http://stevenjcarino.comenSelf-ImprovementCopyright Steven J. Carinohttps://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/4aa23a128cae9d0f45db66884a1b0171.jpghttp://stevenjcarino.comThu, 05 Sep 2024 01:21:17 +0000Steven J. CarinoSteven J. Carinothemonster2000@yahoo.comPhilosophical discussions on developing your inner potential. Fragments of Wisdom interpreted into modern day tools for strengthening character and moral integrity.cleanepisodichttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/11-14-23-on-self-trust--61268272https://api.spreaker.com/episode/61268272Thu, 05 Sep 2024 01:19:05 +0000Steven J. CarinoAs nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing, so nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own.522cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-4-21-paracelsus-the-supreme-secret-of-the-world-blue-book-page-114--60228815https://api.spreaker.com/episode/60228815Thu, 30 May 2024 23:06:35 +0000Steven J. CarinoParacelsus664cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/10-9-23-kant-on-thought-and-immortality--58977495https://api.spreaker.com/episode/58977495Sat, 09 Mar 2024 03:23:56 +0000Steven J. CarinoConnection, Unity, and Pure Reason568cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/8-5-23-nature-s-simple-majesty--58833131https://api.spreaker.com/episode/58833131Mon, 26 Feb 2024 19:58:26 +0000Steven J. CarinoFriedrich Schiller687cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/9-28-23-attestation-of-faith--58226664https://api.spreaker.com/episode/58226664Mon, 08 Jan 2024 01:06:53 +0000Steven J. CarinoRalph Waldo Emerson from The Transcendentalist684cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/8-24-23-on-frugality-emerson--58226611https://api.spreaker.com/episode/58226611Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:50:06 +0000Steven J. CarinoDiamonds are best plain-set.720cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-2-24-william-wordsworth-the-prelude--58199534https://api.spreaker.com/episode/58199534Thu, 04 Jan 2024 17:10:38 +0000Steven J. CarinoFor I, methought, while the sweet breath of Heaven was blowing on my body, felt within a corresponding, mild creative breeze, a vital breeze, which travel gently on over things we should have made, and is become a tempest, a redundant energy vexing...704cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/2-19-23-emerson-the-workman-streams-through-us--57383680https://api.spreaker.com/episode/57383680Wed, 25 Oct 2023 18:23:02 +0000Steven J. CarinoThe Soul of the Workman streams through us544cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/2-15-23-emerson-on-thought--57383503https://api.spreaker.com/episode/57383503Wed, 25 Oct 2023 18:06:36 +0000Steven J. Carino“God does not play dice” - Einstein723cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/in-the-case-of-the-animal-and-the-plant-on-loveliness-and-dignity--57118932https://api.spreaker.com/episode/57118932Fri, 06 Oct 2023 16:06:13 +0000Steven J. CarinoFriedrich Schiller871cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/keep-ministering-spirits-gracian-emerson-thoreau--57118673https://api.spreaker.com/episode/57118673Fri, 06 Oct 2023 15:39:21 +0000Steven J. CarinoNo wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art...813cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/2-5-23-on-potency-of-mind--56918962https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56918962Sun, 24 Sep 2023 21:30:33 +0000Steven J. CarinoAristotle / Contemplation545cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-29-23-on-impulse--56918856https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56918856Sun, 24 Sep 2023 21:16:50 +0000Steven J. CarinoFriedrich Schiller from letter XIX438cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-22-23-politically-speaking--56918790https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56918790Sun, 24 Sep 2023 21:04:24 +0000Steven J. CarinoAll political reform should emanate from improvement of character.685cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-19-23-on-suffering-mencius-james--56813210
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. Proverbs III - 11:12]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56813210Fri, 15 Sep 2023 17:12:20 +0000Steven J. CarinoConsider it pure joy my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish his work, so that you may be mature and complete, not liking anything....
