accepts it. But the puzzle has a real difficulty latent under it, to which Socrates will endeavour to find a reply. The difficulty is the origin of knowledge:—

He has heard from priests and priestesses, and from the poet Pindar, of an immortal soul which is born again and again in successive periods of existence, returning into this world when she has paid the penalty of ancient crime, and, having wandered over all places of the upper and under world, and seen and known all things at one time or other, is by association out of one thing capable of recovering all. For nature is of one kindred; and every soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into all knowledge. The existence of this latent knowledge is further proved by the interrogation of one of Meno's slaves, who, in the skilful hands of Socrates, is made to acknowledge some elementary relations of geometrical figures. The theorem that the square of the diagonal is double the square of the side—that famous discovery of primitive mathematics, in honour of which the legendary Pythagoras is said to have sacrificed a hecatomb—is elicited from him. The first step in the process of teaching has made him conscious of his own ignorance. He has had the 'torpedo's shock' given him, and is the better for the operation. But whence had the uneducated man this knowledge? He had never learnt geometry in this world; nor was it born with him; he must therefore have had it when he was not a man. And as he always either was or was not a man, he must have always had it. (Compare Phaedo.)

After Socrates has given this specimen of the true nature of teaching, the original question of the teachableness of virtue is renewed. Again he professes a desire to know 'what virtue is' first. But he is willing to argue the question, as mathematicians say, under an hypothesis. He will assume that if virtue is knowledge, then virtue can be taught. (This was the stage of the argument at which the Protagoras concluded.)

Socrates has no difficulty in showing that virtue is a good, and that goods, whether of body or mind, must be under the direction of knowledge. Upon the assumption just made, then, virtue is teachable. But where are the teachers? There are none to be found. This is extremely discouraging. Virtue is no sooner discovered to be teachable, than the discovery follows that it is not taught. Virtue, therefore, is and is not teachable.

In this dilemma an appeal is made to Anytus, a respectable and well-to-do citizen of the old school, and a family friend of Meno, who happens to be present. He is asked 'whether Meno shall go to the Sophists and be taught.' The suggestion throws him into a rage. 'To whom, then, shall Meno go?' asks Socrates. To any Athenian gentleman—to the great Athenian statesmen of past times. Socrates replies here, as elsewhere (Laches, Prot.), that Themistocles, Pericles, and other great men, had sons to whom they would surely, if they could have done so, have imparted their own political wisdom; but no one ever heard that these sons of theirs were remarkable for anything except riding and wrestling and similar accomplishments. Anytus is angry at the imputation which is cast on his favourite statesmen, and on a class to which he supposes himself to belong; he breaks off with a significant hint. The mention of another opportunity of talking with him, and the suggestion that Meno may do the Athenian people a service by pacifying him, are evident allusions to the trial of Socrates.

Socrates returns to the consideration of the question 'whether virtue is teachable,' which was denied on the ground that there are no teachers of it: (for the Sophists are bad teachers, and the rest of the world do not profess to teach). But there is another point which we failed to observe, and in which Gorgias has never instructed Meno, nor Prodicus Socrates. This is the nature of right opinion. For virtue may be under the guidance of right opinion as well as of knowledge; and right opinion is for practical purposes as good as knowledge, but is incapable of being taught, and is also liable, like the images of Daedalus, to 'walk off,' because not bound by the tie of the cause. This is the sort of instinct which is possessed by statesmen, who are not wise or knowing persons, but only inspired or divine. The higher virtue, which is identical with knowledge, is an ideal only. If the statesman had this knowledge, and could teach what he knew, he would be like Tiresias in the world below,—'he alone has wisdom, but the rest flit like shadows.'

This Dialogue is an attempt to answer the question, Can virtue be taught? No one would either ask or answer such a question in modern times. But in the age of Socrates it was only by an effort that the mind could rise to a general notion of virtue as distinct from the particular virtues of courage, liberality, and the like. And when a hazy conception of this ideal was attained, it was only by a further effort that the question of the teachableness of virtue could be resolved.

The answer which is given by Plato is paradoxical enough, and seems rather intended to stimulate than to satisfy enquiry. Virtue is knowledge, and therefore virtue can be taught. But virtue is not taught, and therefore in this higher and ideal sense there is no virtue and no knowledge. The teaching of the Sophists is confessedly inadequate, and Meno, who is their pupil, is ignorant of the very nature of general terms. He can only produce out of their armoury the sophism, 'that you can neither enquire into what you know nor into what you do not know;' to which Socrates replies by his theory of reminiscence.

To the doctrine that virtue is knowledge, Plato has been constantly tending in the previous Dialogues. But the new truth is no sooner found than it vanishes away. 'If there is knowledge, there must be teachers; and where are the teachers?' There is no knowledge in the higher sense of systematic, connected, reasoned knowledge, such as may one day be attained, and such as Plato himself seems to see in some far off vision of a single science. And there are no teachers in the higher sense of the word; that is to say, no real teachers who will arouse the spirit of enquiry in their pupils, and not merely instruct them in rhetoric or impart to them ready-made information for a fee of 'one' or of 'fifty drachms.' Plato is desirous of deepening the notion of education, and therefore he asserts the paradox that there are no educators. This paradox, though different in form, is not really different from the remark which is often made in modern times by those who would depreciate either the methods of education commonly employed, or the standard attained—that 'there is no true education among us.'

There remains still a possibility which must not be overlooked. Even if there be no true knowledge, as is proved by 'the wretched state of education,' there may be right opinion, which is a sort of guessing or divination resting on no knowledge of causes, and incommunicable to others. This is the gift which our statesmen have, as is proved by the circumstance that they are unable to impart their knowledge to their sons. Those who are possessed of it cannot be said to be men of science or philosophers, but they are inspired and divine.

There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms the concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of human life. To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of all things the most divine. Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing to admit that 'probability is the guide of life (Butler's Analogy.);' and he is at the same time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which governs the world with a higher wisdom. There are many instincts, judgments, and anticipations of the human mind which cannot be reduced to rule, and of which the grounds cannot always be given in words. A person may have some skill or latent experience which he is able to use himself and is yet unable to teach others, because he has no principles, and is incapable of collecting or arranging his ideas. He has practice, but not theory; art, but not science. This is a true fact of psychology, which is recognized by Plato in this passage. But he is far from saying, as some have imagined, that inspiration or divine grace is to be regarded as higher than knowledge. He would not have preferred the poet or man of action to the philosopher, or the virtue of custom to the virtue based upon ideas.

Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only has knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There may be a sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But there is no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he is deriding the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium, or of oracles in the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking of the daemonium of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right opinion, as well as the higher one of science, in the spirit of one who desires to include in his philosophy every aspect of human life; just as he recognizes the existence of popular opinion as a fact, and the Sophists as the expression of it.

This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of reminiscence and of the immortality of the soul. The proof is very slight, even slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic. Because men had abstract ideas in a previous state, they must have always had them, and their souls therefore must have always existed. For they must always have been either men or not men. The fallacy of the latter words is transparent. And Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their weakness; for he adds immediately afterwards, 'I have said some things of which I am not altogether confident.' (Compare Phaedo.) It may be observed, however, that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined with a true but partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge, and of the association of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.

The idealism of Plato is here presented in a less developed form than in the Phaedo and Phaedrus. Nothing is said of the pre-existence of ideas of justice, temperance, and the like. Nor is Socrates positive of anything but the duty of enquiry. The doctrine of reminiscence too is explained more in accordance with fact and experience as arising out of the affinities of nature (ate tes thuseos oles suggenous ouses). Modern philosophy says that all things in nature are dependent on one another; the ancient philosopher had the same truth latent in his mind when he affirmed that out of one thing all the rest may be recovered. The subjective was converted by him into an objective; the mental phenomenon of the association of ideas (compare Phaedo) became a real chain of existences. The germs of two valuable principles of education may also be gathered from the 'words of priests and priestesses:' (1) that true knowledge is a knowledge of causes (compare Aristotle's theory of episteme); and (2) that the process of learning consists not in what is brought to the learner, but in what is drawn out of him.

Some lesser points of the dialogue may be noted, such as (1) the acute observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is embellished with poetical language, to the better and truer one; or (2) the shrewd reflection, which may admit of an application to modern as well as to ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made large fortunes; this must surely be a criterion of their powers of teaching, for that no man could get a living by shoemaking who was not a good shoemaker; or (3) the remark conveyed, almost in a word, that the verbal sceptic is saved the labour of thought and enquiry (ouden dei to toiouto zeteseos). Characteristic also of the temper of the Socratic enquiry is, (4) the proposal to discuss the teachableness of virtue under an hypothesis, after the manner of the mathematicians; and (5) the repetition of the favourite doctrine which occurs so frequently in the earlier and more Socratic Dialogues, and gives a colour to all of them—that mankind only desire evil through ignorance; (6) the experiment of eliciting from the slave-boy the mathematical truth which is latent in him, and (7) the remark that he is all the better for knowing his ignorance.

The character of Meno, like that of Critias, has no relation to the actual circumstances of his life. Plato is silent about his treachery to the ten thousand Greeks, which Xenophon has recorded, as he is also silent about the crimes of Critias. He is a Thessalian Alcibiades, rich and luxurious—a spoilt child of fortune, and is described as the hereditary friend of the great king. Like Alcibiades he is inspired with an ardent desire of knowledge, and is equally willing to learn of Socrates and of the Sophists. He may be regarded as standing in the same relation to Gorgias as Hippocrates in the Protagoras to the other great Sophist. He is the sophisticated youth on whom Socrates tries his cross-examining powers, just as in the Charmides, the Lysis, and the Euthydemus, ingenuous boyhood is made the subject of a similar experiment. He is treated by Socrates in a half-playful manner suited to his character; at the same time he appears not quite to understand the process to which he is being subjected. For he is exhibited as ignorant of the very elements of dialectics, in which the Sophists have failed to instruct their disciple. His definition of virtue as 'the power and desire of attaining things honourable,' like the first definition of justice in the Republic, is taken from a poet. His answers have a sophistical ring, and at the same time show the sophistical incapacity to grasp a general notion.

Anytus is the type of the narrow-minded man of the world, who is indignant at innovation, and equally detests the popular teacher and the true philosopher. He seems, like Aristophanes, to regard the new opinions, whether of Socrates or the Sophists, as fatal to Athenian greatness. He is of the same class as Callicles in the Gorgias, but of a different variety; the immoral and sophistical doctrines of Callicles are not attributed to him. The moderation with which he is described is remarkable, if he be the accuser of Socrates, as is apparently indicated by his parting words. Perhaps Plato may have been desirous of showing that the accusation of Socrates was not to be attributed to badness or malevolence, but rather to a tendency in men's minds. Or he may have been regardless of the historical truth of the characters of his dialogue, as in the case of Meno and Critias. Like Chaerephon (Apol.) the real Anytus was a democrat, and had joined Thrasybulus in the conflict with the thirty.

The Protagoras arrived at a sort of hypothetical conclusion, that if 'virtue is knowledge, it can be taught.' In the Euthydemus, Socrates himself offered an example of the manner in which the true teacher may draw out the mind of youth; this was in contrast to the quibbling follies of the Sophists. In the Meno the subject is more developed; the foundations of the enquiry are laid deeper, and the nature of knowledge is more distinctly explained. There is a progression by antagonism of two opposite aspects of philosophy. But at the moment when we approach nearest, the truth doubles upon us and passes out of our reach. We seem to find that the ideal of knowledge is irreconcilable with experience. In human life there is indeed the profession of knowledge, but right opinion is our actual guide. There is another sort of progress from the general notions of Socrates, who asked simply, 'what is friendship?' 'what is temperance?' 'what is courage?' as in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, to the transcendentalism of Plato, who, in the second stage of his philosophy, sought to find the nature of knowledge in a prior and future state of existence.

The difficulty in framing general notions which has appeared in this and in all the previous Dialogues recurs in the Gorgias and Theaetetus as well as in the Republic. In the Gorgias too the statesmen reappear, but in stronger opposition to the philosopher. They are no longer allowed to have a divine insight, but, though acknowledged to have been clever men and good speakers, are denounced as 'blind leaders of the blind.' The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is also carried further, being made the foundation not only of a theory of knowledge, but of a doctrine of rewards and punishments. In the Republic the relation of knowledge to virtue is described in a manner more consistent with modern distinctions. The existence of the virtues without the possession of knowledge in the higher or philosophical sense is admitted to be possible. Right opinion is again introduced in the Theaetetus as an account of knowledge, but is rejected on the ground that it is irrational (as here, because it is not bound by the tie of the cause), and also because the conception of false opinion is given up as hopeless. The doctrines of Plato are necessarily different at different times of his life, as new distinctions are realized, or new stages of thought attained by him. We are not therefore justified, in order to take away the appearance of inconsistency, in attributing to him hidden meanings or remote allusions.

There are no external criteria by which we can determine the date of the Meno. There is no reason to suppose that any of the Dialogues of Plato were written before the death of Socrates; the Meno, which appears to be one of the earliest of them, is proved to have been of a later date by the allusion of Anytus.

We cannot argue that Plato was more likely to have written, as he has done, of Meno before than after his miserable death; for we have already seen, in the examples of Charmides and Critias, that the characters in Plato are very far from resembling the same characters in history. The repulsive picture which is given of him in the Anabasis of Xenophon, where he also appears as the friend of Aristippus 'and a fair youth having lovers,' has no other trait of likeness to the Meno of Plato.

The place of the Meno in the series is doubtfully indicated by internal evidence. The main character of the Dialogue is Socrates; but to the 'general definitions' of Socrates is added the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence. The problems of virtue and knowledge have been discussed in the Lysis, Laches, Charmides, and Protagoras; the puzzle about knowing and learning has already appeared in the Euthydemus. The doctrines of immortality and pre-existence are carried further in the Phaedrus and Phaedo; the distinction between opinion and knowledge is more fully developed in the Theaetetus. The lessons of Prodicus, whom he facetiously calls his master, are still running in the mind of Socrates. Unlike the later Platonic Dialogues, the Meno arrives at no conclusion. Hence we are led to place the Dialogue at some point of time later than the Protagoras, and earlier than the Phaedrus and Gorgias. The place which is assigned to it in this work is due mainly to the desire to bring together in a single volume all the Dialogues which contain allusions to the trial and death of Socrates.

ON THE IDEAS OF PLATO.

Plato's doctrine of ideas has attained an imaginary clearness and definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings. The popular account of them is partly derived from one or two passages in his Dialogues interpreted without regard to their poetical environment. It is due also to the misunderstanding of him by the Aristotelian school; and the erroneous notion has been further narrowed and has become fixed by the realism of the schoolmen. This popular view of the Platonic ideas may be summed up in some such formula as the following: 'Truth consists not in particulars, but in universals, which have a place in the mind of God, or in some far-off heaven. These were revealed to men in a former state of existence, and are recovered by reminiscence (anamnesis) or association from sensible things. The sensible things are not realities, but shadows only, in relation to the truth.' These unmeaning propositions are hardly suspected to be a caricature of a great theory of knowledge, which Plato in various ways and under many figures of speech is seeking to unfold. Poetry has been converted into dogma; and it is not remarked that the Platonic ideas are to be found only in about a third of Plato's writings and are not confined to him. The forms which they assume are numerous, and if taken literally, inconsistent with one another. At one time we are in the clouds of mythology, at another among the abstractions of mathematics or metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly from one to the other. Reason and fancy are mingled in the same passage. The ideas are sometimes described as many, coextensive with the universals of sense and also with the first principles of ethics; or again they are absorbed into the single idea of good, and subordinated to it. They are not more certain than facts, but they are equally certain (Phaedo). They are both personal and impersonal. They are abstract terms: they are also the causes of things; and they are even transformed into the demons or spirits by whose help God made the world. And the idea of good (Republic) may without violence be converted into the Supreme Being, who 'because He was good' created all things (Tim.).

It would be a mistake to try and reconcile these differing modes of thought. They are not to be regarded seriously as having a distinct meaning. They are parables, prophecies, myths, symbols, revelations, aspirations after an unknown world. They derive their origin from a deep religious and contemplative feeling, and also from an observation of curious mental phenomena. They gather up the elements of the previous philosophies, which they put together in a new form. Their great diversity shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think. They have not yet settled down into a single system. Plato uses them, though he also criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others are always talking about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and that they are not peculiar to himself (Phaedo; Republic; Soph.). But in his later writings he seems to have laid aside the old forms of them. As he proceeds he makes for himself new modes of expression more akin to the Aristotelian logic.

Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common meaning or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he treats of the ideas and those in which he is silent about them. This is the spirit of idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many names and taken many forms, and has in a measure influenced those who seemed to be most averse to it. It has often been charged with inconsistency and fancifulness, and yet has had an elevating effect on human nature, and has exercised a wonderful charm and interest over a few spirits who have been lost in the thought of it. It has been banished again and again, but has always returned. It has attempted to leave the earth and soar heavenwards, but soon has found that only in experience could any solid foundation of knowledge be laid. It has degenerated into pantheism, but has again emerged. No other knowledge has given an equal stimulus to the mind. It is the science of sciences, which are also ideas, and under either aspect require to be defined. They can only be thought of in due proportion when conceived in relation to one another. They are the glasses through which the kingdoms of science are seen, but at a distance. All the greatest minds, except when living in an age of reaction against them, have unconsciously fallen under their power.

The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno is the simplest and clearest, and we shall best illustrate their nature by giving this first and then comparing the manner in which they are described elsewhere, e.g. in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic; to which may be added the criticism of them in the Parmenides, the personal form which is attributed to them in the Timaeus, the logical character which they assume in the Sophist and Philebus, and the allusion to them in the Laws. In the Cratylus they dawn upon him with the freshness of a newly-discovered thought.

The Meno goes back to a former state of existence, in which men did and suffered good and evil, and received the reward or punishment of them until their sin was purged away and they were allowed to return to earth. This is a tradition of the olden time, to which priests and poets bear witness. The souls of men returning to earth bring back a latent memory of ideas, which were known to them in a former state. The recollection is awakened into life and consciousness by the sight of the things which resemble them on earth. The soul evidently possesses such innate ideas before she has had time to acquire them. This is proved by an experiment tried on one of Meno's slaves, from whom Socrates elicits truths of arithmetic and geometry, which he had never learned in this world. He must therefore have brought them with him from another.

The notion of a previous state of existence is found in the verses of Empedocles and in the fragments of Heracleitus. It was the natural answer to two questions, 'Whence came the soul? What is the origin of evil?' and prevailed far and wide in the east. It found its way into Hellas probably through the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rites and mysteries. It was easier to think of a former than of a future life, because such a life has really existed for the race though not for the individual, and all men come into the world, if not 'trailing clouds of glory,' at any rate able to enter into the inheritance of the past. In the Phaedrus, as well as in the Meno, it is this former rather than a future life on which Plato is disposed to dwell. There the Gods, and men following in their train, go forth to contemplate the heavens, and are borne round in the revolutions of them. There they see the divine forms of justice, temperance, and the like, in their unchangeable beauty, but not without an effort more than human. The soul of man is likened to a charioteer and two steeds, one mortal, the other immortal. The charioteer and the mortal steed are in fierce conflict; at length the animal principle is finally overpowered, though not extinguished, by the combined energies of the passionate and rational elements. This is one of those passages in Plato which, partaking both of a philosophical and poetical character, is necessarily indistinct and inconsistent. The magnificent figure under which the nature of the soul is described has not much to do with the popular doctrine of the ideas. Yet there is one little trait in the description which shows that they are present to Plato's mind, namely, the remark that the soul, which had seen truths in the form of the universal, cannot again return to the nature of an animal.

In the Phaedo, as in the Meno, the origin of ideas is sought for in a previous state of existence. There was no time when they could have been acquired in this life, and therefore they must have been recovered from another. The process of recovery is no other than the ordinary law of association, by which in daily life the sight of one thing or person recalls another to our minds, and by which in scientific enquiry from any part of knowledge we may be led on to infer the whole. It is also argued that ideas, or rather ideals, must be derived from a previous state of existence because they are more perfect than the sensible forms of them which are given by experience. But in the Phaedo the doctrine of ideas is subordinate to the proof of the immortality of the soul. 'If the soul existed in a previous state, then it will exist in a future state, for a law of alternation pervades all things.' And, 'If the ideas exist, then the soul exists; if not, not.' It is to be observed, both in the Meno and the Phaedo, that Socrates expresses himself with diffidence. He speaks in the Phaedo of the words with which he has comforted himself and his friends, and will not be too confident that the description which he has given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true, but he 'ventures to think that something of the kind is true.' And in the Meno, after dwelling upon the immortality of the soul, he adds, 'Of some things which I have said I am not altogether confident' (compare Apology; Gorgias). From this class of uncertainties he exempts the difference between truth and appearance, of which he is absolutely convinced.