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. Proverbs III - 11:12]]>748cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-8-23-con-t-schiller--56557393https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56557393Tue, 22 Aug 2023 17:32:35 +0000Steven J. CarinoNothing is our own except what is implanted in the Understanding611cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-8-23-schiller-on-necessary-limits-and-beautiful-forms--56557221https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56557221Tue, 22 Aug 2023 17:19:07 +0000Steven J. CarinoThe interest of the imagination consists in changing its objects according to its own good pleasure; the interest of the understanding, in combining its objects according to a principle of rigid necessity.705cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/emerson-fate-1-6-23--56514863https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56514863Fri, 18 Aug 2023 16:01:16 +0000Steven J. CarinoThe Day of days, the great day of the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens to the Unity in things, to the omnipresence of laws – sees that what is must be and ought to be or is the best. This beatitude dips from on high down on us and...411cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/plotinus-self-realization-1-1-23--56514009 Adverse fortune does not shake his felicity: the life, so founded is stable ever.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56514009Fri, 18 Aug 2023 15:47:49 +0000Steven J. CarinoOnce the man is a Sage, the means of happiness, the way to good, all within, for nothing is good that lives outside him. Adverse fortune does not shake his felicity: the life, so founded is stable ever. Adverse fortune does not shake his felicity: the life, so founded is stable ever.]]>684cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/friedrich-schiller-1-4-23-on-sensations-without-the-action-of-the-subject--56289606https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56289606Sat, 29 Jul 2023 17:39:57 +0000Steven J. CarinoSchiller Emerson - God enters by a private door into every individual.735cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/paracelsus-the-seed-1-6-23--56288914https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56288914Sat, 29 Jul 2023 17:24:30 +0000Steven J. CarinoIf God, then, shows Himself to our discernment in Nature so powerful and so wise, how much more glorious will He reveal Himself by His Holy Spirit to our kind, if we only seek Him?530cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-3-23-on-imagination-emerson-the-poet--56191168
It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder,
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his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveller who has lost his way throws his reins on his horse's neck and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature; the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56191168Sun, 23 Jul 2023 15:53:27 +0000Steven J. CarinoThis insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees; by sharing the path or circuit of things through forms, and so making...
It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder,
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his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveller who has lost his way throws his reins on his horse's neck and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature; the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible.]]>611cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-1-23-emerson-do-not-trifle-with-your-perceptions-or-hold-them-cheap--56129924https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56129924Mon, 17 Jul 2023 18:12:34 +0000Steven J. CarinoFrom Powers and Laws of Thought669cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/novalis-last-fragments-49--56129788https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56129788Mon, 17 Jul 2023 17:54:28 +0000Steven J. CarinoThe poet always remains true. He endures the cycle of nature.762cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-29-22-schiller-necessity-outside-of-us--56129551 The mind detaches / Plato- The secret of his popular success.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56129551Mon, 17 Jul 2023 17:31:59 +0000Steven J. CarinoFriedrich Schiller with Ralph Waldo Emerson The mind detaches / Plato- The secret of his popular success. The mind detaches / Plato- The secret of his popular success.]]>817cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/schiller-letter-xix-and-xx-full--56113849https://api.spreaker.com/episode/56113849Sat, 15 Jul 2023 18:50:34 +0000Steven J. CarinoLetter XX802cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-28-22-to-genius-must-go-two-gifts-emerson-first-the-thought-then-the-publication--53949527 thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. [1] It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature. To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought now for the first time bursting into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed and to dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought of man and goes to fashion every institution. But to make it available it needs a vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. To be communicable it must become picture or sensible object. We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. The ray of light passes invisible through space and only when it falls on an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy is directed on something outward, then it is a thought. The relation between it and you first makes you, the value of you, apparent to me.