In the Republic the ideas are spoken of in two ways, which though not contradictory are different. In the tenth book they are represented as the genera or general ideas under which individuals having a common name are contained. For example, there is the bed which the carpenter makes, the picture of the bed which is drawn by the painter, the bed existing in nature of which God is the author. Of the latter all visible beds are only the shadows or reflections. This and similar illustrations or explanations are put forth, not for their own sake, or as an exposition of Plato's theory of ideas, but with a view of showing that poetry and the mimetic arts are concerned with an inferior part of the soul and a lower kind of knowledge. On the other hand, in the 6th and 7th books of the Republic we reach the highest and most perfect conception, which Plato is able to attain, of the nature of knowledge. The ideas are now finally seen to be one as well as many, causes as well as ideas, and to have a unity which is the idea of good and the cause of all the rest. They seem, however, to have lost their first aspect of universals under which individuals are contained, and to have been converted into forms of another kind, which are inconsistently regarded from the one side as images or ideals of justice, temperance, holiness and the like; from the other as hypotheses, or mathematical truths or principles.

In the Timaeus, which in the series of Plato's works immediately follows the Republic, though probably written some time afterwards, no mention occurs of the doctrine of ideas. Geometrical forms and arithmetical ratios furnish the laws according to which the world is created. But though the conception of the ideas as genera or species is forgotten or laid aside, the distinction of the visible and intellectual is as firmly maintained as ever. The IDEA of good likewise disappears and is superseded by the conception of a personal God, who works according to a final cause or principle of goodness which he himself is. No doubt is expressed by Plato, either in the Timaeus or in any other dialogue, of the truths which he conceives to be the first and highest. It is not the existence of God or the idea of good which he approaches in a tentative or hesitating manner, but the investigations of physiology. These he regards, not seriously, as a part of philosophy, but as an innocent recreation (Tim.).

Passing on to the Parmenides, we find in that dialogue not an exposition or defence of the doctrine of ideas, but an assault upon them, which is put into the mouth of the veteran Parmenides, and might be ascribed to Aristotle himself, or to one of his disciples. The doctrine which is assailed takes two or three forms, but fails in any of them to escape the dialectical difficulties which are urged against it. It is admitted that there are ideas of all things, but the manner in which individuals partake of them, whether of the whole or of the part, and in which they become like them, or how ideas can be either within or without the sphere of human knowledge, or how the human and divine can have any relation to each other, is held to be incapable of explanation. And yet, if there are no universal ideas, what becomes of philosophy? (Parmenides.) In the Sophist the theory of ideas is spoken of as a doctrine held not by Plato, but by another sect of philosophers, called 'the Friends of Ideas,' probably the Megarians, who were very distinct from him, if not opposed to him (Sophist). Nor in what may be termed Plato's abridgement of the history of philosophy (Soph.), is any mention made such as we find in the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, of the derivation of such a theory or of any part of it from the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the Heracleiteans, or even from Socrates. In the Philebus, probably one of the latest of the Platonic Dialogues, the conception of a personal or semi-personal deity expressed under the figure of mind, the king of all, who is also the cause, is retained. The one and many of the Phaedrus and Theaetetus is still working in the mind of Plato, and the correlation of ideas, not of 'all with all,' but of 'some with some,' is asserted and explained. But they are spoken of in a different manner, and are not supposed to be recovered from a former state of existence. The metaphysical conception of truth passes into a psychological one, which is continued in the Laws, and is the final form of the Platonic philosophy, so far as can be gathered from his own writings (see especially Laws). In the Laws he harps once more on the old string, and returns to general notions:—these he acknowledges to be many, and yet he insists that they are also one. The guardian must be made to recognize the truth, for which he has contended long ago in the Protagoras, that the virtues are four, but they are also in some sense one (Laws; compare Protagoras).

So various, and if regarded on the surface only, inconsistent, are the statements of Plato respecting the doctrine of ideas. If we attempted to harmonize or to combine them, we should make out of them, not a system, but the caricature of a system. They are the ever-varying expression of Plato's Idealism. The terms used in them are in their substance and general meaning the same, although they seem to be different. They pass from the subject to the object, from earth (diesseits) to heaven (jenseits) without regard to the gulf which later theology and philosophy have made between them. They are also intended to supplement or explain each other. They relate to a subject of which Plato himself would have said that 'he was not confident of the precise form of his own statements, but was strong in the belief that something of the kind was true.' It is the spirit, not the letter, in which they agree—the spirit which places the divine above the human, the spiritual above the material, the one above the many, the mind before the body.

The stream of ancient philosophy in the Alexandrian and Roman times widens into a lake or sea, and then disappears underground to reappear after many ages in a distant land. It begins to flow again under new conditions, at first confined between high and narrow banks, but finally spreading over the continent of Europe. It is and is not the same with ancient philosophy. There is a great deal in modern philosophy which is inspired by ancient. There is much in ancient philosophy which was 'born out of due time; and before men were capable of understanding it. To the fathers of modern philosophy, their own thoughts appeared to be new and original, but they carried with them an echo or shadow of the past, coming back by recollection from an elder world. Of this the enquirers of the seventeenth century, who to themselves appeared to be working out independently the enquiry into all truth, were unconscious. They stood in a new relation to theology and natural philosophy, and for a time maintained towards both an attitude of reserve and separation. Yet the similarities between modern and ancient thought are greater far than the differences. All philosophy, even that part of it which is said to be based upon experience, is really ideal; and ideas are not only derived from facts, but they are also prior to them and extend far beyond them, just as the mind is prior to the senses.

Early Greek speculation culminates in the ideas of Plato, or rather in the single idea of good. His followers, and perhaps he himself, having arrived at this elevation, instead of going forwards went backwards from philosophy to psychology, from ideas to numbers. But what we perceive to be the real meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin of knowledge, will always continue to be one of the first problems of philosophy.

Plato also left behind him a most potent instrument, the forms of logic—arms ready for use, but not yet taken out of their armoury. They were the late birth of the early Greek philosophy, and were the only part of it which has had an uninterrupted hold on the mind of Europe. Philosophies come and go; but the detection of fallacies, the framing of definitions, the invention of methods still continue to be the main elements of the reasoning process.

Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with very simple conceptions. It is almost wholly a reflection on self. It might be described as a quickening into life of old words and notions latent in the semi-barbarous Latin, and putting a new meaning into them. Unlike ancient philosophy, it has been unaffected by impressions derived from outward nature: it arose within the limits of the mind itself. From the time of Descartes to Hume and Kant it has had little or nothing to do with facts of science. On the other hand, the ancient and mediaeval logic retained a continuous influence over it, and a form like that of mathematics was easily impressed upon it; the principle of ancient philosophy which is most apparent in it is scepticism; we must doubt nearly every traditional or received notion, that we may hold fast one or two. The being of God in a personal or impersonal form was a mental necessity to the first thinkers of modern times: from this alone all other ideas could be deduced. There had been an obscure presentiment of 'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously. The Eleatic notion that being and thought were the same was revived in a new form by Descartes. But now it gave birth to consciousness and self-reflection: it awakened the 'ego' in human nature. The mind naked and abstract has no other certainty but the conviction of its own existence. 'I think, therefore I am;' and this thought is God thinking in me, who has also communicated to the reason of man his own attributes of thought and extension—these are truly imparted to him because God is true (compare Republic). It has been often remarked that Descartes, having begun by dismissing all presuppositions, introduces several: he passes almost at once from scepticism to dogmatism. It is more important for the illustration of Plato to observe that he, like Plato, insists that God is true and incapable of deception (Republic)—that he proceeds from general ideas, that many elements of mathematics may be found in him. A certain influence of mathematics both on the form and substance of their philosophy is discernible in both of them. After making the greatest opposition between thought and extension, Descartes, like Plato, supposes them to be reunited for a time, not in their own nature but by a special divine act (compare Phaedrus), and he also supposes all the parts of the human body to meet in the pineal gland, that alone affording a principle of unity in the material frame of man. It is characteristic of the first period of modern philosophy, that having begun (like the Presocratics) with a few general notions, Descartes first falls absolutely under their influence, and then quickly discards them. At the same time he is less able to observe facts, because they are too much magnified by the glasses through which they are seen. The common logic says 'the greater the extension, the less the comprehension,' and we may put the same thought in another way and say of abstract or general ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them, the less are they capable of being applied to particular and concrete natures.

Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy is his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The system of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that of Descartes. In this respect the difference between them is like that between Xenophanes and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be described generally as the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction and taking the form of the Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is overpowered and intoxicated with the idea of Being or God. The greatness of both philosophies consists in the immensity of a thought which excludes all other thoughts; their weakness is the necessary separation of this thought from actual existence and from practical life. In neither of them is there any clear opposition between the inward and outward world. The substance of Spinoza has two attributes, which alone are cognizable by man, thought and extension; these are in extreme opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity. They may be regarded as the two aspects or expressions under which God or substance is unfolded to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of the Eleatic philosophy. The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's Sophist. The grand description of the philosopher in Republic VI, as the spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with another famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie eternitatis.' According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they are conditioned by what is alien to them, and by one another. Human beings are included in the number of them. Hence there is no reality in human action and no place for right and wrong. Individuality is accident. The boasted freedom of the will is only a consciousness of necessity. Truth, he says, is the direction of the reason towards the infinite, in which all things repose; and herein lies the secret of man's well-being. In the exaltation of the reason or intellect, in the denial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus; Laws) Spinoza approaches nearer to Plato than in his conception of an infinite substance. As Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza would have maintained that knowledge alone is good, and what contributes to knowledge useful. Both are equally far from any real experience or observation of nature. And the same difficulty is found in both when we seek to apply their ideas to life and practice. There is a gulf fixed between the infinite substance and finite objects or individuals of Spinoza, just as there is between the ideas of Plato and the world of sense.

Removed from Spinoza by less than a generation is the philosopher Leibnitz, who after deepening and intensifying the opposition between mind and matter, reunites them by his preconcerted harmony (compare again Phaedrus). To him all the particles of matter are living beings which reflect on one another, and in the least of them the whole is contained. Here we catch a reminiscence both of the omoiomere, or similar particles of Anaxagoras, and of the world-animal of the Timaeus.

In Bacon and Locke we have another development in which the mind of man is supposed to receive knowledge by a new method and to work by observation and experience. But we may remark that it is the idea of experience, rather than experience itself, with which the mind is filled. It is a symbol of knowledge rather than the reality which is vouchsafed to us. The Organon of Bacon is not much nearer to actual facts than the Organon of Aristotle or the Platonic idea of good. Many of the old rags and ribbons which defaced the garment of philosophy have been stripped off, but some of them still adhere. A crude conception of the ideas of Plato survives in the 'forms' of Bacon. And on the other hand, there are many passages of Plato in which the importance of the investigation of facts is as much insisted upon as by Bacon. Both are almost equally superior to the illusions of language, and are constantly crying out against them, as against other idols.

Locke cannot be truly regarded as the author of sensationalism any more than of idealism. His system is based upon experience, but with him experience includes reflection as well as sense. His analysis and construction of ideas has no foundation in fact; it is only the dialectic of the mind 'talking to herself.' The philosophy of Berkeley is but the transposition of two words. For objects of sense he would substitute sensations. He imagines himself to have changed the relation of the human mind towards God and nature; they remain the same as before, though he has drawn the imaginary line by which they are divided at a different point. He has annihilated the outward world, but it instantly reappears governed by the same laws and described under the same names.

A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose philosophy the central principle is the denial of the relation of cause and effect. He would deprive men of a familiar term which they can ill afford to lose; but he seems not to have observed that this alteration is merely verbal and does not in any degree affect the nature of things. Still less did he remark that he was arguing from the necessary imperfection of language against the most certain facts. And here, again, we may find a parallel with the ancients. He goes beyond facts in his scepticism, as they did in their idealism. Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more important principles of ethics to custom and probability. But crude and unmeaning as this philosophy is, it exercised a great influence on his successors, not unlike that which Locke exercised upon Berkeley and Berkeley upon Hume himself. All three were both sceptical and ideal in almost equal degrees. Neither they nor their predecessors had any true conception of language or of the history of philosophy. Hume's paradox has been forgotten by the world, and did not any more than the scepticism of the ancients require to be seriously refuted. Like some other philosophical paradoxes, it would have been better left to die out. It certainly could not be refuted by a philosophy such as Kant's, in which, no less than in the previously mentioned systems, the history of the human mind and the nature of language are almost wholly ignored, and the certainty of objective knowledge is transferred to the subject; while absolute truth is reduced to a figment, more abstract and narrow than Plato's ideas, of 'thing in itself,' to which, if we reason strictly, no predicate can be applied.

The question which Plato has raised respecting the origin and nature of ideas belongs to the infancy of philosophy; in modern times it would no longer be asked. Their origin is only their history, so far as we know it; there can be no other. We may trace them in language, in philosophy, in mythology, in poetry, but we cannot argue a priori about them. We may attempt to shake them off, but they are always returning, and in every sphere of science and human action are tending to go beyond facts. They are thought to be innate, because they have been familiar to us all our lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from our mind. Many of them express relations of terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at all in rerum natura corresponds. We are not such free agents in the use of them as we sometimes imagine. Fixed ideas have taken the most complete possession of some thinkers who have been most determined to renounce them, and have been vehemently affirmed when they could be least explained and were incapable of proof. The world has often been led away by a word to which no distinct meaning could be attached. Abstractions such as 'authority,' 'equality,' 'utility,' 'liberty,' 'pleasure,' 'experience,' 'consciousness,' 'chance,' 'substance,' 'matter,' 'atom,' and a heap of other metaphysical and theological terms, are the source of quite as much error and illusion and have as little relation to actual facts as the ideas of Plato. Few students of theology or philosophy have sufficiently reflected how quickly the bloom of a philosophy passes away; or how hard it is for one age to understand the writings of another; or how nice a judgment is required of those who are seeking to express the philosophy of one age in the terms of another. The 'eternal truths' of which metaphysicians speak have hardly ever lasted more than a generation. In our own day schools or systems of philosophy which have once been famous have died before the founders of them. We are still, as in Plato's age, groping about for a new method more comprehensive than any of those which now prevail; and also more permanent. And we seem to see at a distance the promise of such a method, which can hardly be any other than the method of idealized experience, having roots which strike far down into the history of philosophy. It is a method which does not divorce the present from the past, or the part from the whole, or the abstract from the concrete, or theory from fact, or the divine from the human, or one science from another, but labours to connect them. Along such a road we have proceeded a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make us reflect on the want of method which prevails in our own day. In another age, all the branches of knowledge, whether relating to God or man or nature, will become the knowledge of 'the revelation of a single science' (Symp.), and all things, like the stars in heaven, will shed their light upon one another.

MENO

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Meno, Socrates, A Slave of Meno (Boy), Anytus.

MENO: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor by practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?

SOCRATES: O Meno, there was a time when the Thessalians were famous among the other Hellenes only for their riches and their riding; but now, if I am not mistaken, they are equally famous for their wisdom, especially at Larisa, which is the native city of your friend Aristippus. And this is Gorgias' doing; for when he came there, the flower of the Aleuadae, among them your admirer Aristippus, and the other chiefs of the Thessalians, fell in love with his wisdom. And he has taught you the habit of answering questions in a grand and bold style, which becomes those who know, and is the style in which he himself answers all comers; and any Hellene who likes may ask him anything. How different is our lot! my dear Meno. Here at Athens there is a dearth of the commodity, and all wisdom seems to have emigrated from us to you. I am certain that if you were to ask any Athenian whether virtue was natural or acquired, he would laugh in your face, and say: 'Stranger, you have far too good an opinion of me, if you think that I can answer your question. For I literally do not know what virtue is, and much less whether it is acquired by teaching or not.' And I myself, Meno, living as I do in this region of poverty, am as poor as the rest of the world; and I confess with shame that I know literally nothing about virtue; and when I do not know the 'quid' of anything how can I know the 'quale'? How, if I knew nothing at all of Meno, could I tell if he was fair, or the opposite of fair; rich and noble, or the reverse of rich and noble? Do you think that I could?

MENO: No, indeed. But are you in earnest, Socrates, in saying that you do not know what virtue is? And am I to carry back this report of you to Thessaly?

SOCRATES: Not only that, my dear boy, but you may say further that I have never known of any one else who did, in my judgment.

MENO: Then you have never met Gorgias when he was at Athens?

SOCRATES: Yes, I have.

MENO: And did you not think that he knew?

SOCRATES: I have not a good memory, Meno, and therefore I cannot now tell what I thought of him at the time. And I dare say that he did know, and that you know what he said: please, therefore, to remind me of what he said; or, if you would rather, tell me your own view; for I suspect that you and he think much alike.

MENO: Very true.

SOCRATES: Then as he is not here, never mind him, and do you tell me: By the gods, Meno, be generous, and tell me what you say that virtue is; for I shall be truly delighted to find that I have been mistaken, and that you and Gorgias do really have this knowledge; although I have been just saying that I have never found anybody who had.

MENO: There will be no difficulty, Socrates, in answering your question. Let us take first the virtue of a man—he should know how to administer the state, and in the administration of it to benefit his friends and harm his enemies; and he must also be careful not to suffer harm himself. A woman's virtue, if you wish to know about that, may also be easily described: her duty is to order her house, and keep what is indoors, and obey her husband. Every age, every condition of life, young or old, male or female, bond or free, has a different virtue: there are virtues numberless, and no lack of definitions of them; for virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do. And the same may be said of vice, Socrates (Compare Arist. Pol.).

SOCRATES: How fortunate I am, Meno! When I ask you for one virtue, you present me with a swarm of them (Compare Theaet.), which are in your keeping. Suppose that I carry on the figure of the swarm, and ask of you, What is the nature of the bee? and you answer that there are many kinds of bees, and I reply: But do bees differ as bees, because there are many and different kinds of them; or are they not rather to be distinguished by some other quality, as for example beauty, size, or shape? How would you answer me?

MENO: I should answer that bees do not differ from one another, as bees.

SOCRATES: And if I went on to say: That is what I desire to know, Meno; tell me what is the quality in which they do not differ, but are all alike;—would you be able to answer?

MENO: I should.

SOCRATES: And so of the virtues, however many and different they may be, they have all a common nature which makes them virtues; and on this he who would answer the question, 'What is virtue?' would do well to have his eye fixed: Do you understand?

MENO: I am beginning to understand; but I do not as yet take hold of the question as I could wish.

SOCRATES: When you say, Meno, that there is one virtue of a man, another of a woman, another of a child, and so on, does this apply only to virtue, or would you say the same of health, and size, and strength? Or is the nature of health always the same, whether in man or woman?

MENO: I should say that health is the same, both in man and woman.

SOCRATES: And is not this true of size and strength? If a woman is strong, she will be strong by reason of the same form and of the same strength subsisting in her which there is in the man. I mean to say that strength, as strength, whether of man or woman, is the same. Is there any difference?

MENO: I think not.

SOCRATES: And will not virtue, as virtue, be the same, whether in a child or in a grown-up person, in a woman or in a man?

MENO: I cannot help feeling, Socrates, that this case is different from the others.

SOCRATES: But why? Were you not saying that the virtue of a man was to order a state, and the virtue of a woman was to order a house?

MENO: I did say so.

SOCRATES: And can either house or state or anything be well ordered without temperance and without justice?

MENO: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then they who order a state or a house temperately or justly order them with temperance and justice?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then both men and women, if they are to be good men and women, must have the same virtues of temperance and justice?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And can either a young man or an elder one be good, if they are intemperate and unjust?

MENO: They cannot.

SOCRATES: They must be temperate and just?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then all men are good in the same way, and by participation in the same virtues?

MENO: Such is the inference.

SOCRATES: And they surely would not have been good in the same way, unless their virtue had been the same?

MENO: They would not.

SOCRATES: Then now that the sameness of all virtue has been proven, try and remember what you and Gorgias say that virtue is.

MENO: Will you have one definition of them all?

SOCRATES: That is what I am seeking.

MENO: If you want to have one definition of them all, I know not what to say, but that virtue is the power of governing mankind.

SOCRATES: And does this definition of virtue include all virtue? Is virtue the same in a child and in a slave, Meno? Can the child govern his father, or the slave his master; and would he who governed be any longer a slave?

MENO: I think not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: No, indeed; there would be small reason in that. Yet once more, fair friend; according to you, virtue is 'the power of governing;' but do you not add 'justly and not unjustly'?

MENO: Yes, Socrates; I agree there; for justice is virtue.

SOCRATES: Would you say 'virtue,' Meno, or 'a virtue'?

MENO: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean as I might say about anything; that a round, for example, is 'a figure' and not simply 'figure,' and I should adopt this mode of speaking, because there are other figures.

MENO: Quite right; and that is just what I am saying about virtue—that there are other virtues as well as justice.

SOCRATES: What are they? tell me the names of them, as I would tell you the names of the other figures if you asked me.

MENO: Courage and temperance and wisdom and magnanimity are virtues; and there are many others.

SOCRATES: Yes, Meno; and again we are in the same case: in searching after one virtue we have found many, though not in the same way as before; but we have been unable to find the common virtue which runs through them all.

MENO: Why, Socrates, even now I am not able to follow you in the attempt to get at one common notion of virtue as of other things.

SOCRATES: No wonder; but I will try to get nearer if I can, for you know that all things have a common notion. Suppose now that some one asked you the question which I asked before: Meno, he would say, what is figure? And if you answered 'roundness,' he would reply to you, in my way of speaking, by asking whether you would say that roundness is 'figure' or 'a figure;' and you would answer 'a figure.'

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And for this reason—that there are other figures?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if he proceeded to ask, What other figures are there? you would have told him.