The rich inventive genius of the painter must be smothered and lost for want of the power of drawing, and in our happy hours we should be inexhaustible poets if once we could break through the silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of communication in their head, but only in the artist does it descend into the hand. There is an inequality, whose laws we do not yet know, between two men and between two moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. In common hours we have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for their portrait; they are not detached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius is spontaneous; but the power of picture or expression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states, without which no production is possible. [1] It is a conversion of all nature into the rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous also. It does not flow from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. Not by any conscious imitation of particular forms are the

grand strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing to the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. Who is the first drawing-master? Without instruction we know very well the ideal of the human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a picture; if the attitude be natural or grand or mean; though he has never received any instruction in drawing or heard any conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a single feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. We may owe to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill; for as soon as we let our will go and let the unconscious states ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are! We entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of woods and of monsters, and the mystic pencil where with we then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty; it can design well and group well; its composition is full of art, its colors are well laid on and the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike and apt to touch us with terror, with

tenderness, with desire and with grief. Neither are the artist's copies from experience ever mere copies, but always touched and softened by tints from this ideal domain.

The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not appear to be so often combined but that a good sentence or verse remains fresh and memorable for a long time. Yet when we write with ease and come out into the free air of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to continue this communication at pleasure. Up, down, around, the kingdom of thought has no inclosures, but the Muse makes us free of her city. Well, the world has a million writers. One would think then that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good books; nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years. It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are many competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books. But some of the conditions of intellectual construction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a whole and demands integrity in every work. This is resisted equally by a man's devotion to

a single thought and by his ambition to combine too many.

Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood; herein resembling the air, which is our natural element and the breath of our nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison also. I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of your horizon. [1]

Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offence and to liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and subtraction. When we are young we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions

of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.

Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation is the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance which brings the intellect in its greatness and best state to operate every moment. It must have the same wholeness which nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a model by the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet does the world reappear in miniature in every event, so that all the laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. [1] The intellect must have the like perfection in its apprehension and in its works. For this reason, an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. We talk with accomplished persons who appear to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird, are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world is only their lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses are to be spheral and
complete, is one whom Nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more likeness than variety in all her changes. We are stung by the desire for new thought; but when we receive a new thought it is only the old thought with a new face, and though we make it our own we instantly crave another; we are not really enriched. For the truth was in us before it was reflected to us from natural objects; and the profound genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into every product of his wit.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53949527Sun, 21 May 2023 16:41:43 +0000Steven J. CarinoIn the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by the word Genius, we observe the same balance of two elements as in intellect receptive. The constructive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. [1] It is... thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. [1] It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature. To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, a form of thought now for the first time bursting into the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed and to dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought of man and goes to fashion every institution. But to make it available it needs a vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. To be communicable it must become picture or sensible object. We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. The ray of light passes invisible through space and only when it falls on an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy is directed on something outward, then it is a thought. The relation between it and you first makes you, the value of you, apparent to me.

The rich inventive genius of the painter must be smothered and lost for want of the power of drawing, and in our happy hours we should be inexhaustible poets if once we could break through the silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of communication in their head, but only in the artist does it descend into the hand. There is an inequality, whose laws we do not yet know, between two men and between two moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. In common hours we have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for their portrait; they are not detached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius is spontaneous; but the power of picture or expression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states, without which no production is possible. [1] It is a conversion of all nature into the rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous also. It does not flow from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. Not by any conscious imitation of particular forms are the