MENO: I should.

SOCRATES: And if he similarly asked what colour is, and you answered whiteness, and the questioner rejoined, Would you say that whiteness is colour or a colour? you would reply, A colour, because there are other colours as well.

MENO: I should.

SOCRATES: And if he had said, Tell me what they are?—you would have told him of other colours which are colours just as much as whiteness.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And suppose that he were to pursue the matter in my way, he would say: Ever and anon we are landed in particulars, but this is not what I want; tell me then, since you call them by a common name, and say that they are all figures, even when opposed to one another, what is that common nature which you designate as figure—which contains straight as well as round, and is no more one than the other—that would be your mode of speaking?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And in speaking thus, you do not mean to say that the round is round any more than straight, or the straight any more straight than round?

MENO: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: You only assert that the round figure is not more a figure than the straight, or the straight than the round?

MENO: Very true.

SOCRATES: To what then do we give the name of figure? Try and answer. Suppose that when a person asked you this question either about figure or colour, you were to reply, Man, I do not understand what you want, or know what you are saying; he would look rather astonished and say: Do you not understand that I am looking for the 'simile in multis'? And then he might put the question in another form: Meno, he might say, what is that 'simile in multis' which you call figure, and which includes not only round and straight figures, but all? Could you not answer that question, Meno? I wish that you would try; the attempt will be good practice with a view to the answer about virtue.

MENO: I would rather that you should answer, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Shall I indulge you?

MENO: By all means.

SOCRATES: And then you will tell me about virtue?

MENO: I will.

SOCRATES: Then I must do my best, for there is a prize to be won.

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Well, I will try and explain to you what figure is. What do you say to this answer?—Figure is the only thing which always follows colour. Will you be satisfied with it, as I am sure that I should be, if you would let me have a similar definition of virtue?

MENO: But, Socrates, it is such a simple answer.

SOCRATES: Why simple?

MENO: Because, according to you, figure is that which always follows colour.

(SOCRATES: Granted.)

MENO: But if a person were to say that he does not know what colour is, any more than what figure is—what sort of answer would you have given him?

SOCRATES: I should have told him the truth. And if he were a philosopher of the eristic and antagonistic sort, I should say to him: You have my answer, and if I am wrong, your business is to take up the argument and refute me. But if we were friends, and were talking as you and I are now, I should reply in a milder strain and more in the dialectician's vein; that is to say, I should not only speak the truth, but I should make use of premises which the person interrogated would be willing to admit. And this is the way in which I shall endeavour to approach you. You will acknowledge, will you not, that there is such a thing as an end, or termination, or extremity?—all which words I use in the same sense, although I am aware that Prodicus might draw distinctions about them: but still you, I am sure, would speak of a thing as ended or terminated—that is all which I am saying—not anything very difficult.

MENO: Yes, I should; and I believe that I understand your meaning.

SOCRATES: And you would speak of a surface and also of a solid, as for example in geometry.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Well then, you are now in a condition to understand my definition of figure. I define figure to be that in which the solid ends; or, more concisely, the limit of solid.

MENO: And now, Socrates, what is colour?

SOCRATES: You are outrageous, Meno, in thus plaguing a poor old man to give you an answer, when you will not take the trouble of remembering what is Gorgias' definition of virtue.

MENO: When you have told me what I ask, I will tell you, Socrates.

SOCRATES: A man who was blindfolded has only to hear you talking, and he would know that you are a fair creature and have still many lovers.

MENO: Why do you think so?

SOCRATES: Why, because you always speak in imperatives: like all beauties when they are in their prime, you are tyrannical; and also, as I suspect, you have found out that I have weakness for the fair, and therefore to humour you I must answer.

MENO: Please do.

SOCRATES: Would you like me to answer you after the manner of Gorgias, which is familiar to you?

MENO: I should like nothing better.

SOCRATES: Do not he and you and Empedocles say that there are certain effluences of existence?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And passages into which and through which the effluences pass?

MENO: Exactly.

SOCRATES: And some of the effluences fit into the passages, and some of them are too small or too large?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And there is such a thing as sight?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And now, as Pindar says, 'read my meaning:'—colour is an effluence of form, commensurate with sight, and palpable to sense.

MENO: That, Socrates, appears to me to be an admirable answer.

SOCRATES: Why, yes, because it happens to be one which you have been in the habit of hearing: and your wit will have discovered, I suspect, that you may explain in the same way the nature of sound and smell, and of many other similar phenomena.

MENO: Quite true.

SOCRATES: The answer, Meno, was in the orthodox solemn vein, and therefore was more acceptable to you than the other answer about figure.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And yet, O son of Alexidemus, I cannot help thinking that the other was the better; and I am sure that you would be of the same opinion, if you would only stay and be initiated, and were not compelled, as you said yesterday, to go away before the mysteries.

MENO: But I will stay, Socrates, if you will give me many such answers.

SOCRATES: Well then, for my own sake as well as for yours, I will do my very best; but I am afraid that I shall not be able to give you very many as good: and now, in your turn, you are to fulfil your promise, and tell me what virtue is in the universal; and do not make a singular into a plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces: I have given you the pattern.

MENO: Well then, Socrates, virtue, as I take it, is when he, who desires the honourable, is able to provide it for himself; so the poet says, and I say too—

'Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.'

SOCRATES: And does he who desires the honourable also desire the good?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then are there some who desire the evil and others who desire the good? Do not all men, my dear sir, desire good?

MENO: I think not.

SOCRATES: There are some who desire evil?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Do you mean that they think the evils which they desire, to be good; or do they know that they are evil and yet desire them?

MENO: Both, I think.

SOCRATES: And do you really imagine, Meno, that a man knows evils to be evils and desires them notwithstanding?

MENO: Certainly I do.

SOCRATES: And desire is of possession?

MENO: Yes, of possession.

SOCRATES: And does he think that the evils will do good to him who possesses them, or does he know that they will do him harm?

MENO: There are some who think that the evils will do them good, and others who know that they will do them harm.

SOCRATES: And, in your opinion, do those who think that they will do them good know that they are evils?

MENO: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Is it not obvious that those who are ignorant of their nature do not desire them; but they desire what they suppose to be goods although they are really evils; and if they are mistaken and suppose the evils to be goods they really desire goods?

MENO: Yes, in that case.

SOCRATES: Well, and do those who, as you say, desire evils, and think that evils are hurtful to the possessor of them, know that they will be hurt by them?

MENO: They must know it.

SOCRATES: And must they not suppose that those who are hurt are miserable in proportion to the hurt which is inflicted upon them?

MENO: How can it be otherwise?

SOCRATES: But are not the miserable ill-fated?

MENO: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: And does any one desire to be miserable and ill-fated?

MENO: I should say not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: But if there is no one who desires to be miserable, there is no one, Meno, who desires evil; for what is misery but the desire and possession of evil?

MENO: That appears to be the truth, Socrates, and I admit that nobody desires evil.

SOCRATES: And yet, were you not saying just now that virtue is the desire and power of attaining good?

MENO: Yes, I did say so.

SOCRATES: But if this be affirmed, then the desire of good is common to all, and one man is no better than another in that respect?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And if one man is not better than another in desiring good, he must be better in the power of attaining it?

MENO: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Then, according to your definition, virtue would appear to be the power of attaining good?

MENO: I entirely approve, Socrates, of the manner in which you now view this matter.

SOCRATES: Then let us see whether what you say is true from another point of view; for very likely you may be right:—You affirm virtue to be the power of attaining goods?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the goods which you mean are such as health and wealth and the possession of gold and silver, and having office and honour in the state—those are what you would call goods?

MENO: Yes, I should include all those.

SOCRATES: Then, according to Meno, who is the hereditary friend of the great king, virtue is the power of getting silver and gold; and would you add that they must be gained piously, justly, or do you deem this to be of no consequence? And is any mode of acquisition, even if unjust and dishonest, equally to be deemed virtue?

MENO: Not virtue, Socrates, but vice.

SOCRATES: Then justice or temperance or holiness, or some other part of virtue, as would appear, must accompany the acquisition, and without them the mere acquisition of good will not be virtue.

MENO: Why, how can there be virtue without these?

SOCRATES: And the non-acquisition of gold and silver in a dishonest manner for oneself or another, or in other words the want of them, may be equally virtue?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: Then the acquisition of such goods is no more virtue than the non-acquisition and want of them, but whatever is accompanied by justice or honesty is virtue, and whatever is devoid of justice is vice.

MENO: It cannot be otherwise, in my judgment.

SOCRATES: And were we not saying just now that justice, temperance, and the like, were each of them a part of virtue?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And so, Meno, this is the way in which you mock me.

MENO: Why do you say that, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Why, because I asked you to deliver virtue into my hands whole and unbroken, and I gave you a pattern according to which you were to frame your answer; and you have forgotten already, and tell me that virtue is the power of attaining good justly, or with justice; and justice you acknowledge to be a part of virtue.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then it follows from your own admissions, that virtue is doing what you do with a part of virtue; for justice and the like are said by you to be parts of virtue.

MENO: What of that?

SOCRATES: What of that! Why, did not I ask you to tell me the nature of virtue as a whole? And you are very far from telling me this; but declare every action to be virtue which is done with a part of virtue; as though you had told me and I must already know the whole of virtue, and this too when frittered away into little pieces. And, therefore, my dear Meno, I fear that I must begin again and repeat the same question: What is virtue? for otherwise, I can only say, that every action done with a part of virtue is virtue; what else is the meaning of saying that every action done with justice is virtue? Ought I not to ask the question over again; for can any one who does not know virtue know a part of virtue?

MENO: No; I do not say that he can.

SOCRATES: Do you remember how, in the example of figure, we rejected any answer given in terms which were as yet unexplained or unadmitted?

MENO: Yes, Socrates; and we were quite right in doing so.

SOCRATES: But then, my friend, do not suppose that we can explain to any one the nature of virtue as a whole through some unexplained portion of virtue, or anything at all in that fashion; we should only have to ask over again the old question, What is virtue? Am I not right?

MENO: I believe that you are.

SOCRATES: Then begin again, and answer me, What, according to you and your friend Gorgias, is the definition of virtue?

MENO: O Socrates, I used to be told, before I knew you, that you were always doubting yourself and making others doubt; and now you are casting your spells over me, and I am simply getting bewitched and enchanted, and am at my wits' end. And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and touch him, as you have now torpified me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons—and very good ones they were, as I thought—at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is. And I think that you are very wise in not voyaging and going away from home, for if you did in other places as you do in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a magician.

SOCRATES: You are a rogue, Meno, and had all but caught me.

MENO: What do you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I can tell why you made a simile about me.

MENO: Why?

SOCRATES: In order that I might make another simile about you. For I know that all pretty young gentlemen like to have pretty similes made about them—as well they may—but I shall not return the compliment. As to my being a torpedo, if the torpedo is torpid as well as the cause of torpidity in others, then indeed I am a torpedo, but not otherwise; for I perplex others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself. And now I know not what virtue is, and you seem to be in the same case, although you did once perhaps know before you touched me. However, I have no objection to join with you in the enquiry.

MENO: And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?

SOCRATES: I know, Meno, what you mean; but just see what a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue that a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire (Compare Aristot. Post. Anal.).

MENO: Well, Socrates, and is not the argument sound?

SOCRATES: I think not.

MENO: Why not?

SOCRATES: I will tell you why: I have heard from certain wise men and women who spoke of things divine that—

MENO: What did they say?

SOCRATES: They spoke of a glorious truth, as I conceive.

MENO: What was it? and who were they?

SOCRATES: Some of them were priests and priestesses, who had studied how they might be able to give a reason of their profession: there have been poets also, who spoke of these things by inspiration, like Pindar, and many others who were inspired. And they say—mark, now, and see whether their words are true—they say that the soul of man is immortal, and at one time has an end, which is termed dying, and at another time is born again, but is never destroyed. And the moral is, that a man ought to live always in perfect holiness. 'For in the ninth year Persephone sends the souls of those from whom she has received the penalty of ancient crime back again from beneath into the light of the sun above, and these are they who become noble kings and mighty men and great in wisdom and are called saintly heroes in after ages.' The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection. And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of enquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. In that confiding, I will gladly enquire with you into the nature of virtue.

MENO: Yes, Socrates; but what do you mean by saying that we do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection? Can you teach me how this is?

SOCRATES: I told you, Meno, just now that you were a rogue, and now you ask whether I can teach you, when I am saying that there is no teaching, but only recollection; and thus you imagine that you will involve me in a contradiction.

MENO: Indeed, Socrates, I protest that I had no such intention. I only asked the question from habit; but if you can prove to me that what you say is true, I wish that you would.

SOCRATES: It will be no easy matter, but I will try to please you to the utmost of my power. Suppose that you call one of your numerous attendants, that I may demonstrate on him.

MENO: Certainly. Come hither, boy.

SOCRATES: He is Greek, and speaks Greek, does he not?

MENO: Yes, indeed; he was born in the house.

SOCRATES: Attend now to the questions which I ask him, and observe whether he learns of me or only remembers.

MENO: I will.

SOCRATES: Tell me, boy, do you know that a figure like this is a square?

BOY: I do.

SOCRATES: And you know that a square figure has these four lines equal?

BOY: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And these lines which I have drawn through the middle of the square are also equal?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: A square may be of any size?

BOY: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And if one side of the figure be of two feet, and the other side be of two feet, how much will the whole be? Let me explain: if in one direction the space was of two feet, and in the other direction of one foot, the whole would be of two feet taken once?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: But since this side is also of two feet, there are twice two feet?

BOY: There are.

SOCRATES: Then the square is of twice two feet?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And how many are twice two feet? count and tell me.

BOY: Four, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And might there not be another square twice as large as this, and having like this the lines equal?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And of how many feet will that be?

BOY: Of eight feet.

SOCRATES: And now try and tell me the length of the line which forms the side of that double square: this is two feet—what will that be?

BOY: Clearly, Socrates, it will be double.

SOCRATES: Do you observe, Meno, that I am not teaching the boy anything, but only asking him questions; and now he fancies that he knows how long a line is necessary in order to produce a figure of eight square feet; does he not?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And does he really know?

MENO: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: He only guesses that because the square is double, the line is double.

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: Observe him while he recalls the steps in regular order. (To the Boy:) Tell me, boy, do you assert that a double space comes from a double line? Remember that I am not speaking of an oblong, but of a figure equal every way, and twice the size of this—that is to say of eight feet; and I want to know whether you still say that a double square comes from double line?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: But does not this line become doubled if we add another such line here?

BOY: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And four such lines will make a space containing eight feet?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: Let us describe such a figure: Would you not say that this is the figure of eight feet?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And are there not these four divisions in the figure, each of which is equal to the figure of four feet?

BOY: True.

SOCRATES: And is not that four times four?

BOY: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And four times is not double?

BOY: No, indeed.

SOCRATES: But how much?

BOY: Four times as much.

SOCRATES: Therefore the double line, boy, has given a space, not twice, but four times as much.

BOY: True.

SOCRATES: Four times four are sixteen—are they not?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: What line would give you a space of eight feet, as this gives one of sixteen feet;—do you see?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the space of four feet is made from this half line?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: Good; and is not a space of eight feet twice the size of this, and half the size of the other?

BOY: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Such a space, then, will be made out of a line greater than this one, and less than that one?

BOY: Yes; I think so.

SOCRATES: Very good; I like to hear you say what you think. And now tell me, is not this a line of two feet and that of four?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then the line which forms the side of eight feet ought to be more than this line of two feet, and less than the other of four feet?

BOY: It ought.

SOCRATES: Try and see if you can tell me how much it will be.

BOY: Three feet.

SOCRATES: Then if we add a half to this line of two, that will be the line of three. Here are two and there is one; and on the other side, here are two also and there is one: and that makes the figure of which you speak?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: But if there are three feet this way and three feet that way, the whole space will be three times three feet?

BOY: That is evident.

SOCRATES: And how much are three times three feet?

BOY: Nine.

SOCRATES: And how much is the double of four?

BOY: Eight.

SOCRATES: Then the figure of eight is not made out of a line of three?

BOY: No.

SOCRATES: But from what line?—tell me exactly; and if you would rather not reckon, try and show me the line.

BOY: Indeed, Socrates, I do not know.

SOCRATES: Do you see, Meno, what advances he has made in his power of recollection? He did not know at first, and he does not know now, what is the side of a figure of eight feet: but then he thought that he knew, and answered confidently as if he knew, and had no difficulty; now he has a difficulty, and neither knows nor fancies that he knows.

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: Is he not better off in knowing his ignorance?

MENO: I think that he is.

SOCRATES: If we have made him doubt, and given him the 'torpedo's shock,' have we done him any harm?

MENO: I think not.

SOCRATES: We have certainly, as would seem, assisted him in some degree to the discovery of the truth; and now he will wish to remedy his ignorance, but then he would have been ready to tell all the world again and again that the double space should have a double side.

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: But do you suppose that he would ever have enquired into or learned what he fancied that he knew, though he was really ignorant of it, until he had fallen into perplexity under the idea that he did not know, and had desired to know?

MENO: I think not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Then he was the better for the torpedo's touch?

MENO: I think so.

SOCRATES: Mark now the farther development. I shall only ask him, and not teach him, and he shall share the enquiry with me: and do you watch and see if you find me telling or explaining anything to him, instead of eliciting his opinion. Tell me, boy, is not this a square of four feet which I have drawn?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And now I add another square equal to the former one?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And a third, which is equal to either of them?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: Suppose that we fill up the vacant corner?

BOY: Very good.

SOCRATES: Here, then, there are four equal spaces?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And how many times larger is this space than this other?

BOY: Four times.

SOCRATES: But it ought to have been twice only, as you will remember.

BOY: True.

SOCRATES: And does not this line, reaching from corner to corner, bisect each of these spaces?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And are there not here four equal lines which contain this space?

BOY: There are.

SOCRATES: Look and see how much this space is.

BOY: I do not understand.

SOCRATES: Has not each interior line cut off half of the four spaces?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And how many spaces are there in this section?

BOY: Four.

SOCRATES: And how many in this?

BOY: Two.

SOCRATES: And four is how many times two?

BOY: Twice.

SOCRATES: And this space is of how many feet?

BOY: Of eight feet.

SOCRATES: And from what line do you get this figure?

BOY: From this.

SOCRATES: That is, from the line which extends from corner to corner of the figure of four feet?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And that is the line which the learned call the diagonal. And if this is the proper name, then you, Meno's slave, are prepared to affirm that the double space is the square of the diagonal?

BOY: Certainly, Socrates.

SOCRATES: What do you say of him, Meno? Were not all these answers given out of his own head?

MENO: Yes, they were all his own.

SOCRATES: And yet, as we were just now saying, he did not know?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: But still he had in him those notions of his—had he not?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then he who does not know may still have true notions of that which he does not know?

MENO: He has.

SOCRATES: And at present these notions have just been stirred up in him, as in a dream; but if he were frequently asked the same questions, in different forms, he would know as well as any one at last?

MENO: I dare say.

SOCRATES: Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And this spontaneous recovery of knowledge in him is recollection?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And this knowledge which he now has must he not either have acquired or always possessed?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not have acquired it in this life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be made to do the same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge. Now, has any one ever taught him all this? You must know about him, if, as you say, he was born and bred in your house.

MENO: And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.

SOCRATES: And yet he has the knowledge?

MENO: The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.

SOCRATES: But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, then he must have had and learned it at some other time?

MENO: Clearly he must.

SOCRATES: Which must have been the time when he was not a man?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if there have been always true thoughts in him, both at the time when he was and was not a man, which only need to be awakened into knowledge by putting questions to him, his soul must have always possessed this knowledge, for he always either was or was not a man?

MENO: Obviously.

SOCRATES: And if the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal. Wherefore be of good cheer, and try to recollect what you do not know, or rather what you do not remember.

MENO: I feel, somehow, that I like what you are saying.

SOCRATES: And I, Meno, like what I am saying. Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know;—that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.

MENO: There again, Socrates, your words seem to me excellent.

SOCRATES: Then, as we are agreed that a man should enquire about that which he does not know, shall you and I make an effort to enquire together into the nature of virtue?

MENO: By all means, Socrates. And yet I would much rather return to my original question, Whether in seeking to acquire virtue we should regard it as a thing to be taught, or as a gift of nature, or as coming to men in some other way?

SOCRATES: Had I the command of you as well as of myself, Meno, I would not have enquired whether virtue is given by instruction or not, until we had first ascertained 'what it is.' But as you think only of controlling me who am your slave, and never of controlling yourself,—such being your notion of freedom, I must yield to you, for you are irresistible. And therefore I have now to enquire into the qualities of a thing of which I do not as yet know the nature. At any rate, will you condescend a little, and allow the question 'Whether virtue is given by instruction, or in any other way,' to be argued upon hypothesis? As the geometrician, when he is asked whether a certain triangle is capable being inscribed in a certain circle (Or, whether a certain area is capable of being inscribed as a triangle in a certain circle.), will reply: 'I cannot tell you as yet; but I will offer a hypothesis which may assist us in forming a conclusion: If the figure be such that when you have produced a given side of it (Or, when you apply it to the given line, i.e. the diameter of the circle (autou).), the given area of the triangle falls short by an area corresponding to the part produced (Or, similar to the area so applied.), then one consequence follows, and if this is impossible then some other; and therefore I wish to assume a hypothesis before I tell you whether this triangle is capable of being inscribed in the circle':—that is a geometrical hypothesis. And we too, as we know not the nature and qualities of virtue, must ask, whether virtue is or is not taught, under a hypothesis: as thus, if virtue is of such a class of mental goods, will it be taught or not? Let the first hypothesis be that virtue is or is not knowledge,—in that case will it be taught or not? or, as we were just now saying, 'remembered'? For there is no use in disputing about the name. But is virtue taught or not? or rather, does not every one see that knowledge alone is taught?

MENO: I agree.

SOCRATES: Then if virtue is knowledge, virtue will be taught?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then now we have made a quick end of this question: if virtue is of such a nature, it will be taught; and if not, not?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: The next question is, whether virtue is knowledge or of another species?

MENO: Yes, that appears to be the question which comes next in order.

SOCRATES: Do we not say that virtue is a good?—This is a hypothesis which is not set aside.

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Now, if there be any sort of good which is distinct from knowledge, virtue may be that good; but if knowledge embraces all good, then we shall be right in thinking that virtue is knowledge?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And virtue makes us good?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if we are good, then we are profitable; for all good things are profitable?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then virtue is profitable?

MENO: That is the only inference.

SOCRATES: Then now let us see what are the things which severally profit us. Health and strength, and beauty and wealth—these, and the like of these, we call profitable?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And yet these things may also sometimes do us harm: would you not think so?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And what is the guiding principle which makes them profitable or the reverse? Are they not profitable when they are rightly used, and hurtful when they are not rightly used?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Next, let us consider the goods of the soul: they are temperance, justice, courage, quickness of apprehension, memory, magnanimity, and the like?

MENO: Surely.

SOCRATES: And such of these as are not knowledge, but of another sort, are sometimes profitable and sometimes hurtful; as, for example, courage wanting prudence, which is only a sort of confidence? When a man has no sense he is harmed by courage, but when he has sense he is profited?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And the same may be said of temperance and quickness of apprehension; whatever things are learned or done with sense are profitable, but when done without sense they are hurtful?

MENO: Very true.

SOCRATES: And in general, all that the soul attempts or endures, when under the guidance of wisdom, ends in happiness; but when she is under the guidance of folly, in the opposite?

MENO: That appears to be true.

SOCRATES: If then virtue is a quality of the soul, and is admitted to be profitable, it must be wisdom or prudence, since none of the things of the soul are either profitable or hurtful in themselves, but they are all made profitable or hurtful by the addition of wisdom or of folly; and therefore if virtue is profitable, virtue must be a sort of wisdom or prudence?

MENO: I quite agree.

SOCRATES: And the other goods, such as wealth and the like, of which we were just now saying that they are sometimes good and sometimes evil, do not they also become profitable or hurtful, accordingly as the soul guides and uses them rightly or wrongly; just as the things of the soul herself are benefited when under the guidance of wisdom and harmed by folly?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And the wise soul guides them rightly, and the foolish soul wrongly.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And is not this universally true of human nature? All other things hang upon the soul, and the things of the soul herself hang upon wisdom, if they are to be good; and so wisdom is inferred to be that which profits—and virtue, as we say, is profitable?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And thus we arrive at the conclusion that virtue is either wholly or partly wisdom?

MENO: I think that what you are saying, Socrates, is very true.

SOCRATES: But if this is true, then the good are not by nature good?

MENO: I think not.

SOCRATES: If they had been, there would assuredly have been discerners of characters among us who would have known our future great men; and on their showing we should have adopted them, and when we had got them, we should have kept them in the citadel out of the way of harm, and set a stamp upon them far rather than upon a piece of gold, in order that no one might tamper with them; and when they grew up they would have been useful to the state?

MENO: Yes, Socrates, that would have been the right way.

SOCRATES: But if the good are not by nature good, are they made good by instruction?

MENO: There appears to be no other alternative, Socrates. On the supposition that virtue is knowledge, there can be no doubt that virtue is taught.

SOCRATES: Yes, indeed; but what if the supposition is erroneous?

MENO: I certainly thought just now that we were right.

SOCRATES: Yes, Meno; but a principle which has any soundness should stand firm not only just now, but always.

MENO: Well; and why are you so slow of heart to believe that knowledge is virtue?

SOCRATES: I will try and tell you why, Meno. I do not retract the assertion that if virtue is knowledge it may be taught; but I fear that I have some reason in doubting whether virtue is knowledge: for consider now and say whether virtue, and not only virtue but anything that is taught, must not have teachers and disciples?

MENO: Surely.

SOCRATES: And conversely, may not the art of which neither teachers nor disciples exist be assumed to be incapable of being taught?

MENO: True; but do you think that there are no teachers of virtue?

SOCRATES: I have certainly often enquired whether there were any, and taken great pains to find them, and have never succeeded; and many have assisted me in the search, and they were the persons whom I thought the most likely to know. Here at the moment when he is wanted we fortunately have sitting by us Anytus, the very person of whom we should make enquiry; to him then let us repair. In the first place, he is the son of a wealthy and wise father, Anthemion, who acquired his wealth, not by accident or gift, like Ismenias the Theban (who has recently made himself as rich as Polycrates), but by his own skill and industry, and who is a well-conditioned, modest man, not insolent, or overbearing, or annoying; moreover, this son of his has received a good education, as the Athenian people certainly appear to think, for they choose him to fill the highest offices. And these are the sort of men from whom you are likely to learn whether there are any teachers of virtue, and who they are. Please, Anytus, to help me and your friend Meno in answering our question, Who are the teachers? Consider the matter thus: If we wanted Meno to be a good physician, to whom should we send him? Should we not send him to the physicians?

ANYTUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Or if we wanted him to be a good cobbler, should we not send him to the cobblers?

ANYTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And so forth?

ANYTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Let me trouble you with one more question. When we say that we should be right in sending him to the physicians if we wanted him to be a physician, do we mean that we should be right in sending him to those who profess the art, rather than to those who do not, and to those who demand payment for teaching the art, and profess to teach it to any one who will come and learn? And if these were our reasons, should we not be right in sending him?

ANYTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And might not the same be said of flute-playing, and of the other arts? Would a man who wanted to make another a flute-player refuse to send him to those who profess to teach the art for money, and be plaguing other persons to give him instruction, who are not professed teachers and who never had a single disciple in that branch of knowledge which he wishes him to acquire—would not such conduct be the height of folly?

ANYTUS: Yes, by Zeus, and of ignorance too.

SOCRATES: Very good. And now you are in a position to advise with me about my friend Meno. He has been telling me, Anytus, that he desires to attain that kind of wisdom and virtue by which men order the state or the house, and honour their parents, and know when to receive and when to send away citizens and strangers, as a good man should. Now, to whom should he go in order that he may learn this virtue? Does not the previous argument imply clearly that we should send him to those who profess and avouch that they are the common teachers of all Hellas, and are ready to impart instruction to any one who likes, at a fixed price?

ANYTUS: Whom do you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: You surely know, do you not, Anytus, that these are the people whom mankind call Sophists?

ANYTUS: By Heracles, Socrates, forbear! I only hope that no friend or kinsman or acquaintance of mine, whether citizen or stranger, will ever be so mad as to allow himself to be corrupted by them; for they are a manifest pest and corrupting influence to those who have to do with them.

SOCRATES: What, Anytus? Of all the people who profess that they know how to do men good, do you mean to say that these are the only ones who not only do them no good, but positively corrupt those who are entrusted to them, and in return for this disservice have the face to demand money? Indeed, I cannot believe you; for I know of a single man, Protagoras, who made more out of his craft than the illustrious Pheidias, who created such noble works, or any ten other statuaries. How could that be? A mender of old shoes, or patcher up of clothes, who made the shoes or clothes worse than he received them, could not have remained thirty days undetected, and would very soon have starved; whereas during more than forty years, Protagoras was corrupting all Hellas, and sending his disciples from him worse than he received them, and he was never found out. For, if I am not mistaken, he was about seventy years old at his death, forty of which were spent in the practice of his profession; and during all that time he had a good reputation, which to this day he retains: and not only Protagoras, but many others are well spoken of; some who lived before him, and others who are still living. Now, when you say that they deceived and corrupted the youth, are they to be supposed to have corrupted them consciously or unconsciously? Can those who were deemed by many to be the wisest men of Hellas have been out of their minds?

ANYTUS: Out of their minds! No, Socrates; the young men who gave their money to them were out of their minds, and their relations and guardians who entrusted their youth to the care of these men were still more out of their minds, and most of all, the cities who allowed them to come in, and did not drive them out, citizen and stranger alike.

SOCRATES: Has any of the Sophists wronged you, Anytus? What makes you so angry with them?

ANYTUS: No, indeed, neither I nor any of my belongings has ever had, nor would I suffer them to have, anything to do with them.

SOCRATES: Then you are entirely unacquainted with them?

ANYTUS: And I have no wish to be acquainted.

SOCRATES: Then, my dear friend, how can you know whether a thing is good or bad of which you are wholly ignorant?

ANYTUS: Quite well; I am sure that I know what manner of men these are, whether I am acquainted with them or not.

SOCRATES: You must be a diviner, Anytus, for I really cannot make out, judging from your own words, how, if you are not acquainted with them, you know about them. But I am not enquiring of you who are the teachers who will corrupt Meno (let them be, if you please, the Sophists); I only ask you to tell him who there is in this great city who will teach him how to become eminent in the virtues which I was just now describing. He is the friend of your family, and you will oblige him.

ANYTUS: Why do you not tell him yourself?

SOCRATES: I have told him whom I supposed to be the teachers of these things; but I learn from you that I am utterly at fault, and I dare say that you are right. And now I wish that you, on your part, would tell me to whom among the Athenians he should go. Whom would you name?

ANYTUS: Why single out individuals? Any Athenian gentleman, taken at random, if he will mind him, will do far more good to him than the Sophists.

SOCRATES: And did those gentlemen grow of themselves; and without having been taught by any one, were they nevertheless able to teach others that which they had never learned themselves?

ANYTUS: I imagine that they learned of the previous generation of gentlemen. Have there not been many good men in this city?

SOCRATES: Yes, certainly, Anytus; and many good statesmen also there always have been and there are still, in the city of Athens. But the question is whether they were also good teachers of their own virtue;—not whether there are, or have been, good men in this part of the world, but whether virtue can be taught, is the question which we have been discussing. Now, do we mean to say that the good men of our own and of other times knew how to impart to others that virtue which they had themselves; or is virtue a thing incapable of being communicated or imparted by one man to another? That is the question which I and Meno have been arguing. Look at the matter in your own way: Would you not admit that Themistocles was a good man?

ANYTUS: Certainly; no man better.

SOCRATES: And must not he then have been a good teacher, if any man ever was a good teacher, of his own virtue?

ANYTUS: Yes certainly,—if he wanted to be so.

SOCRATES: But would he not have wanted? He would, at any rate, have desired to make his own son a good man and a gentleman; he could not have been jealous of him, or have intentionally abstained from imparting to him his own virtue. Did you never hear that he made his son Cleophantus a famous horseman; and had him taught to stand upright on horseback and hurl a javelin, and to do many other marvellous things; and in anything which could be learned from a master he was well trained? Have you not heard from our elders of him?

ANYTUS: I have.

SOCRATES: Then no one could say that his son showed any want of capacity?

ANYTUS: Very likely not.

SOCRATES: But did any one, old or young, ever say in your hearing that Cleophantus, son of Themistocles, was a wise or good man, as his father was?

ANYTUS: I have certainly never heard any one say so.

SOCRATES: And if virtue could have been taught, would his father Themistocles have sought to train him in these minor accomplishments, and allowed him who, as you must remember, was his own son, to be no better than his neighbours in those qualities in which he himself excelled?

ANYTUS: Indeed, indeed, I think not.

SOCRATES: Here was a teacher of virtue whom you admit to be among the best men of the past. Let us take another,—Aristides, the son of Lysimachus: would you not acknowledge that he was a good man?

ANYTUS: To be sure I should.

SOCRATES: And did not he train his son Lysimachus better than any other Athenian in all that could be done for him by the help of masters? But what has been the result? Is he a bit better than any other mortal? He is an acquaintance of yours, and you see what he is like. There is Pericles, again, magnificent in his wisdom; and he, as you are aware, had two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus.

ANYTUS: I know.

SOCRATES: And you know, also, that he taught them to be unrivalled horsemen, and had them trained in music and gymnastics and all sorts of arts—in these respects they were on a level with the best—and had he no wish to make good men of them? Nay, he must have wished it. But virtue, as I suspect, could not be taught. And that you may not suppose the incompetent teachers to be only the meaner sort of Athenians and few in number, remember again that Thucydides had two sons, Melesias and Stephanus, whom, besides giving them a good education in other things, he trained in wrestling, and they were the best wrestlers in Athens: one of them he committed to the care of Xanthias, and the other of Eudorus, who had the reputation of being the most celebrated wrestlers of that day. Do you remember them?

ANYTUS: I have heard of them.

SOCRATES: Now, can there be a doubt that Thucydides, whose children were taught things for which he had to spend money, would have taught them to be good men, which would have cost him nothing, if virtue could have been taught? Will you reply that he was a mean man, and had not many friends among the Athenians and allies? Nay, but he was of a great family, and a man of influence at Athens and in all Hellas, and, if virtue could have been taught, he would have found out some Athenian or foreigner who would have made good men of his sons, if he could not himself spare the time from cares of state. Once more, I suspect, friend Anytus, that virtue is not a thing which can be taught?

ANYTUS: Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak evil of men: and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend you to be careful. Perhaps there is no city in which it is not easier to do men harm than to do them good, and this is certainly the case at Athens, as I believe that you know.

SOCRATES: O Meno, think that Anytus is in a rage. And he may well be in a rage, for he thinks, in the first place, that I am defaming these gentlemen; and in the second place, he is of opinion that he is one of them himself. But some day he will know what is the meaning of defamation, and if he ever does, he will forgive me. Meanwhile I will return to you, Meno; for I suppose that there are gentlemen in your region too?

MENO: Certainly there are.

SOCRATES: And are they willing to teach the young? and do they profess to be teachers? and do they agree that virtue is taught?

MENO: No indeed, Socrates, they are anything but agreed; you may hear them saying at one time that virtue can be taught, and then again the reverse.

SOCRATES: Can we call those teachers who do not acknowledge the possibility of their own vocation?

MENO: I think not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And what do you think of these Sophists, who are the only professors? Do they seem to you to be teachers of virtue?

MENO: I often wonder, Socrates, that Gorgias is never heard promising to teach virtue: and when he hears others promising he only laughs at them; but he thinks that men should be taught to speak.

SOCRATES: Then do you not think that the Sophists are teachers?

MENO: I cannot tell you, Socrates; like the rest of the world, I am in doubt, and sometimes I think that they are teachers and sometimes not.

SOCRATES: And are you aware that not you only and other politicians have doubts whether virtue can be taught or not, but that Theognis the poet says the very same thing?

MENO: Where does he say so?

SOCRATES: In these elegiac verses (Theog.):

'Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to them; for from the good you will learn what is good, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have.'

Do you observe that here he seems to imply that virtue can be taught?

MENO: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But in some other verses he shifts about and says (Theog.):

'If understanding could be created and put into a man, then they' (who were able to perform this feat) 'would have obtained great rewards.'

And again:—

'Never would a bad son have sprung from a good sire, for he would have heard the voice of instruction; but not by teaching will you ever make a bad man into a good one.'

And this, as you may remark, is a contradiction of the other.

MENO: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And is there anything else of which the professors are affirmed not only not to be teachers of others, but to be ignorant themselves, and bad at the knowledge of that which they are professing to teach? or is there anything about which even the acknowledged 'gentlemen' are sometimes saying that 'this thing can be taught,' and sometimes the opposite? Can you say that they are teachers in any true sense whose ideas are in such confusion?

MENO: I should say, certainly not.

SOCRATES: But if neither the Sophists nor the gentlemen are teachers, clearly there can be no other teachers?

MENO: No.

SOCRATES: And if there are no teachers, neither are there disciples?

MENO: Agreed.

SOCRATES: And we have admitted that a thing cannot be taught of which there are neither teachers nor disciples?

MENO: We have.

SOCRATES: And there are no teachers of virtue to be found anywhere?

MENO: There are not.

SOCRATES: And if there are no teachers, neither are there scholars?

MENO: That, I think, is true.

SOCRATES: Then virtue cannot be taught?

MENO: Not if we are right in our view. But I cannot believe, Socrates, that there are no good men: And if there are, how did they come into existence?

SOCRATES: I am afraid, Meno, that you and I are not good for much, and that Gorgias has been as poor an educator of you as Prodicus has been of me. Certainly we shall have to look to ourselves, and try to find some one who will help in some way or other to improve us. This I say, because I observe that in the previous discussion none of us remarked that right and good action is possible to man under other guidance than that of knowledge (episteme);—and indeed if this be denied, there is no seeing how there can be any good men at all.

MENO: How do you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I mean that good men are necessarily useful or profitable. Were we not right in admitting this? It must be so.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And in supposing that they will be useful only if they are true guides to us of action—there we were also right?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: But when we said that a man cannot be a good guide unless he have knowledge (phrhonesis), this we were wrong.

MENO: What do you mean by the word 'right'?

SOCRATES: I will explain. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right and good guide?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And while he has true opinion about that which the other knows, he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the truth?

MENO: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is also right opinion.

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: Then right opinion is not less useful than knowledge?

MENO: The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?

MENO: I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion—or why they should ever differ.

SOCRATES: And shall I explain this wonder to you?

MENO: Do tell me.

SOCRATES: You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of Daedalus (Compare Euthyphro); but perhaps you have not got them in your country?

MENO: What have they to do with the question?

SOCRATES: Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away.

MENO: Well, what of that?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain.

MENO: What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very like the truth.

SOCRATES: I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture. And yet that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with me. There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most certainly one of them.

MENO: Yes, Socrates; and you are quite right in saying so.

SOCRATES: And am I not also right in saying that true opinion leading the way perfects action quite as well as knowledge?

MENO: There again, Socrates, I think you are right.

SOCRATES: Then right opinion is not a whit inferior to knowledge, or less useful in action; nor is the man who has right opinion inferior to him who has knowledge?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: And surely the good man has been acknowledged by us to be useful?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Seeing then that men become good and useful to states, not only because they have knowledge, but because they have right opinion, and that neither knowledge nor right opinion is given to man by nature or acquired by him—(do you imagine either of them to be given by nature?

MENO: Not I.)

SOCRATES: Then if they are not given by nature, neither are the good by nature good?

MENO: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And nature being excluded, then came the question whether virtue is acquired by teaching?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: If virtue was wisdom (or knowledge), then, as we thought, it was taught?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if it was taught it was wisdom?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And if there were teachers, it might be taught; and if there were no teachers, not?

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: But surely we acknowledged that there were no teachers of virtue?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then we acknowledged that it was not taught, and was not wisdom?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And yet we admitted that it was a good?

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the right guide is useful and good?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And the only right guides are knowledge and true opinion—these are the guides of man; for things which happen by chance are not under the guidance of man: but the guides of man are true opinion and knowledge.

MENO: I think so too.

SOCRATES: But if virtue is not taught, neither is virtue knowledge.

MENO: Clearly not.

SOCRATES: Then of two good and useful things, one, which is knowledge, has been set aside, and cannot be supposed to be our guide in political life.

MENO: I think not.

SOCRATES: And therefore not by any wisdom, and not because they were wise, did Themistocles and those others of whom Anytus spoke govern states. This was the reason why they were unable to make others like themselves—because their virtue was not grounded on knowledge.

MENO: That is probably true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: But if not by knowledge, the only alternative which remains is that statesmen must have guided states by right opinion, which is in politics what divination is in religion; for diviners and also prophets say many things truly, but they know not what they say.

MENO: So I believe.

SOCRATES: And may we not, Meno, truly call those men 'divine' who, having no understanding, yet succeed in many a grand deed and word?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then we shall also be right in calling divine those whom we were just now speaking of as diviners and prophets, including the whole tribe of poets. Yes, and statesmen above all may be said to be divine and illumined, being inspired and possessed of God, in which condition they say many grand things, not knowing what they say.

MENO: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the women too, Meno, call good men divine—do they not? and the Spartans, when they praise a good man, say 'that he is a divine man.'

MENO: And I think, Socrates, that they are right; although very likely our friend Anytus may take offence at the word.

SOCRATES: I do not care; as for Anytus, there will be another opportunity of talking with him. To sum up our enquiry—the result seems to be, if we are at all right in our view, that virtue is neither natural nor acquired, but an instinct given by God to the virtuous. Nor is the instinct accompanied by reason, unless there may be supposed to be among statesmen some one who is capable of educating statesmen. And if there be such an one, he may be said to be among the living what Homer says that Tiresias was among the dead, 'he alone has understanding; but the rest are flitting shades'; and he and his virtue in like manner will be a reality among shadows.

MENO: That is excellent, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Then, Meno, the conclusion is that virtue comes to the virtuous by the gift of God. But we shall never know the certain truth until, before asking how virtue is given, we enquire into the actual nature of virtue. I fear that I must go away, but do you, now that you are persuaded yourself, persuade our friend Anytus. And do not let him be so exasperated; if you can conciliate him, you will have done good service to the Athenian people.


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--- OBJECT INSTANCES [0]


--- PRIMARY CLASS


book
chapter

--- SEE ALSO


--- SIMILAR TITLES [1]


4.03 - The Special Phenomenology of the Child Archetype
5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
Meno
Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon
Phenomenology of Perception
Phenomenology of Spirit
Psychological Assessment of Adult Posttraumatic States Phenomenology, Diagnosis, and Measurement
The Phenomenon of Man
select ::: Being, God, injunctions, media, place, powers, subjects,
favorite ::: cwsa, everyday, grade, mcw, memcards (table), project, project 0001, Savitri, the Temple of Sages, three js, whiteboard,
temp ::: consecration, experiments, knowledge, meditation, psychometrics, remember, responsibility, temp, the Bad, the God object, the Good, the most important, the Ring, the source of inspirations, the Stack, the Tarot, the Word, top priority, whiteboard,

--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)


menobranch ::: n. --> Alt. of Menobranchus

menobranchus ::: n. --> A large aquatic American salamander of the genus Necturus, having permanent external gills.

menologia ::: pl. --> of Menology

menologies ::: pl. --> of Menology

menologium ::: n. --> Alt. of Menology

menology ::: n. --> A register of months.
A brief calendar of the lives of the saints for each day in the year, or a simple remembrance of those whose lives are not written.

menopause ::: n. --> The period of natural cessation of menstruation. See Change of life, under Change.

menopoma ::: n. --> Alt. of Menopome

menopome ::: n. --> The hellbender.

menorrhagia ::: n. --> Profuse menstruation.
Any profuse bleeding from the uterus; Metrorrhagia.

menostasis ::: n. --> Stoppage of the mences.

menostation ::: n. --> Same as Menostasis.

menow ::: n. --> A minnow.

menobranch ::: n. --> Alt. of Menobranchus

menobranchus ::: n. --> A large aquatic American salamander of the genus Necturus, having permanent external gills.

menologia ::: pl. --> of Menology

menologies ::: pl. --> of Menology

menologium ::: n. --> Alt. of Menology

menology ::: n. --> A register of months.
A brief calendar of the lives of the saints for each day in the year, or a simple remembrance of those whose lives are not written.

menopause ::: n. --> The period of natural cessation of menstruation. See Change of life, under Change.

menopoma ::: n. --> Alt. of Menopome

menopome ::: n. --> The hellbender.

menorrhagia ::: n. --> Profuse menstruation.
Any profuse bleeding from the uterus; Metrorrhagia.

menostasis ::: n. --> Stoppage of the mences.

menostation ::: n. --> Same as Menostasis.

menow ::: n. --> A minnow.

Menor —an angel conjured in the exorcism of

Menor.]

Menorah :::
The Menorah is the seven-branched candelabrum that was lit daily in the sanctuary of the Tabernacle and, afterwards, in the Holy Temple. Also employed in reference to the eight-branched candelabrum used in the Jewish home to hold theChanukah lights.


Menorah ::: Jewish candelabrum with special religious significance; a nine-branched menorah is used at Hanukkah, while the seven- branched was used in the ancient Temple.

meno: less; see meno mosso, for example, under mosso


--- QUOTES [51 / 51 - 500 / 6151] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



KEYS (10k)

   15 Sri Aurobindo
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NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

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1:The seer remains unaffected by the phenomenon. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks 196,
2:All is one in self, but all is variation in the phenomenon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita 2.05 - The Divine Truth and Way,
3:The form is phenomenon, the idea is reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga 1.13 - The Stress of the Hidden Spirit,
4:Above the world the world-creators stand,In the phenomenon see its mystic source. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 01.04 - The Secret Knowledge,
5:Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon Of Man ,
6:To be fixed on the transient, to be limited in the phenomenon is to accept mortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita The Field and its Knower,
7:On our life’s prow that breaks the waves of TimeNo signal light of hope has gleamed in vain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death,
8:Phenomenon built Reality’s summer-houseOn the beaches of the sea of Infinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,
9:Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man ,
10:Out of all masquerade of phenomenon and becoming the Real Being must eventually deliver itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads The Supramental Godhead,
11:The assumption of imperfection by the perfect is the whole mystic phenomenon of the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita 1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood,
12:A mass phenomenon of visible shapesSupported by the silence of the VoidAppeared in the eternal Consciousness ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri 02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life,
13:The greater the tension, the greater the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites. ~ Carl Jung, "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942) CW 13,
14:Essence and phenomenon of the essence are complementary to each other, not contradictory,—the phenomenon manifests the essence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine 2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion,
15:This is the practical and active form of that obligation of a Master of the Temple in which it said:: 'I will interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul.' ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA Magick,
16:The stuff of the universe, woven in a single piece according to one and the same system, but never repeating itself from one point to another, represents a single figure. Structurally it forms a Whole. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959) ,
17:Reliable friendship is almost always with a very few; to have a horde of loving, unselfishly faithful friends is a phenomenon so rare that it can be safely taken as an illusion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV Human Relations and the Spiritual Life,
18:The idea of organization is the first step, that of interpretation the second. The Master of the Temple, whose grade corresponds to Binah, is sworn to interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with his soul. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA Book 4,
19:UB 1:4.1. The infinity of the perfection of God is such that it eternally constitutes him mystery. And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the Universal Father sojourns with the creatures of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries. ~ The Urantia Papers,
20:Just as eagles soar through the vast expanse of the sky without meeting any obstructions, needing only minimal effort to maintain their flight, so advanced meditators concentrating on emptiness can meditate on emptiness for a long time with little effort. Their minds soar through space-like emptiness, undistracted by any other phenomenon. When we meditate on emptiness we should try to emulate these meditators. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso,
21:They are now beginning to realise that even the most objective of their observations are steeped in the conventions they adopted at the outset and by forms or habits of thought developed in the course of the growth of research; so that, when they reach the end of their analyses they cannot tell with any certainty whether the structure they have reached is the essence of the matter they are studying, or the reflection of their own thought. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon Of Man ,
22:Natural consciousness will prove itself to be only knowledge in principle or not real knowledge. Since, however, it immediately takes itself to be the real and genuine knowledge, this pathway has a negative significance for it; what is a realization of the notion of knowledge means for it rather the ruin and overthrow of itself; for on this road it loses its own truth. Because of that, the road can be looked on as the path of doubt, or more properly a highway of despair. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit ,
23:Man came silently into the world. As a matter of fact he trod so softly that, when we first catch sight of him as revealed by those indestructible stone instruments, we find him sprawling all over the old world from the Cape of Good Hope to Peking. Without doubt he already speaks and lives in groups ; he already makes fire. After all, this is surely what we ought to expect. As we know, each time a new living form rises up before us out of the depths of history, it is always complete and already legion. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon Of Man The Birth of Thought,
24:Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will. The will can only become magically effective when the mind is focused and not interfering with the will The mind must first discipline itself to focus its entire attention on some meaningless phenomenon. If an attempt is made to focus on some form of desire, the effect is short circuited by lust of result. Egotistical identification, fear of failure, and the reciprocal desire not to achieve desire, arising from our dual nature, destroy the result. Therefore, when selecting topics for concentration, choose subjects of no spiritual, egotistical, intellectual, emotional, or useful significance - meaningless things. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null Liber MMM,
25:An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct" the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry - including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology-all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing. ~ Ken Wilber,
26:Medieval alchemy prepared the way for the greatest intervention in the divine world that man has ever attempted: alchemy was the dawn of the scientific age, when the daemon of the scientific spirit compelled the forces of nature to serve man to an extent that had never been known before. It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the "superman" Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche's Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, to "create a god for yourself out of your seven devils." Here we find the true roots, the preparatory processes deep in the psyche, which unleashed the forces at work in the world today. Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter. ~ Carl Jung, "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942) CW 13,
27:On the exoteric side if necessary the mind should be trained by the study of any well-developed science, such as chemistry, or mathematics. The idea of organization is the first step, that of interpretation the second. The Master of the Temple, whose grade corresponds to Binah, is sworn to interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with his soul. {85} But even the beginner may attempt this practice with advantage. Either a fact fits in or it does not; if it does not, harmony is broken; and as the Universal harmony cannot be broken, the discord must be in the mind of the student, thus showing that he is not in tune with that Universal choir. Let him then puzzle out first the great facts, then the little; until one summer, when he is bald and lethargic after lunch, he understands and appreciates the existence of flies! ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA Book 4,
28:She sets the hard inventions of her brain In a pattern of eternal fixity: Indifferent to the cosmic dumb demand, Unconscious of too close realities, Of the unspoken thought, the voiceless heart, She leans to forge her credos and iron codes And metal structures to imprison life And mechanic models of all things that are. For the world seen she weaves a world conceived: She spins in stiff but unsubstantial lines Her gossamer word-webs of abstract thought, Her segment systems of the Infinite, Her theodicies and cosmogonic charts And myths by which she explains the inexplicable. At will she spaces in thin air of mind Like maps in the school-house of intellect hung, Forcing wide Truth into a narrow scheme, Her numberless warring strict philosophies; Out of Nature's body of phenomenon She carves with Thought's keen edge in rigid lines, Like rails for the World-Magician's power to run, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri ,
29:My understanding is that these are interdmensional entities that have an objective existence apart from the tripper's consciousnessThe narcissistic reductionistism of physicalism assumes that either consciousness is an epiphenomnon of brain activity, or, at best, that brain and consciousness are two different aspects of the same reality (e.g. Neutral Monism, Teilhard, Wilber). While the latter option is more receptive of alternate realities, neither of these options acknowledges entities or consciousness existing apart from the empirical material world.Ufo researcher John Keel coined the term "ultraterrestrial." A similar phenomenon may be the case here. These are entities that are more "material" than the imaginal ("astral") world.So, a continuum of being might be something like:- Transcendent- Mind or psyche apart from matter- Imaginal world (sensu Henry Corbin, = Collective Unconscious of Jung)- Interdimensional, Ultraterrestrial, ufos, drug vision entities, high strangeness- Orgone (Reich), linga sharira (Blavatsky), Etheric body- Empirical material reality ~ M Alan Kazlev, Facebook 2020-09-14 ,
30:An Informal Integral Canon: Selected books on Integral Science, Philosophy and the Integral Transformation Sri Aurobindo - The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo - The Synthesis of Yoga Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man Jean Gebser - The Ever-Present Origin Edward Haskell - Full Circle - The Moral Force of Unified Science Oliver L. Reiser - Cosmic Humanism and World Unity Christopher Hills - Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body The Mother - Mother's Agenda Erich Jantsch - The Self-Organizing Universe - Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution T. R. Thulasiram - Arut Perum Jyothi and Deathless Body Kees Zoeteman - Gaiasophy Ken Wilber - Sex Ecology Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution Don Edward Beck - Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change Kundan Singh - The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda Sean Esbjorn-Hargens - Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper.php">Kheper ,
31:witness and non-dual states ::: The Witness and Non-Dual states are everpresent capacities which hold the special relationship to the other states. The Witness state, or Witnessing, is the capacity to observe, see or witness phenomenon arising in the other states. Meaning for example, its the capacity to hold unbroken attention in the gross states, and the capacity to witness the entire relative world of form arise as object viewed by the pure witness, the pure subject that is never itself a seen object but always the pure seer or pure Self, that is actually no-self. Next we have Non-Dual which refers to both the suchness and is-ness of reality right now. It is the not-two-ness or everpresent unity of subject and object, form and emptiness, heaven and earth, relative and absolute. When the Witness dissolves and pure seer and all that is seen become not seperate or not two, the Non-Duality of absolute emptiness and relative form or the luminous identity of unqualifiable spirit and all of its manifestations appear as play of radiant natural and spontaneous and present love. Absolute and relative are already always not-two but nor are they one, nor both nor neither. ~ Essential Integral, L5-18 ,
32:There are beings in the spiritual realms for whom anxiety and fear emanating from human beings offer welcome food. When humans have no anxiety and fear, then these creatures starve. People not yet sufficiently convinced of this statement could understand it to be meant comparatively only. But for those who are familiar with this phenomenon, it is a reality. If fear and anxiety radiates from people and they break out in panic, then these creatures find welcome nutrition and they become more and more powerful. These beings are hostile towards humanity. Everything that feeds on negative feelings, on anxiety, fear and superstition, despair or doubt, are in reality hostile forces in supersensible worlds, launching cruel attacks on human beings, while they are being fed. Therefore, it is above all necessary to begin with that the person who enters the spiritual world overcomes fear, feelings of helplessness, despair and anxiety. But these are exactly the feelings that belong to contemporary culture and materialism; because it estranges people from the spiritual world, it is especially suited to evoke hopelessness and fear of the unknown in people, thereby calling up the above mentioned hostile forces against them. ~ Rudolf Steiner,
33:Part 1 - Departure1. The Call to Adventure ::: This first stage of the mythological journey-which we have designated the "call to adventure"-signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of grav­ ity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father's city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent, as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder, as did that of the princess of the fairy tale; or still again, one may be only casually strolling, when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum, from every corner of the world. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces ,
34:Are remembrance and memory the same thing?Not necessarily. Memory is a mental phenomenon, purely mental. Remembrance can be a phenomenon of consciousness. One can remember in all the domains of one's being: one can remember vitally, one can remember physically, one can remember psychically, one can remember mentally also. But memory is a purely mental phenomenon. Memory can, first of all, be deformed and it can also be effaced, one can forget. The phenomenon of consciousness is very precise; if you can take the consciousness back to the state in which it was, things come back exactly as they were. It is as though you relived the same mo- ment. You can relive it once, twice, ten times, a hundred times, but you relive a phenomenon of consciousness. It is very different from the memory of a fact which you inscribe somewhere in your brain. And if the cerebral associations are disturbed in the least (for there are many things in your brain and it is a very delicate instrument), if there is the slightest disturbance, your memory goes out of order. And then holes are formed and you forget. On the other hand, if you know how to bring back a particular state of consciousness in you, it comes back exactly the same as it was. Now, a remembrance can also be purely mental and it may be a continuation of cerebral activities, but that is mental remembrance. And you have remembrances in feeling, remembrances in sensation.... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953 290-291,
35:I have spoken of Sri Aurobindo's life as a series of radical turns that changed the movement, the mode of life, almost radically every time the turn came. The turn meant a break with the past and a moving into the future. We have a word for this phenomenon of radical and unforeseen change. You know the word, it is intervention. Intervention means, as the Mother has explained to us more than once, the entry of a higher, a greater force from another world into the already existent world. Into the familiar established mode of existence that runs on the routine of some definite rules and regulations, the Law of the present, there drops all on a sudden another mode of being and consciousness and force, a Higher Law which obliterates or changes out of recognition the familiar mode of living; it is thus that one rises from level to level, moves out into wider ranges of being, otherwise one stands still, remains for ever what he is, stagnant, like an unchanging clod or at the most a repetitive animal. The higher the destiny, the higher also the source of intervention, that is to say, more radical - more destructive yet more creative - destructive of the past, creative of the future. I have spoken of the passing away of Sri Aurobindo as a phenomenon of intervention, a great decisive event in view of the work to be done. Even so we may say that his birth too was an act of intervention, a deliberate divine intervention. The world needed it, the time was ripe and the intervention happened and that was his birth as an embodied human being - to which we offer our salutation and obeisance today. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta,
36:For invincible reasons of homogeneity and coherence, the fibers of cosmogenesis require to be prolonged in ourselves far more deeply than flesh and bone. We are not being tossed about and drawn along in the vital current merely by the material surface of our being. But like a subtle fluid, space-time, having drowned our bodies, penetrates our soul. It fills it and impregnates it. It mingles with its powers, until the soul soon no longer knows how to distinguish space-time from its own thoughts. Nothing can escape this flux any longer, for those who know how to see, even though it were the summit of our being, because it can only be defined in terms of increases of consciousness. For is not the very act by which the fine point of our mind penetrates the absolute a phenomenon of emergence? In short, recognized at first in a single point of things, then inevitably having spread to the whole of the inorganic and organic volume of matter, whether we like it or not evolution is now starting to invade the psychic zones of the world.... The human discovers that, in the striking words of Julian Huxley, we are nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself. It seems to me that until it is established in this perspective, the modern mind...will always be restless. For it is on this summit and this summit alone that a resting place and illumination await us.... All evolution becomes conscious of itself deep within us.... Not only do we read the secret of its movements in our slightest acts, but to a fundamental extent we hold it in our own hands: responsible for its past and its future. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man ,
37:Humanity is a peculiar class of life which, in some degree, determines its own destinies; therefore in practical life words and ideas become facts-facts, moreover, which bring about important practical consequences. For instance, many millions of human beings have defined a stroke of lightning as being the "punishment of God" of evil men; other millions have defined it as a "natural, casual, periodical phenomenon"; yet other millions have defined it as an "electric spark." What has been the result of these "non-important" definitions in practical life? In the case of the first definition, when lightning struck a house, the population naturally made no attempt to save the house or anything in it, because to do so would be against the "definition" which proclaims the phenomenon to be a "punishment for evil," any attempt to prevent or check the destruction would be an impious act; the sinner would be guilty of "resisting the supreme law" and would deserve to be punished by death. Now in the second instance, a stricken building is treated just as any tree overturned by storm; the people save what they can and try to extinguish the fire. In both instances, the behavior of the populace is the same in one respect; if caught in the open by a storm they take refuge under a tree-a means of safety involving maximum danger but the people do not know it. Now in the third instance, in which the population have a scientifically correct definition of lightning, they provide their houses with lightning rods; and if they are caught by a storm in the open they neither run nor hide under a tree; but when the storm is directly over their heads, they put themselves in a position of minimum exposure by lying flat on the ground until the storm has passed. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity ,
38:To analyse the classes of life we have to consider two very different kinds of phenomena: the one embraced under the collective name-Inorganic chemistry-the other under the collective nameOrganic chemistry, or the chemistry of hydro-carbons. These divisions are made because of the peculiar properties of the elements chiefly involved in the second class. The properties of matter are so distributed among the elements that three of them- Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Carbon-possess an ensemble of unique characteristics. The number of reactions in inorganic chemistry are relatively few, but in organic chemistry-in the chemistry of these three elements the number of different compounds is practically unlimited. Up to 1910, we knew of more than 79 elements of which the whole number of reactions amounted to only a few hundreds, but among the remaining three elements-Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen-the reactions were known to be practically unlimited in number and possibilities; this fact must have very far reaching consequences. As far as energies are concerned, we have to take them as nature reveals them to us. Here more than ever, mathematical thinking is essential and will help enormously. The reactions in inorganic chemistry always involve the phenomenon of heat, sometimes light, and in some instances an unusual energy is produced called electricity. Until now, the radioactive elements represent a group too insufficiently known for an enlargement here upon this subject. The organic compounds being unlimited in number and possibilities and with their unique characteristics, represent of course, a different class of phenomena, but being, at the same time, chemical they include the basic chemical phenomena involved in all chemical reactions, but being unique in many other respects, they also have an infinitely vast field of unique characteristics. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity Questions And Answers 1953,
39:Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge; ::: The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara ¯, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga The Conditions of the Synthesis,
40:separating from the heart and mind and the benefits of doing so ::: Therefore the mental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to say I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and afraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional passions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the sensational and emotional mind. The mind then draws back from its emotions and becomes with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing mind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at thier unreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and loses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of itself as master of the sanction who by his withdrawl of sanction can make this play to cease. When the sanction is withdrawn, another significant phenomenon takes place; the emotional mind becomes normally calm and pure and free from these reactions, and even when they come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall on it as impression from outside to which its fibers are still able to respond; but this habit of reponse dies away and the emotional mind is in time entirely liberated from the passions which it has renounced. Hope and fear, joy and grief, liking and disliking, attraction and repulsion, content and discontent, gladness and depression, horror and wrath and fear and disgust and shame and the passions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga 2.08 - The Release from the Heart and the Mind,
41:reading ::: Self-Help Reading List: James Allen As a Man Thinketh (1904) Marcus Aurelius Meditations (2nd Century) The Bhagavad-Gita The Bible Robert Bly Iron John (1990) Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (6thC) Alain de Botton How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997) William Bridges Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980) David Brooks The Road to Character (2015) Brené Brown Daring Greatly (2012) David D Burns The New Mood Therapy (1980) Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers) The Power of Myth (1988) Richard Carlson Don't Sweat The Small Stuff (1997) Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) Deepak Chopra The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994) Clayton Christensen How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012) Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (1988) Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1991) The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler The Art of Happiness (1999) The Dhammapada (Buddha's teachings) Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit (2011) Wayne Dyer Real Magic (1992) Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841) Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With The Wolves (1996) Viktor Frankl Man's Search For Meaning (1959) Benjamin Franklin Autobiography (1790) Shakti Gawain Creative Visualization (1982) Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence (1995) John Gray Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992) Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life (1984) James Hillman The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996) Susan Jeffers Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (1987) Richard Koch The 80/20 Principle (1998) Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014) Ellen Langer Mindfulness: Choice and Control in Everyday Life (1989) Lao-Tzu Tao-te Ching (The Way of Power) Maxwell Maltz Psycho-Cybernetics (1960) Abraham Maslow Motivation and Personality (1954) Thomas Moore Care of the Soul (1992) Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963) Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) M Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled (1990) Anthony Robbins Awaken The Giant Within (1991) Florence Scovell-Shinn The Game of Life and How To Play It (1923) Martin Seligman Learned Optimism (1991) Samuel Smiles Self-Help (1859) Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955) Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854) Marianne Williamson A Return To Love (1993) ~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help ,
42:It is your birthday tomorrow?Yes, Mother.How old will you be?Twenty-six, Mother.I shall see you tomorrow and give you something special. You will see, I am not speaking of anything material- that, I shall give you a card and all that- but of something...You will see, tomorrow, now go home and prepare yourself quietly so that you may be ready to receive it.Yes, Mother.You know, my child, what "Bonne Fete" signifies, that is, the birthday we wish here?Like that, I know what it means, Mother, but not the special significance you want to tell me.Yes, it is truly a special day in one's life. It is one of those days in the year when the Supreme descends into us- or when we are face to face with the Eternal- one of those days when our soul comes in contact with the Eternal and, if we remain a little conscious, we can feel His Presence within us. If we make a little effort on this day, we accomplish the work of many lives as in a lightning flash. That is why I give so much importance to the birthday- because what one gains in one day is truly something incomparable. And it is for this that I also work to open the consciousness a little towards what is above so that one may come before the Eternal. My child, it is a very, very special day, for it is the day of decision, the day one can unite with the Supreme Consciousness. For the Lord lifts us on this day to the highest region possible so that our soul which is a portion of that Eternal Flame, may be united and identified with its Origin.This day is truly an opportunity in life. One is so open and so receptive that one can assimilate all that is given. I can do many things, that is why it is important.It is one of those days when the Lord Himself opens the doors wide for us. It is as though He were inviting us to rekindle more powerfully the flame of aspiration. It is one of those days which He gives us. We too, by our personal effort, could attain to this, but it would be long, hard and not so easy. And this- this is a real chance in life- the day of Grace.It is an occult phenomenon that occurs invariably, without our knowledge, on this particular day of the year. The soul leaves behind the body and journeys up and up till it merges into the Source in order to replenish itself and absorb from the Supreme Its Power, Light and Ananda and comes down charged for a whole year to pass. Then again and again... it continues like this year after year. ~ The Mother, Sweet Mother Mona Sarkar,
43:reading ::: 50 Philosophy Classics: List of Books Covered: 1. Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition (1958) 2. Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC) 3. AJ Ayer - Language, Truth and Logic (1936) 4. Julian Baggini - The Ego Trick (2011) 5. Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation (1981) 6. Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1952) 7. Jeremy Bentham - Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) 8. Henri Bergson - Creative Evolution (1911) 9. David Bohm - Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980) 10. Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power (2002) 11. Cicero - On Duties (44 BC) 12. Confucius - Analects (5th century BC) 13. Rene Descartes - Meditations (1641) 14. Ralph Waldo Emerson - Fate (1860) 15. Epicurus - Letters (3rd century BC) 16. Michel Foucault - The Order of Things (1966) 17. Harry Frankfurt - On Bullshit (2005) 18. Sam Harris - Free Will (2012) 19. GWF Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit (1803) 20. Martin Heidegger - Being and Time (1927) 21. Heraclitus - Fragments (6th century) 22. David Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) 23. William James - Pragmatism (1904) 24. Daniel Kahneman - Thinking: Fast and Slow (2011) 25. Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason (1781) 26. Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling (1843) 27. Saul Kripke - Naming and Necessity (1972) 28. Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) 29. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Theodicy (1710) 30. John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) 31. Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage (1967) 32. Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince (1532) 33. John Stuart Mill - On Liberty (1859) 34. Michel de Montaigne - Essays (1580) 35. Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good (1970) 36. Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil (1886) 37. Blaise Pascal - Pensees (1670) 38. Plato - The Republic (4th century BC) 39. Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934) 40. John Rawls - A Theory of Justice (1971) 41. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract (1762) 42. Bertrand Russell - The Conquest of Happiness (1920) 43. Michael Sandel - Justice (2009) 44. Jean Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness (1943) 45. Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation (1818) 46. Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save (2009) 47. Baruch Spinoza - Ethics (1677) 48. Nassim Nicholas - Taleb The Black Swan (2007) 49. Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations (1953) 50. Slavoj Zizek - Living In The End Times (2010) ~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Philosophy Classics ,
44:What is the difference between meditation and concentration? Meditation is a purely mental activity, it interests only the mental being. One can concentrate while meditating but this is a mental concentration; one can get a silence but it is a purely mental silence, and the other parts of the being are kept immobile and inactive so as not to disturb the meditation. You may pass twenty hours of the day in meditation and for the remaining four hours you will be an altogether ordinary man because only the mind has been occupied-the rest of the being, the vital and the physical, is kept under pressure so that it may not disturb. In meditation nothing is directly done for the other parts of the being. Certainly this indirect action can have an effect, but... I have known in my life people whose capacity for meditation was remarkable but who, when not in meditation, were quite ordinary men, even at times ill-natured people, who would become furious if their meditation was disturbed. For they had learnt to master only their mind, not the rest of their being. Concentration is a more active state. You may concentrate mentally, you may concentrate vitally, psychically, physically, and you may concentrate integrally. Concentration or the capacity to gather oneself at one point is more difficult than meditation. You may gather together one portion of your being or consciousness or you may gather together the whole of your consciousness or even fragments of it, that is, the concentration may be partial, total or integral, and in each case the result will be different. If you have the capacity to concentrate, your meditation will be more interesting and easieR But one can meditate without concentrating. Many follow a chain of ideas in their meditation - it is meditation, not concentration. Is it possible to distinguish the moment when one attains perfect concentration from the moment when, starting from this concentration, one opens oneself to the universal Energy? Yes. You concentrate on something or simply you gather yourself together as much as is possible for you and when you attain a kind of perfection in concentration, if you can sustain this perfection for a sufficiently long time, then a door opens and you pass beyond the limit of your ordinary consciousness-you enter into a deeper and higher knowledge. Or you go within. Then you may experience a kind of dazzling light, an inner wonder, a beatitude, a complete knowledge, a total silence. There are, of course, many possibilities but the phenomenon is always the same. To have this experience all depends upon your capacity to maintain your concentration sufficiently long at its highest point of perfection. ~ The Mother,
45:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation. But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine ,
46:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey2. The Old Testament3. Aeschylus - Tragedies4. Sophocles - Tragedies5. Herodotus - Histories6. Euripides - Tragedies7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings9. Aristophanes - Comedies10. Plato - Dialogues11. Aristotle - Works12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13. Euclid - Elements14.Archimedes - Works15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections16. Cicero - Works17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things18. Virgil - Works19. Horace - Works20. Livy - History of Rome21. Ovid - Works22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion26. Ptolemy - Almagest27. Lucian - Works28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties30. The New Testament31. Plotinus - The Enneads32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33. The Song of Roland34. The Nibelungenlied35. The Saga of Burnt Njal36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43. Thomas More - Utopia44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58. John Milton - Works59. Molière - Comedies60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69. William Congreve - The Way of the World70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler,
47:Coded LanguageWhereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic community to its drum woven pastWhereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released at the same given moment of recorded history, yet at a different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with the present.We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal aggressors.Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualizeWe have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with seasonOur cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and effectReject mediocrity!Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand.The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed pearsLight years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.Thus, in the name of:ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN,LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITHE, LOURDE, WHITMAN,BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, Gandhi, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA,MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GUARDSIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY,DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMNINOV,ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHOWAY, HENDRIX, KUTL, DICKERSON, RIPPERTON,MARY, ISIS, THERESA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI,LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOURLITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERONE, MARLEY, COSBY,SHAKUR, THOSE STILL AFLAMED, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMEDWe claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.We are determining the future at this very moment.We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stoneOur music is our alchemyWe stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever.If you must count to keep the beat then count.Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.Curve you circles counterclockwiseUse your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love.We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slainAny utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain ~ Saul Williams,
48:Death & FameWhen I dieI don't care what happens to my body throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel CemeteryBut I want a big funeral St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in ManhattanFirst, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother 96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters their grandchildren, companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche, there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting America, Satchitananda Swami Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche, Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau Roshis, Lama Tarchen --Then, most important, lovers over half-century Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousandday retreat --""I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he loved me""I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone""We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly arms round each other""I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my skivvies would be on the floor""Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master""We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then sleep in his captain's bed.""He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy""I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my stomach shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- ""All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth & fingers along my waist""He gave great head"So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997 and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!""I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me.""I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head, my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick, tickled with his tongue my behind""I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a pillow --"Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his walk-up flat, seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him again never wanted to... ""He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made sure I came first"This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-harp pennywhistles & kazoosNext, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India, Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American provincesThen highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved him anyway, true artist""Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me from suicide hospitals""Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my studio guest a week in Budapest"Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois""I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- ""He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas City""Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City""Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982""I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized others like me out there"Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gesturesThen Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural historians come to witness the historic funeral Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkersEveryone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was aliveFebruary 22, 1997 ~ Allen Ginsberg,
49:Chapter LXXXII: Epistola Penultima: The Two Ways to RealityCara Soror,Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.How very sensible of you, though I admit somewhat exacting!You write-Will you tell me exactly why I should devote so much of my valuable time to subjects like Magick and Yoga.That is all very well. But you ask me to put it in syllogistic form. I have no doubt this can be done, though the task seems somewhat complicated. I think I will leave it to you to construct your series of syllogisms yourself from the arguments of this letter.In your main question the operative word is "valuable. Why, I ask, in my turn, should you consider your time valuable? It certainly is not valuable unless the universe has a meaning, and what is more, unless you know what that meaning is-at least roughly-it is millions to one that you will find yourself barking up the wrong tree.First of all let us consider this question of the meaning of the universe. It is its own evidence to design, and that design intelligent design. There is no question of any moral significance-"one man's meat is another man's poison" and so on. But there can be no possible doubt about the existence of some kind of intelligence, and that kind is far superior to anything of which we know as human.How then are we to explore, and finally to interpret this intelligence?It seems to me that there are two ways and only two. Imagine for a moment that you are an orphan in charge of a guardian, inconceivably learned from your point of view.Suppose therefore that you are puzzled by some problem suitable to your childish nature, your obvious and most simple way is to approach your guardian and ask him to enlighten you. It is clearly part of his function as guardian to do his best to help you. Very good, that is the first method, and close parallel with what we understand by the word Magick.We are bothered by some difficulty about one of the elements-say Fire-it is therefore natural to evoke a Salamander to instruct you on the difficult point. But you must remember that your Holy Guardian Angel is not only far more fully instructed than yourself on every point that you can conceive, but you may go so far as to say that it is definitely his work, or part of his work; remembering always that he inhabits a sphere or plane which is entirely different from anything of which you are normally aware.To attain to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is consequently without doubt by far the simplest way by which you can yourself approach that higher order of being.That, then, is a clearly intelligible method of procedure. We call it Magick.It is of course possible to strengthen the link between him and yourself so that in course of time you became capable of moving and, generally speaking, operating on that plane which is his natural habitat.There is however one other way, and one only, as far as I can see, of reaching this state.It is at least theoretically possible to exalt the whole of your own consciousness until it becomes as free to move on that exalted plane as it is for him. You should note, by the way, that in this case the postulation of another being is not necessary. There is no way of refuting the solipsism if you feel like that. Personally I cannot accede to its axiom. The evidence for an external universe appears to me perfectly adequate.Still there is no extra charge for thinking on those lines if you so wish.I have paid a great deal of attention in the course of my life to the method of exalting the human consciousness in this way; and it is really quite legitimate to identify my teaching with that of the Yogis.I must however point out that in the course of my instruction I have given continual warnings as to the dangers of this line of research. For one thing there is no means of checking your results in the ordinary scientific sense. It is always perfectly easy to find a subjective explanation of any phenomenon; and when one considers that the greatest of all the dangers in any line of research arise from egocentric vanity, I do not think I have exceeded my duty in anything that I have said to deter students from undertaking so dangerous a course as Yoga.It is, of course, much safer if you are in a position to pursue in the Indian Jungles, provided that your health will stand the climate and also, I must say, unless you have a really sound teacher on whom you can safely rely. But then, if we once introduce a teacher, why not go to the Fountain-head and press towards the Knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel?In any case your Indian teacher will ultimately direct you to seek guidance from that source, so it seems to me that you have gone to a great deal of extra trouble and incurred a great deal of unnecessary danger by not leaving yourself in the first place in the hands of the Holy Guardian Angel.In any case there are the two methods which stand as alternatives. I do not know of any third one which can be of any use whatever. Logically, since you have asked me to be logical, there is certainly no third way; there is the external way of Magick, and the internal way of Yoga: there you have your alternatives, and there they cease.Love is the law, love under will.Fraternally,666 ~ Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears ,
50:[The Gods and Their Worlds] [...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same. This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds. There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth. All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete. One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is. Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence. But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it. When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation. Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being! I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised. Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness! These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects. In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism. If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality. If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III 355
,
51:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passageOmnes eodem cogimur, omniumVersatur urna serius ociusSors exitura et nos in aeternumExilium impositura cymbae.Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vainUpon the axis of its pain,Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!'Farewell, farewell! but this I tellTo thee, thou Wedding-Guest!He prayeth well, who loveth wellBoth man and bird and beast.He prayeth best, who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno ,

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Il fait courir ~ Georges Simenon,
2:epiphenomenon. “But ~ Lev Grossman,
3:marmots, trinquer ~ Georges Simenon,
4: Heautontimoroumenos
~ Anton Wildgans,
5:Los que menos corren, vuelan ~ Junot D az,
6:Slow as your own dubious grace. ~ Joe Meno,
7:En el amor no hay más y menos ~ Leo Tolstoy,
8:presse-papiers, entrouvrant ~ Georges Simenon,
9:Rock and menopause do not mix. ~ Stevie Nicks,
10:cuanto menos tenga, más puedo amar ~ Anonymous,
11:Lost' was a phenomenon, like Elvis. ~ John Cho,
12:Menopausal women are the horniest, ~ C D Reiss,
13:sus transformaciones fuera menos ~ J K Rowling,
14:book loan for Menopause For Dummies ~ Anonymous,
15:Cinema is a worldwide phenomenon. ~ Wim Wenders,
16:An act of evil is the death of wonder ~ Joe Meno,
17:Sé la música en tono menor de mi vida ~ Anne Rice,
18:Estaban vivos a medias, o quizá menos. ~ Jack London,
19:Life is a wondrous phenomenon. ~ Albert Szent Gyorgyi,
20:People are just greedy animals, after all. ~ Joe Meno,
21:Fame is an interesting phenomenon. ~ Paulina Porizkova,
22:Islamophobia is a complex phenomenon. ~ Jonathan Sacks,
23:Menos se habla, más se llega a viejo. ~ Sylvain Tesson,
24:DENON IS AN ECUMENOPOLIS like Coruscant, ~ Kevin Hearne,
25:Dimple pointed the camera at the statue ~ Sandhya Menon,
26:La muerte no era menor milagro que la vida. ~ Anonymous,
27:She’d say this for him: He had no guile. ~ Sandhya Menon,
28:Echó de menos el futuro que había imaginado. ~ John Green,
29:I have made love to ten thousand women. ~ Georges Simenon,
30:Like they say: los que menos corren, vuelan. ~ Junot D az,
31:Menos follón, menos estrés, más beneficio. ~ Hugh MacLeod,
32:Sé un perro, pero no seas un hermano menor. ~ Idries Shah,
33:Cada día sabemos más y entendemos menos. ~ Albert Einstein,
34:We're kind of an international phenomenon. ~ Michael Stipe,
35:No hay actividad humana que dé más por menos. ~ Elia Barcel,
36:Cada vez hay más científicos y menos sabios. ~ Stanis aw Lem,
37:Raskain rangaistus on nimenomaan muisto. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
38:Y aquella noche, tuvo un nombre menos que odiar. ~ Anonymous,
39:Più ci cavo io per me, meno ci cavi tu per te ~ Lewis Carroll,
40:Quienes más sufren son quienes menos lo dicen. ~ Fannie Flagg,
41:Menopause. A pause while you reconsider men. ~ Margaret Atwood,
42:temperatura constante de mais ou menos 21 graus ~ Isaac Asimov,
43:There’s no skill and no grace to it, but you ~ Georges Simenon,
44:Todo tan insuficiente, tan de más o de menos. ~ Julio Cort zar,
45:A menos que todo empeore, nada puede mejorar. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,
46:Él debe tener cada vez más importancia y yo, menos. ~ Anonymous,
47:Quien menos posee, tanto menos es poseído ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
48:En compañía de un libro uno se aburre mucho menos. ~ Jane Austen,
49:(...) me custava muito menos pensar do que ser. ~ Julio Cort zar,
50:Todo se explica utilizando menor número de causas. ~ Umberto Eco,
51:A meno che non muoia, sarò sempre ciò che sono. ~ Alexandre Dumas,
52:Am I a myth? Am I a legend? Or am I a phenomenon? ~ Scott Steiner,
53:«el sentido común es el menos común de los sentidos», ~ Anonymous,
54:No demuestres humildad a menos que la sientas. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
55:A novelist is a man who doesn't like his mother. ~ Georges Simenon,
56:argue that causality is wholly an aesthetic phenomenon ~ Anonymous,
57:Giving a phenomenon a label does not explain it. ~ Taylor Caldwell,
58:Quería que lo llamara. Quería que lo echara de menos. ~ John Green,
59:The world of evil is only as evil as we allow it to be. ~ Joe Meno,
60:Twinkle: “When I’m with you, I feel I can breathe. ~ Sandhya Menon,
61:A concentrated phenomenon based on vague motives. ~ Haruki Murakami,
62:al menos los humanos tienen el buen juicio de morir. ~ Markus Zusak,
63:¡Cosa extraña! Al creer que era amado menos, amó él más. ~ Stendhal,
64:El liderazgo es influencia, nada más y nada menos. ~ John C Maxwell,
65:Los compañeros perfectos no tienen menos de cuatro patas. ~ Colette,
66:Menos objetivos tenía, más sentido tomaba su vida. ~ Sylvain Tesson,
67:El idiota cree que todos son idiotas menos él. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa,
68:Exploding is a perfectly normal medical phenomenon. ~ Graham Chapman,
69:I think Channel One was very integral in my career. ~ Maria Menounos,
70:I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. ~ Georges Simenon,
71:Los viejos, entre viejos, son menos viejos. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,
72:Más baños para pájaros y menos balas; ése es mi lema. ~ Stephen King,
73:Se si sappia vivere da vinti, lo si è un po' meno. ~ Guido Ceronetti,
74:Siempre he entendido todo, menos la muerte. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,
75:THE LITTLE HOUSE
AT CROIX-ROUSSE Georges Simenon ~ Jeffery Deaver,
76:A veces la vida brilla más si la adornamos menos. ~ El sabet Benavent,
77:El mundo da vueltas, menos mal, si se cae, se rompe. ~ Elena Ferrante,
78:Menos aún amarse sin oponerse a todo lo que no es amor, ~ Andr Breton,
79:No hables a menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
80:No me gusta desperdiciar. Menos los sentimientos. ~ ngeles Mastretta,
81:Te gustan demasiadas cosas. Menos «gustar» y más «buscar» ~ Anonymous,
82:aun sabiendo que cuanto más compitamos, menos ganaremos. ~ Peter Thiel,
83:Cada vez tengo más preguntas y menos respuestas. ~ Svetlana Alexievich,
84:You can't just live in phenomenon and not research it. ~ Corey Feldman,
85:Culture is not a surface phenomenon, it is our very care ~ Edgar Schein,
86:En esta vida se perdona todo menos decir la verdad. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
87:Frozen is a phenomenon on an entirely new Disney scale. ~ Edward Kitsis,
88:He’d just been waiting for her to catch up to him. And, ~ Sandhya Menon,
89:Imagination is a place where all the important answers live. ~ Joe Meno,
90:La verdad siempre es mucho menos heroica que los sueños. ~ Benito Taibo,
91:Los días pasan, la noche permanece. Te echo de menos. ~ Mathias Malzieu,
92:menores de ocho años se agarran a las faldas de sus madres. ~ Anonymous,
93:Ghost lights or Will O’ the Wisps are a phenomenon that ~ Ophelia Julien,
94:If queerness can be defined, then it is no longer queer. ~ Madhavi Menon,
95:Pain is a natural phenomenon. But suffering is a ‘choice. ~ Wayne W Dyer,
96:Per favore, un po' meno d'amore e un po' più di dignità. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
97:un hombre no va menos perdido por caminar en línea recta. ~ Jos Saramago,
98:(1949-20**) Al menos aguantó sin caminar hasta el final ~ Haruki Murakami,
99:Do you want to be mesmermized by the physical phenomenon? ~ Scott Steiner,
100:«En una negociación gana quien tiene menos que perder». ~ Timothy Ferriss,
101:Um, excuse you, but Harry Potter is a cultural phenomenon. ~ Angie Thomas,
102:...un acto es menos que todas las horas de un hombre. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
103:¿Cómo podía echar de menos una vida que no me llenaba? ~ El sabet Benavent,
104:How’s life?”
“That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. ~ Joe Meno,
105:No hay efecto secundario menos original que la muerte. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
106:No puedes ser feliz si no fuiste infeliz al menos una vez. ~ Lauren Oliver,
107:...the city is just too big and too full of people to be alone. ~ Joe Meno,
108:Un encuentro casual era lo menos casual en nuestras vidas ~ Julio Cort zar,
109:Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. ~ Sandhya Menon,
110:Cuanto más te acercas a lo esencial, menos puedes nombrarlo. ~ Rosa Montero,
111:Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one ~ Matthew Arnold,
112:DEFINITION OF A SPORTS CAR: A HEDGE AGAINST THE MALE MENOPAUSE. ~ Tom Wolfe,
113:Desear algo más que a Dios hace que Dios parezca menos valioso. ~ Anonymous,
114:Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. ~ Milton Friedman,
115:me·nor·ah   n. (the Menorah) a sacred candelabrum ~ Oxford University Press,
116:Yo no estudio por saber más, sino por ignorar menos ~ Juana In s de la Cruz,
117:¿y teniendo yo más alma, tengo menos libertad? ~ Pedro Calder n de la Barca,
118:As palavras diziam menos do que aquilo que todos sabíamos ~ Jos Lu s Peixoto,
119:But I have seen il Fenomeno do things that nobody else has ever done. ~ Kaka,
120:Cuanto menos intentemos, menos riesgo tendremos de fracasar. ~ Robert Greene,
121:El que recogió mucho, no tuvo más; y el que poco, no tuvo menos. ~ Anonymous,
122:I write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow. ~ Georges Simenon,
123:Mientras más estoy en tú mundo, menos puedo estar en el de él ~ Ben Sherwood,
124:Por lo menos nadie te observa ya nadie admira tus fracasos. ~ Fidel S Buergo,
125:Ti si najbeskonačnije, najplavlje nebo kraj mog rumenog uha. ~ Miroslav Anti,
126:Amad el arte. De todas las mentiras es la menos mentirosa. ~ Gustave Flaubert,
127:El que no tiembla ante una acción, menos se espanta por palabras. ~ Sophocles,
128:I think people think we're all sipping martinis by the pool. ~ Maria Menounos,
129:Mi smo vremenom prožeti, a ono tek po nama ima svoj smisao. ~ Miroslav Krle a,
130:No voy a ser la marioneta de nadie, mucho menos, de mí mismo. ~ Douglas Adams,
131:A menos que odiemos lo que no somos, no podemos amar lo que somos. ~ Anonymous,
132:In verità, chi poco possiede viene tanto meno posseduto. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
133:I think social media is a revolutionary phenomenon all in itself. ~ Tony Blair,
134:Nessun fenomeno al mondo può impedire al sole di risorgere. ~ Benito Mussolini,
135:Se enojó conmigo. Me dijo más o menos que me fuera a la mierda. ~ Jens Lapidus,
136:siempre se disfruta de libertad a menos que estemos encarcelados ~ Mary Balogh,
137:... um homem não vai menos perdido por caminhar em linha recta. ~ Jos Saramago,
138:Fall in Alabama was menopausal: hot one moment and cold the next. ~ Lexi George,
139:I’ve noticed that this same phenomenon occurs in my spiritual life. ~ Anonymous,
140:I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon. ~ Karl Lagerfeld,
141:Love is born of faith, lives on hope, and dies of charity. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti,
142:Podrías pasar menos tiempo horneando y un poco más viviendo la vida ~ Jenny Han,
143:Tu sei più o meno l'unica cosa che mi fa desiderare di svegliarmi. ~ Jojo Moyes,
144:Will the social networking phenomenon lessen? I don't think so. ~ Marissa Mayer,
145:Cada foto que te hacen menoscaba tu espíritu y te acorta la vida. ~ Jandy Nelson,
146:Education, done properly, is an emergent, evolutionary phenomenon. ~ Matt Ridley,
147:O pão de agora não mata a fome de ontem, muito menos a de amanhã. ~ Jos Saramago,
148:particularly gruesome menopause (or meno-go, as the case was), ~ Kristan Higgins,
149:Perché, infine, da tutto possiamo fuggire, meno che da noi stessi ~ Jos Saramago,
150:Recupero la fe en la humanidad. O por lo menos en la que cocina. ~ Andr s Neuman,
151:Cada minuto que passa é um minuto a menos nesta casa. Nesta vida. ~ Anthony Doerr,
152:el afán de alcanzar algo es menor que lo que logramos alcanzar. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
153:El conjunto no puede tener valor a menos que tengan valor las partes. ~ Anonymous,
154:merece un amor menos salvaje y temible e inútil que el tuyo. ~ Alejandra Pizarnik,
155:Noi siamo quello che ricordiamo. Meno ricordiamo, meno siamo. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
156:Sabiendo que como siempre me costaba mucho menos pensar que ser. ~ Julio Cort zar,
157:Si yo no hiciera al menos una locura por año, me volvería loco ~ Vicente Huidobro,
158:Ya no siente el menor desprecio sino una inmensa indiferencia. ~ Philippe Sollers,
159:Ageing is a complex phenomenon that is still not completely understood ~ Anonymous,
160:Hiperactividad de la función intestinal en menoscabo de la cerebral, ~ Umberto Eco,
161:I saw Redeye, and I love being scared and on the edge of my seat. ~ Maria Menounos,
162:Las cartas de importancia hay que retenerlas por lo menos un día. ~ Ernesto Sabato,
163:Retirement is the menopause of an employee’s mind and hands. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
164:That is a strange phenomenon, people pretending to be other people. ~ Andy Samberg,
165:The single most amazing phenomenon is the discrediting of idealism. ~ Susan Sontag,
166:Apunta a la luna y si fallas, al menos estaras entre las estrellas. ~ Cecelia Ahern,
167:Cómo me volvería menos competitivo para poder tener más éxito?”». ~ Timothy Ferriss,
168:El lema de la familia era: «La muerte, menos temida, da más vida». ~ Isabel Allende,
169:El mundo de ningún modo se hundirá porque haya menos hombres malos. ~ Immanuel Kant,
170:Eres tan real como cualquiera, y tus dudas te hacen más real, no menos ~ John Green,
171:No sabía con certeza de qué huía, a menos que fuera de la gente. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
172:Pojmenovali Kolonii 5 po záři na obloze — a vesmír na to odpověděl. ~ Karin Tidbeck,
173:¡Qué poco sabemos de lo que somos!
¡Como menos lo que podemos ser! ~ Lord Byron,
174:A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
175:Apunta a la Luna y, si fallas, al menos estarás entre las estrellas. ~ Cecelia Ahern,
176:Great gifts are not given easily and I waited years before I had you. ~ Ramesh Menon,
177:I love comic book movies, and Marvel Comics obviously are the best. ~ Maria Menounos,
178:No creo que se pueda aprender todo de nada, y menos de un idioma. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
179:No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon ~ Robert Lanza,
180:Puede que el afecto no sea amor, pero al menos es primo hermano de este. ~ Anonymous,
181:This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing. ~ Bill Gates,
182:Amare è un verbo, quindi un azione da compiere. Più fatti, meno parole. ~ Nina George,
183:Being decent is the only thing that matters in a terrible world like this. ~ Joe Meno,
184:Cuanto menos tiempo tienes, menos quieres arriesgar el que te queda ~ Joe Abercrombie,
185:Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen. ~ Henry A Kissinger,
186:È conoscendo meglio la vittima che in genere si scopre l'assassino. ~ Georges Simenon,
187:In fact, my popularity seems almost entirely a masculine phenomenon. ~ Marilyn Monroe,
188:Kamu hanya perlu menerima. Menolak, menyangkal, cuma bikin kamu lelah'. ~ Dee Lestari,
189:La vida práctica siempre me ha parecido el menos cómodo de los suicidios. ~ Anonymous,
190:logoterapia es un método menos introspectivo y menos retrospectivo. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
191:No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. ~ Robert Lanza,
192:Noumenon beyond phenomena. Thought of the divine incorporeity ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
193:The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world. ~ Georges Simenon,
194:Todos nós, mais ou menos, em rapazes, fomos poetas e republicanos... ~ E a de Queir s,
195:Una compañía funciona mejor cuanto menos pague a su consejero delegado; ~ Peter Thiel,
196:What has gotten into you lately? Save a little craziness for menopause! ~ Woody Allen,
197:a Dios le importa menos lo que comes que cómo tratas a tus seres queridos ~ Megan Hart,
198:Não há oferta de excelência a menos que você goste do que está fazendo. ~ Richard Koch,
199:Please let there be a heaven for everything that is too pitiful to believe. ~ Joe Meno,
200:se había transformado en algo que era más, y a la vez, menos que humano ~ Paul Jenkins,
201:Y me sentí un transeúnte más que un día sería un transeúnte menos ~ Enrique Vila Matas,
202:You’re going through your menopause and you thought you were in love. ~ Elmore Leonard,
203:acumulamos recuerdos para sentirnos menos solos en el momento de la muerte. ~ Anonymous,
204:Ama l'arte; fra tutte le menzogne è ancora quella che mente di meno. ~ Gustave Flaubert,
205:Cuando el fin es sublime, todo lo que se sufre para conseguirlo no lo es menos. ~ Plato,
206:O homem não é Deus. Cabe a nós fazer que seja pelo menos humano. ~ Andr Comte Sponville,
207:A lot of people didn't realize that I acted before I did anything else. ~ Maria Menounos,
208:Cuando sólo se habla por hablar, poco se piensa y aún menos se hace. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
209:Engañar es un acto económico primitivo: obtener más a cambio de menos. ~ Steven D Levitt,
210:La gente debería verse más como sus retratos y menos como en la vida real ~ Salvador Dal,
211:Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity. ~ Marshall McLuhan,
212:Se le antojó que de estar menos atendida se habría hallado más a su gusto. ~ Jane Austen,
213:The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev,
214:We live in a time when writers do not always have barriers around them ~ Georges Simenon,
215:And then she smiled a smile so dazzling, Rishi tripped over his own feet. ~ Sandhya Menon,
216:Es estúpido echar de menos a alguien con quien ni siquiera te llevabas bien. ~ John Green,
217:Huey coined the term “revolutionary suicide” to describe this phenomenon. ~ Huey P Newton,
218:I matrimoni hanno sempre a che fare col denaro, che lo si ammetta o meno. ~ Carrie Bebris,
219:¡Los gritos nunca me han asustado y los de los cobardes aún menos! ~ Santiago Posteguillo,
220:A fragrance of cold rose petals and copper. Like flowers in your bloody throat. ~ Joe Meno,
221:Cuando aprendas a aceptar en lugar de esperar, tendrás menos decepciones”. ~ Robert Fisher,
222:Human tragedies are always simple when we reconsider them in retrospect. ~ Georges Simenon,
223:In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
224:Las tormentas son menos volubles de lo que son, los mares menos caprichosos. ~ Holly Black,
225:Nada de lo que vemos nos pertenece; mucho menos lo que no vemos. J. J. BENÍTEZ ~ Anonymous,
226:No hay fenómenos de moral, hay interpretación moral de los fenómenos ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
227:The aspiration to save the world is a morbid phenomenon of today's youth. ~ Marilyn Manson,
228:The most important things in your life are almost always impossible to predict. ~ Joe Meno,
229:Hay personas que cuanto más se hace por ellos menos hacen ellos por sí mismos ~ Jane Austen,
230:It's just amazing to do something that's part of a pop culture phenomenon. ~ Chaske Spencer,
231:La vida práctica siempre me ha parecido el menos cómodo de los suicidios. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
232:Pasé de los insultos al silencio. Eran menos dolorosos los primeros. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky,
233:She set her book carefully down, dog-earing a corner of her page with love. ~ Sandhya Menon,
234:So naturally I’m fascinated with the phenomenon of the NDE, of ‘going over. ~ Lincoln Child,
235:Impression is a great phenomenon in itself: as a man thinketh so is he. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
236:I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men. ~ Georges Simenon,
237:It’s pretty hard not to like her,” he says. “Even when
you know you shouldn’t. ~ Joe Meno,
238:Lembro que naquela manhã também o calor era menos, e o ar era bondoso. ~ Jo o Guimar es Rosa,
239:Loyalty is a continuous phenomenon, you don't score points for past action, ~ Natasha Pulley,
240:My life is not merely a public phenomenon, it is a solitary adventure as well. ~ Tom Robbins,
241:romper nuestra ceguera periférica, y mirar menos al espejo y más por la ventana. ~ Anonymous,
242:Te conocí cuando menos lo esperaba y llegaste a mí cuando más te necesitaba. ~ Megan Maxwell,
243:Walter non aveva mai capito come vivere, ma adesso lo capiva meno che mai ~ Jonathan Franzen,
244:E nunca antes eu me havia deixado levar, a menos que soubesse para o quê. ~ Clarice Lispector,
245:He aqui un consejo: eres lindo cuando eres seguro de ti. Y menos cuando no eres. ~ John Green,
246:My admiration for the phenomenon of Alcoholics Anonymous is boundless. ~ Mercedes McCambridge,
247:Quiereme cuando menos lo merezca, porque será cuando más lo necesite ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
248:Te quiero infinito
Te extraño infinito

Echaba de menos sus infinitos. ~ John Green,
249:-Todo el mundo quiere amor -digo-. O al menos sexo. Es la naturaleza humana. ~ Colleen Hoover,
250:cleantech was even more of a social phenomenon than an environmental imperative. ~ Peter Thiel,
251:Female killer whales are also among the few mammals that go through menopause. ~ John Hargrove,
252:For 30 years I have tried to make it understood that there are no criminals. ~ Georges Simenon,
253:Geeks are smart and talented and passionate. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. ~ Sandhya Menon,
254:Quanto menos vida pessoal, mais segura e melhor será a vida intelectual. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
255:Si al final mis problemas no eran solubles, cuando menos serían adulterables. ~ Xavier Velasco,
256:the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
257:Todo el mundo merece que le ocurra algo bueno en su vida, al menos una vez. ~ Morris Gleitzman,
258:«un modelo fenomenológico de la conciencia basado en la teoría de la información». ~ Anonymous,
259:A belief proves to me only the phenomenon of belief, not the content of the belief. ~ Carl Jung,
260:A mi entender, el amor y la callada sencillez si hablan menos, dicen más. ~ William Shakespeare,
261:«Cuanto más sabes quién eres y lo que quieres, menos te afectan las cosas». ~ Stephanie Perkins,
262:Cuanto menos soy más viva estoy, cuanto más pierdo mi nombre más me llaman. ~ Clarice Lispector,
263:Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon. ~ Sugata Mitra,
264:I adore life but I dont fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible. ~ Georges Simenon,
265:Jacques Coppenole, calzettaio. Hai udito, usciere? Niente di più, niente di meno. ~ Victor Hugo,
266:Las convenciones siempre nos imponen su locura en los momentos menos apropiados. ~ Irvine Welsh,
267:Me sentiré muchísimo menos extranjera contigo que en cualquier otra tierra. ~ Elena Poniatowska,
268:Niente dura, e nondimeno niente passa. E niente passa proprio perché niente dura. ~ Philip Roth,
269:No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. ~ John Archibald Wheeler,
270:Palavras vulgares; mas há vulgaridades sublimes, ou, pelo menos, deleitosas, ~ Machado de Assis,
271:Siempre ha habido peleas, luchar fue siempre, más o menos, una forma de ceguera, ~ Jos Saramago,
272:There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman. ~ Margaret Mead,
273:The Shastras say that a son who does not obey his father has no place in heaven. ~ Ramesh Menon,
274:Un carácter complejo no tiene qué ser más o menos estimable que uno como el suyo. ~ Jane Austen,
275:Uno de los grandes Sufis dijo: "Un santo es un santo a menos que sepa que lo es". ~ Idries Shah,
276:We have to accept that some very toxic stuff was marbled into the Trump phenomenon. ~ Van Jones,
277:A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all. ~ William S Burroughs,
278:Às vezes, as pessoas que mais precisam ser salvas não têm a menor ideia disso. ~ Lynn Weingarten,
279:«El precio de la disciplina es siempre menor que el dolor del arrepentimiento». ~ Robin S Sharma,
280:En mi lápida quiero que diga: «Estaba loco, pero al menos lo intentó.» —¡Papá! ~ John Katzenbach,
281:esa tozuda negativa de la humanidad a intentar al menos obrar de un modo razonable. ~ Jojo Moyes,
282:Extremism is a spiritual phenomenon, a desire for loftiness of spirit gone perverse. ~ Anonymous,
283:It is extremely obvious to me that the internet is a religious phenomenon ~ Peter Lamborn Wilson,
284:I will interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul ~ Aleister Crowley,
285:La lucha en el barro no es de mi agrado, a menos que implique poca ropa - Puck xD ~ Julie Kagawa,
286:Mientras más sabes quién eres, y lo que quieres, menos dejas que las cosas molesten. ~ Anonymous,
287:Nunca juega el tahúr la pieza que el contrario presume, y menos la que desea. ~ Baltasar Graci n,
288:The Leatherman was a lesbian phenomenon and life ran more smoothly because of it. ~ Michelle Tea,
289:Todos los seres humanos habían, más o menos, deseado la muerte de los que amaban. ~ Albert Camus,
290:El sufrimiento procede de tres patrones de pensamiento: pérdida, menos, nunca.» ~ Timothy Ferriss,
291:I think the big news there - most post-menopausal women I know are not celibate. ~ Laurie Simmons,
292:La enemistad perdura. La amistad es menos segura. Sobre todo en esos tiempos. ~ Edward Rutherfurd,
293:Love is a spiritual phenomenon; lust is physical. Ego is psychological; love is spiritual. ~ Osho,
294:Por lo menos, confiesa que te he dado tema para una novela. ¿No, niño bueno? ~ Mario Vargas Llosa,
295:Se sei in ritardo, arrivi in ritardo. Un paio di minuti di meno non fanno differenza. ~ Wulf Dorn,
296:Te echaré de menos, morena, pero al final, lo sabemos… no nos quisimos tanto. ~ El sabet Benavent,
297:That's a phenomenon of the Left: You don't fight evil. You fight carbon emissions ~ Dennis Prager,
298:The number of hypotheses available to explain any given phenomenon is infinite. ~ Robert M Pirsig,
299:There is no more creative force in the world than the menopausal woman with zest. ~ Margaret Mead,
300:...tratemos por lo menos de engañarnos
como si el buen amor
fuera la vida ~ Mario Benedetti,
301:Un'amicizia incapace di aiutare potrebbe benissimo fare a meno di esistere. ~ Elizabeth von Arnim,
302:Yamadutas, ancient, inscrutable and of many lives unknown are the reasons of Siva. ~ Ramesh Menon,
303:As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. ~ Eben Alexander,
304:He encontrado el amor cuando menos lo buscaba y con la persona que menos esperaba. ~ Megan Maxwell,
305:He lit the night he brought with the fire that puts out the planets when time ends. ~ Ramesh Menon,
306:Let menot, even inmyownmind, committheinjustice of taking a speck for the whole. ~ Maria Edgeworth,
307:Lo que hace falta en el mundo es más gente mala de verdad y menos cazurros limítrofes. ~ Anonymous,
308:…Ser menos para que la persona amada se sienta más ¿Habrá mayor estupidez “amorosa”? ~ Walter Riso,
309:Siva laughed, and said, ‘Let any man who enters this forest be turned into a woman, ~ Ramesh Menon,
310:soy un infiel descreído de Dios. Al menos, así voté en las últimas elecciones. ~ Christopher Moore,
311:The phenomenon of HIV criminalization is so much more massive than people understand. ~ Sean Strub,
312:Todo es arduo, menos ser rey de dioses. Que, excepto Zeus, nadie en el mundo es libre. ~ Aeschylus,
313:What is the meaning of life? It is too great a phenomenon to fit into any meaning. ~ Jaggi Vasudev,
314:El mundo puede hacerse pedazos, pero al menos todos nosotros nos daremos un baño. ~ Kristin Cashore,
315:For all practical purposes "race" is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. ~ UNESCO,
316:Her body conveyed anger like a second language; she must have had a lot of practice ~ Sandhya Menon,
317:Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It is made by or stopped by the central bank. ~ Milton Friedman,
318:Kad te netko ne želi pustiti unutra, s vremenom odustaneš i ne da ti se više kucati. ~ Ransom Riggs,
319:—Me has atrapado, Cassita —susurró—. Y nunca había tenido menos ganas de escapar. ~ Sylvain Reynard,
320:Nunca comprendió que era posible echar de menos y llorar lo que nunca se ha tenido. ~ Paula Hawkins,
321:Once you can reproduce a phenomenon, you are well on the way to understanding it. ~ Arthur C Clarke,
322:Podemos cometer muchos errores en nuestras vidas, menos uno: aquel que nos destruye. ~ Paulo Coelho,
323:Si regala qualcosa per il piacere di farlo,non perché qualcuno lo meriti o meno ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
324:You are like an autumn cloud, Bhoorisravas, full of thunder but never bringing rain. ~ Ramesh Menon,
325:acontecido es por eso mucho menos grave siempre que los temores y las hipótesis, las ~ Javier Mar as,
326:Cuando nos olvidamos es que hemos perdido, sin duda alguna, menos memoria que deseo. ~ Juan Jos Saer,
327:Data is not the phenomenon. It represents the phenomenon, but not very well. ~ Clayton M Christensen,
328:Health is not just a physical phenomenon. We do not just have physical bodies. ~ Christopher Penczak,
329:I just did a dramatic love story. Whether it's a cultural phenomenon is not for me to say. ~ Ang Lee,
330:Me duele como a ti, pero tengo menos miedo de la muerte y más esperanza en la vida. ~ Isabel Allende,
331:Menospreciar al enemigo, escuchadme bien los dos, es el camino de la derrota. ~ Santiago Posteguillo,
332:Non ci meritiamo la primavera, e non ci meritiamo nemmeno l'inverno. Esistono e basta. ~ Rufi Thorpe,
333:No siempre los imbéciles salimos tan imbéciles como el imbécil que nos menosprecia. ~ Xavier Velasco,
334:Nunca estás donde te busco, y apareces cuando menos lo espero. Como el arco iris. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
335:Orang boleh menodong senapan, tapi kalian punya pilihan, untuk takut atau tetap tegar. ~ Ahmad Fuadi,
336:Our worlds are so momentary. We are along all our lives and then go off that way as well. ~ Joe Meno,
337:[...] Perchè se lei non riusciva ad abbandonare un amico, nemmeno lui poteva farlo. ~ Winston Graham,
338:the dream is not a somatic but a psychic phenomenon. You appreciate the significance ~ Sigmund Freud,
339:What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
340:-Ya sabes que no puedes ser feliz a menos que seas desgraciada alguna vez. ¿verdad?- ~ Lauren Oliver,
341:El amor es como el sol, no brilla menos para ti, solo por que brilla para los demás ~ Marquis de Sade,
342:If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it? ~ Bette Midler,
343:llega un momento en el que todo sale a la luz de repente y cuando menos te lo esperas ~ Lorena Franco,
344:Lo que importa más nunca debe de estar a merced de lo que importa menos. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
345:Not surprisingly, work-life moaners tend to be a phenomenon of below-average performers. ~ Jack Welch,
346:Nunca habrá sido en balde el día que fuimos merecedores, al menos, de un buen consejo. ~ Jos Saramago,
347:Pour agir, Saint-Menoux va cesser pendant quelques secondes de se tenir hors du temps. ~ Ren Barjavel,
348:Si regala qualcosa per il piacere di farlo, non perché qualcuno lo meriti o meno. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
349:Consciousness is the true reality, and matter is an epiphenomenon bordering on trivial. ~ Amit Goswami,
350:Dar y Tomar
El Patrón toma menos de lo que le es dado
Y da más de lo que ha tomado ~ Idries Shah,
351:Madame....gloatingly savored her words as earlier she had savored her pig's trotter. ~ Georges Simenon,
352:Music is...a form of remembering, a return to the seasons of the heart long gone. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti,
353:Ya sabes, lo que vemos no es más que una pequeña parte de un fenómeno en cambio constante. ~ Anonymous,
354:«Casi nunca la naturaleza hizo más por un país donde el hombre casi siempre hizo lo menos». ~ Anonymous,
355:Come si può andare avanti? La risposta è: non si può. Almeno non sforzandosi, onestamente. ~ Kim Holden,
356:Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon of globalization. ~ Lawrence Summers,
357:Ella dijo: "Voy a echarte de menos cuando despierte".
"No despiertes", contestó él. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
358:I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong. ~ Georges Simenon,
359:...nadie, y menos en literatura, es capaz de no parpadear durante un tiempo prolongado ~ Roberto Bola o,
360:Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature. ~ Stephen Crane,
361:With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon. ~ Albert Einstein,
362:Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known. ~ Roger Penrose,
363:E o riso dele? Er aalgo absolutamente dominador. Ninguém tinha a menor chance diante dele ~ Markus Zusak,
364:I had a bit of a male menopause. It started at the age of 18 and continued until I was 45. ~ Ian McShane,
365:I'm still trying to figure things out too. All I know is a couple of very unimportant things. ~ Joe Meno,
366:It is a truly powerful phenomenon when a brand makes a stand for what it believes in. ~ Simon Mainwaring,
367:«No puedo pretender que no te conozco,
Pero al menos puedo fingir que no me importó» ~ Lissa D Angelo,
368:Nos entenderíamos mejor, y yo me preocuparía menos, si no me recordaras tanto a mí misma. ~ Jandy Nelson,
369:Paulinho is like a black Lampard, but also makes headed goals. He is a phenomenon. ~ Juan Roman Riquelme,
370:Sabías lo que yo era cuando me pediste que te eligiera. No sugieras ahora que sea menos. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
371:Siento que la conozco menos cuanto más la conozco. (Del amor y otros demonios). ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,
372:These megaleaks... They're an important phenomenon, and they're only going to increase. ~ Julian Assange,
373:Whatever a man does, good or evil, comes back to him someday. And he pays for everything. ~ Ramesh Menon,
374:El amor existe Oliva, solo hay que tener paciencia y acabará llegando cuando menos te lo esperes. ~ Ne ra,
375:era un niño poco corriente, sobre todo porque, a decir verdad, no era un niño ni mucho menos. ~ Anonymous,
376:Es una desgracia que no se pueda confiar en los hombres, a menos que se les esté vigilando. ~ Bram Stoker,
377:Hay belleza o cuando menos interés en todo, si se ve con un ojo suficientemente perspicaz. ~ Susan Sontag,
378:Poetry, rather than being a phenomenology of the mind, is a phenomenology of the soul. ~ Gaston Bachelard,
379:Religion is the most widely debated and least agreed upon phenomenon of human history. ~ Georgia Harkness,
380:Rud’ means misery and ‘dravayati’ means to root out. Rudra is the destroyer of our misery. ~ Ramesh Menon,
381:Si hay menos mal humor en las altas esferas, también lo habrá en el resto del escalafón. ~ Daniel Goleman,
382:There were few things that made her feel lonelier than conversations with her own mother. ~ Sandhya Menon,
383:Uno mismo es quien menos sabe de su existencia... No se existe sino para los demás... ~ Miguel de Unamuno,
384:Voy a irme yendo” indica que no se va todavía, va a esperar todavía un poco, por lo menos ~ Javier Mar as,
385:Al hacer las cosas con otros pierdo, por lo menos una cosa, que es hacer las cosas solo. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
386:«A veces me siento desdichada, nada más que de no saber qué es lo que estoy echando de menos», ~ Anonymous,
387:Blanca, pelo menos, tem algo em comum comigo: também é uma triste com vocação de alegre. ~ Mario Benedetti,
388:Chiunque, se è vivo, ha una personalità. Solo che in alcuni è più evidente in altre meno ~ Haruki Murakami,
389:Education is not a skyhook from which to hang economic policy; it is an emergent phenomenon. ~ Matt Ridley,
390:If each one of us could make just one other happy, the whole world would know happiness. ~ Georges Simenon,
391:La amistad es poderosa cuando no es por interés, o, al menos, eso dice Aristóteles, ~ Santiago Posteguillo,
392:Las obras de arte son soledades infinitas y con nada son menos alcanzables que con la crítica. ~ Anonymous,
393:Life is nothing short of a phenomenon. In every sense life is mysterious and unfathomable. ~ Bryant McGill,
394:Lo que hace falta en el mundo es más gente mala de verdad y menos cazurros limítrofes. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
395:Los lambiscones se esmeran como putas menopáusicas para hacerte creer que son muy útiles. ~ Xavier Velasco,
396:Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti,
397:No necesitas nada de nadie, a menos que sea el tipo de amor que te elige primero, siempre. ~ Tarryn Fisher,
398:No, señor, lo tengo por norma: cuanto más extraño me parece algo, menos pregunto. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
399:Pero una ráfaga de moto ha pasado por mi casa, y uno, ya, más o menos, vive de ráfagas. ~ Francisco Umbral,
400:Quanti sono coloro che amano davvero, o che almeno si sposano per amore, a questo mondo? ~ Charlotte Bront,
401:That's why charity work is very selfish at the same time, because it makes you feel good. ~ Maria Menounos,
402:The truth is an arbitrary, shifting, culturally relative, and historically molded phenomenon. ~ Ken Wilber,
403:todo el mundo debería tener su amor verdadero, y por lo menos debería durar tanto como su vida ~ Anonymous,
404:We are tricked by a phenomenon of time: hours and days pass slowly, but years pass quickly. ~ Sally Warner,
405:Why can't a girl be smart without it being explained away as a rare supernatural phenomenon? ~ Cat Winters,
406:Women know when they've got the menopause but men don't quite know. They know it afterwards. ~ Omar Sharif,
407:Yo tenía esa edad en la que el menor gesto de bondad parece una prueba de amistad eterna. ~ Benjamin Black,
408:You. Are. Beautiful. Lajawab. My only worry is that I might not be able to do you justice. ~ Sandhya Menon,
409:All share complicity in the destruction of that much under-rated phenomenon called liberty. ~ Barbara Amiel,
410:All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you. ~ Jon Krakauer,
411:... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age. ~ Saul Bellow,
412:Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary. ~ Claude Debussy,
413:Después de todo, la vida es un ameno y grave recorrido por los más diversos funerales. ~ Enrique Vila Matas,
414:I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words. ~ Georges Simenon,
415:It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man. ~ Heinrich Heine,
416:—La amistad es poderosa cuando no es por interés, o, al menos, eso dice Aristóteles, ~ Santiago Posteguillo,
417:letrero que se menospreciaba a sí mismo: «Oficina de Rezagos del Correo Nacional». ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,
418:lo humillante era ser víctima de un acontecimiento que todo el mundo veía venir menos yo. ~ Pierre Lemaitre,
419:Mientras más sabes quién eres, y lo que quieres, menos dejas que las cosas te molesten. ~ Stephanie Perkins,
420:Mientras somos jóvenes somos también menos tozudos y nos es más fácil reprimir nuestro egoísmo. ~ Anonymous,
421:Nel momento in cui ti soffermi a pensare se ami o meno una persona, hai già la risposta ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
422:Photography is a strange phenomenon... You trust your eye and cannot help but bare your soul. ~ Inge Morath,
423:Quanto mais gosto da humanidade em geral, menos gosto das pessoas em particular, (...) ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
424:...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible. ~ Werner Heisenberg,
425:When she cries, it is quiet, tearless, almost completely imperceptible: one more unheard prayer. ~ Joe Meno,
426:Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti,
427:A vida é muito menos assustadora quando se enterram as ambições e se pára de desejar coisas. ~ Lolly Winston,
428:Kami bermaksud baik Ngama. Ngama adat jangan sangsi. Kami ingin menolong yang sakit. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer,
429:La felicidad es vivir sintiendo, lo menos posible, que el hombre, en realidad, está solo. ~ Banana Yoshimoto,
430:Nel momento in cui ti soffermi a pensare se ami o meno una persona, hai già la risposta. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
431:Photography is a strange phenomenon ... You trust your eye and cannot help but bare your soul. ~ Inge Morath,
432:Solución de la pregunta general de los Prolegómenos ¿Cómo es posible la metafísica como ciencia? ~ Anonymous,
433:the causes and conditions that produce that phenomenon contain the seed for its destruction. ~ Tashi Tsering,
434:Todo el mundo debería tener su amor verdadero, y por lo menos debería durar tanto como su vida. ~ John Green,
435:Kita ada Tuhan. Dalam banyak keadaan yang luar biasa dan mustahil pun, Tuhan pasti menolong. ~ Faisal Tehrani,
436:secreto de la vida está, tal vez, en las sorpresas que esta te da cuando menos te lo esperas. ~ Lorena Franco,
437:Si uno va a sentarse sobre la lápida de alguien, al menos debe saber algo sobre ellos, ¿no? ~ Nicholas Sparks,
438:Y por ultimo, pero no menos importante, ni un poquito menos impotente. Nunca te arrepientas. ~ Colleen Hoover,
439:Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti,
440:...avaricia, la cual, como es sabido, tiene hambre de lobo: cuanto más devora, menos se sacia. ~ Nikolai Gogol,
441:A veces me siento desdichada, nada más que de no saber qué es lo que estoy echando de menos. ~ Mario Benedetti,
442:es menos duro sobrellevar un acontecimiento espantoso que imaginarlo y aguardarlo sin fin, ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
443:Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
444:Existe el jardín. Y existe la cizaña. ¡Y a menos que seas despiadado, la cizaña siempre gana! ~ Sheri S Tepper,
445:ganando dinero para disfrutar de una libertad discutible en la parte menos valiosa de ella». ~ Timothy Ferriss,
446:Había aparecido en su vida cuando ella menos lo esperaba, de la forma más increíble posible. ~ Nicholas Sparks,
447:I certainly hope I'm not still answering child-star questions by the time I reach menopause. ~ Christina Ricci,
448:It is very easy to take for granted the phenomenon that we are each alive, but we must try not to. ~ Alex Grey,
449:Mi padre solía decirme que ninguna decisión de vida es permanente a menos que sea un tatuaje. ~ Colleen Hoover,
450:Una prima es ligeramente mejor que un salario, al menos está supeditada a un trabajo bien hecho. ~ Peter Thiel,
451:Without Greece, it is not possible to preserve the integrity of the European phenomenon. ~ Evangelos Venizelos,
452:Basura como la que los ministros usan en los parlamentos cuando no tienen la menor respuesta. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
453:—Conseguir un objetivo depende menos de superar obstáculos externos que de eliminar los internos: ~ John Verdon,
454:El hombre tiene menos tiempo, amigos, esperanza y cualidades de lo que sospecha.

Proverbio ~ Idries Shah,
455:I seek refuge in Siva whose power is unequalled, whose glory spreads everywhere, who is Un-born! ~ Ramesh Menon,
456:La gente es más de lo que creemos. Y también menos. La clave está en entender ambas cosas. ~ Michael Cunningham,
457:La naturaleza, al menos, no necesitaba de operaciones para ser bella.
Simplemente lo era. ~ Scott Westerfeld,
458:las italianas tienen a lo menos sobre las francesas la ventaja de ser fieles a su infidelidad ~ Alexandre Dumas,
459:Life is not a discrete phenomenon it is a part of an intelligent cosmic field. It is a cosmic dance. ~ Amit Ray,
460:My fear again waned low, since a natural phenomenon tends to dispel broodings over the unknown. ~ H P Lovecraft,
461:No soy guapa, al menos no de cerca. En general, cuanto más se me acercan, menos guapa les parezco. ~ John Green,
462:-No te calles por mi culpa, Kvothe -dijo con dulzura-. Echaría de menos el sonido de tu voz. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
463:¡Oh raza humana, nacida para remontar vuelo!, ¿por qué el menor soplo de viento te hace caer? ~ Dante Alighieri,
464:Parece irónico, pero cuanto menos pienses en el resultado final, más rápido se producirá éste. ~ Robin S Sharma,
465:pero los inversores que comprenden la ley potencial hacen el menor número de inversiones posible. ~ Peter Thiel,
466:qué desgracia saber tu nombre aunque ya no conozca hoy tu rostro y aún menos lo conozca mañana. ~ Javier Mar as,
467:Si compiacque di averlo ucciso e ci credé davvero, per almeno cinque secondi. ~ Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli,
468:Ahora y aqui cuadra bien la palabra fin, pariente de infinito y hermana menor del confín cerrado. ~ Erri De Luca,
469:A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti,
470:«A veces me siento desdichada, nada más que de no saber qué es lo que estoy echando de menos», ~ Mario Benedetti,
471:Ciò che è noto racchiude in sé meno terrore di ciò che è soltanto sussurrato e fantasticato ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
472:El hombre más sagaz es el que menos sospecha que puede caer ante un detalle insignificante. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
473:El hombre no puede descubrir nuevos océanos a menos que tenga el coraje de perder de vista la costa. ~ Andr Gide,
474:Madeline decides Jonathan is an immature, selfish asshole and that she is never talking to him again. ~ Joe Meno,
475:No hay nada menos vacío que un estadio vacío. No hay nada menos mudo que las gradas sin nadie. ~ Eduardo Galeano,
476:Purpose in the human being is a much more complex phenomenon than what used to be called will power. ~ Rollo May,
477:Quien vaya a ser sabio se menosprecia a sí mismo. Sólo los ignorantes confían en su propio juicio. ~ Idries Shah,
478:To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness. ~ Edmund Husserl,
479:War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means. ~ Carl von Clausewitz,
480:57.Quanto menor é a alma de um homem mais espaço ela ocupa. Não há espaço para ninguém ao seu lado. ~ Afonso Cruz,
481:Ante la posibilidad de vivir menos tiempo que los demás, me he prometido vivir más deprisa ~ Alexandre Dumas fils,
482:A verdadeira finalidade do dinheiro é manipular os outros e fazê-los sentir que são menos que nós. ~ Ransom Riggs,
483:Ce n’est pas possible d’éplucher des pommes de terre et de gratter des carottes en combinaison. ~ Georges Simenon,
484:¿Crees que pienso en ti todo el tiempo? A menos que te llames Adrian Ivashkov te estas engañando. ~ Richelle Mead,
485:Entre esas cosas que se echan de menos cuando no se tienen y que agobian cuando se tienen en demasía, ~ Anonymous,
486:I propose that the phenomenon of love is the psychological pivot in the persecution of women. ~ Ti Grace Atkinson,
487:It seems to me that for Darwin the pulsing of evolutionary rates was a strictly vertical phenomenon. ~ Ernst Mayr,
488:Las heridas no duelen menos cuando te obsesionas con repartirlas entre sus posibles causantes. ~ Daniel Glattauer,
489:Maybe. Because he’s got to try. Because she is too interesting, too beautiful not to even do anything. ~ Joe Meno,
490:Mnogi misle da su dobro i lose apsolutne vrednosti.No, nije bas tako, te vrednosti se vremenom menjaju. ~ Jo Nesb,
491:Porque una sociedad no tiene la menor posibilidad de éxito si sus mujeres no reciben educación. ~ Khaled Hosseini,
492:Siempre he creído que al menos la mitad de los personajes famosos de la historia no han existido. ~ Philip K Dick,
493:Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting. ~ Josef Albers,
494:The biggest mistake that I made was not anticipating the rise of the social networking phenomenon. ~ Eric Schmidt,
495:2 El que entiende el significado de dar, no puede por menos que reírse de la idea del sacrificio. ~ Helen Schucman,
496:A veces, prender fuego a tu pasado es menos alejarte de él, que elevarte por encima de él. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus,
497:Chi oserebbe condannarti alla perdita del tu, catastrofe non meno terribile della perdita dell'io? ~ Italo Calvino,
498:Dicen que los lugares conservan por lo menos cierta huella de las personas que los han habitado. ~ Patrick Modiano,
499:Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world. ~ Noam Chomsky,
500:If your vision of the world is of a certain kind you will put poetry in everything, necessarily. ~ Georges Simenon,

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



0

  366 Integral Yoga
   64 Occultism
   50 Psychology
   21 Philosophy
   8 Yoga
   7 Christianity
   4 Poetry
   4 Mythology
   2 Theosophy
   1 Hinduism
   1 Buddhism
   1 Alchemy


  225 The Mother
  170 Sri Aurobindo
  161 Satprem
   79 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   53 Carl Jung
   23 Aleister Crowley
   10 Plato
   7 George Van Vrekhem
   6 Swami Krishnananda
   6 Jordan Peterson
   6 James George Frazer
   4 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   4 Rudolf Steiner
   4 Paul Richard
   4 Aldous Huxley
   3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   3 Plotinus
   3 Ovid
   3 Friedrich Nietzsche
   2 Swami Vivekananda


   41 The Life Divine
   26 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   22 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   20 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   20 Agenda Vol 04
   18 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   17 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   16 Liber ABA
   15 The Practice of Psychotherapy
   15 Agenda Vol 07
   14 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   14 Agenda Vol 02
   13 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   13 Magick Without Tears
   13 Agenda Vol 08
   13 Agenda Vol 03
   12 Questions And Answers 1956
   12 Letters On Yoga IV
   12 Agenda Vol 06
   11 Questions And Answers 1953
   11 Essays On The Gita
   11 Agenda Vol 11
   11 Agenda Vol 05
   10 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   10 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   10 Essays Divine And Human
   10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   10 Aion
   10 Agenda Vol 12
   10 Agenda Vol 09
   10 Agenda Vol 01
   9 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   8 Record of Yoga
   8 Questions And Answers 1955
   7 Savitri
   6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Golden Bough
   6 Talks
   6 Questions And Answers 1954
   6 Maps of Meaning
   6 Letters On Yoga II
   6 Letters On Yoga I
   6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   6 Agenda Vol 10
   5 Isha Upanishad
   4 Words Of Long Ago
   4 The Perennial Philosophy
   4 The Human Cycle
   4 City of God
   4 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   3 Twilight of the Idols
   3 On the Way to Supermanhood
   3 Metamorphoses
   3 Liber Null
   3 Letters On Poetry And Art
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   3 Agenda Vol 13
   2 Theosophy
   2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
   2 Letters On Yoga III
   2 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06


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