grand strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing to the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. Who is the first drawing-master? Without instruction we know very well the ideal of the human form. A child knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a picture; if the attitude be natural or grand or mean; though he has never received any instruction in drawing or heard any conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a single feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. We may owe to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill; for as soon as we let our will go and let the unconscious states ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are! We entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of woods and of monsters, and the mystic pencil where with we then draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty; it can design well and group well; its composition is full of art, its colors are well laid on and the whole canvas which it paints is lifelike and apt to touch us with terror,...]]>872cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-27-22-wise-workman-emerson--53949356
Yet vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and enlarges our field of action. We have a debt to every great heart, to every fine genius; to those who have put life and fortune on the cast of an act of justice; to those who have added new sciences; to those who have refined life by elegant pursuits. 'Tis the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern. Fine society, in the common acceptation, has neither ideas nor aims. It renders the service of a perfumery, or a laundry, not of a farm or factory. 'Tis an exclusion and a precinct. Sidney Smith said, "A few yards in London cement or dissolve friendship." It is an unprincipled decorum; an affair of clean linen and coaches, of gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day. Society wishes to be amused. I do not wish to be amused. I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste. Is all we have to do to draw the breath in, and blow it out again? Porphyry's definition is better; "Life is that which holds matter together." The babe in arms is a channel through which the energies we call fate, love, and reason, visibly stream. See what a cometary train of auxiliaries man carries with him, of animals, plants, stones, gases, and imponderable elements. Let us infer his ends from this pomp of means. Mirabeau said, "Why should we feel ourselves to be men, unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere. You must say of nothing, That is beneath me, nor feel that anything can be out of your power. Nothing is impossible to the man who can will. Is that necessary? That shall be:--this is the only law of success." Whoever said it, this is in the right key. But this is not the tone and genius of the men in the street. In the streets, we grow cynical. The men we meet are coarse and torpid. The finest wits have their sediment. What quantities of fribbles, paupers, invalids, epicures, antiquaries, politicians, thieves, and triflers of both sexes, might be advantageously spared! Mankind divides itself into two classes,— benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast, the first a handful. A person seldom falls sick, but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die:--quantities of poor lives; of distressing invalids; of cases for a gun. Franklin said, "Mankind are very superficial and dastardly: they begin upon a thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it discouraged: but they have capacities, if they would employ them." Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst of charity is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses! the calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men spoken on their honor and their conscience. In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under-estimated. "Clay and clay differ in dignity," as we discover by our preferences every day. What a vicious practice is this of our politicians at Washington pairing off! as if one man who votes wrong, going away, could excuse you, who mean to vote right, for going away; or, as if your presence did not tell in more ways than in your vote. Suppose the three hundred heroes at Thermopylae had paired off with three hundred Persians: would it have been all the same to Greece, and to history? Napoleon was called by his men Cent Mille. Add honesty to him, and they might have called him Hundred Million.

Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that is good, and shakes down a tree full of gnarled, wormy, unripe crabs, before you can find a dozen dessert apples; and she scatters nations of naked Indians, and nations of clothed Christians, with two or three good heads among them. Nature works very hard, and only hits the white once in a million throws. In mankind, she is contented if she yields one master in a century. The more difficulty there is in creating good men, the more they are used when they come. I once counted in a little neighborhood, and found that every able-bodied man had, say from twelve to fifteen persons dependent on him for material aid,--to whom he is to be for spoon and jug, for backer and sponsor, for nursery and hospital, and many functions beside: nor does it seem to make much difference whether he is bachelor or patriarch; if he do not violently decline the duties that fall to him, this amount of helpfulness will in one way or another be brought home to him. This is the tax which his abilities pay. The good men are employed for private centres of use, and for larger influence. All revelations, whether of mechanical or intellectual or moral science, are made not to communities, but to single persons. All the marked events of our day, all the cities, all the colonizations, may be traced back to their origin in a private brain. All the feats which make our civility were the thoughts of a few good heads.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53949356Sun, 21 May 2023 16:14:04 +0000Steven J. CarinoAlthough this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enters into it, that we doubt we can say...
Yet vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and enlarges our field of action. We have a debt to every great heart, to every fine genius; to those who have put life and fortune on the cast of an act of justice; to those who have added new sciences; to those who have refined life by elegant pursuits. 'Tis the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern. Fine society, in the common acceptation, has neither ideas nor aims. It renders the service of a perfumery, or a laundry, not of a farm or factory. 'Tis an exclusion and a precinct. Sidney Smith said, "A few yards in London cement or dissolve friendship." It is an unprincipled decorum; an affair of clean linen and coaches, of gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day. Society wishes to be amused. I do not wish to be amused. I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste. Is all we have to do to draw the breath in, and blow it out again? Porphyry's definition is better; "Life is that which holds matter together." The babe in arms is a channel through which the energies we call fate, love, and reason, visibly stream. See what a cometary train of auxiliaries man carries with him, of animals, plants, stones, gases, and imponderable elements. Let us infer his ends from this pomp of means. Mirabeau said, "Why should we feel ourselves to be men, unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere. You must say of nothing, That is beneath me, nor feel that anything can be out of your power. Nothing is...]]>387cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/thoreau-conclusion-that-if-one-advances-confidently-in-the-direction-of-his-dreams--53949253 ¶2 I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them. . . .
¶3 Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hear, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an appletree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is down we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? . . .
¶4 However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more

disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said, “From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadow of poverty and meanness gather around us, “an lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth or Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. . . .
¶5 The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts,–from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance b y the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,–heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board,–may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!
¶6 I do not say the John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eye is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53949253Sun, 21 May 2023 15:52:43 +0000Steven J. Carino1 I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and... ¶2 I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them. . . .
¶3 Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hear, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an appletree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is down we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? . . .
¶4 However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more

disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said, “From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder;...]]>879cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/letter-xix-friedrich-schiller-notes--53709730 WE may distinguish in mankind in general two different conditions of passive and active determinability, and as many conditions of passive and active determination. The explanation of this statement will be the shortest way to our goal.
The condition of the human spirit before any determination, the one that is given it through impressions of the senses, is an unlimited capacity for being determined. The boundlessness of space and time is presented to Man’s imagination for its free employment, and since ex hypothesi nothing in this wide realm of the possible is ordained, and consequently nothing is yet excluded, we may call this condition of indeterminability an empty infinity, which is by no means to be confused with an infinite emptiness.
And now his sense is to be touched, and out of the infinite number of possible determinations one single one is to attain actuality. A conception is to arise within him. What in the previous condition of mere determinability was nothing but an empty capacity now becomes an operative power that acquires a content; but at the same time it receives, as operative power, a limit, after being as mere capacity unlimited. So reality is there; but infinity is lost. In order to describe a shape in space, we must set limits to infinite space; in order to represent to ourselves an alteration in time, we must divide the totality of time. So we arrive at reality only through limitation, at the positive, or actually established, only through negation or exclusion, at determination only through the surrender of our free determinability.
But no reality would arise to all eternity from mere exclusion, and no idea would arise to all eternity from mere sense perception, unless there were something there from which the exclusion could be made, unless by an absolute act of the mind the negation were related to something positive, and from non- entity some entity arose; this activity of the mind is called judging or thinking, and its result is called thought.
Before we determine a position in space, there simply is no space for us; but without absolute space we should never be able to determine a position at all. It

is the same with time. Before we have the instant, there simply is no time for us; but without everlasting time we should never have a manifestation of the instant. Thus we arrive, to be sure, at the whole only through the part, at the unlimited only through limitation; but we also arrive at the part only through the whole, at limitation only through the unlimited.
So when it is asserted of the Beautiful, that it paves the way for mankind to a transition from sensation to thought, we are by no means to suppose by this that the Beautiful can fill up the gulf which separates sensation from thought, passivity from activity; this gulf is infinite, and without the intervention of a new and autonomous faculty nothing universal can to all eternity arise from the particular, nothing necessary from the fortuitous. Thought is the immediate operation of this absolute capacity, which must indeed be induced by the senses to declare itself, but in its actual declaration depends so little on sense perception that it rather reveals itself only through opposition to it. The self-dependence with which it acts excludes every outside influence; and it is not insofar as she helps reflection (which contains an obvious contradiction), but only insofar as she secures for the intellectual faculties the freedom to express themselves according to their own laws, that Beauty can become a means of leading Man from matter to form, from perception to principles, from a limited to an absolute existence.
But this presupposes that the freedom of the intellectual faculties can be restricted, which seems to conflict with the idea of an autonomous faculty. Because a faculty which receives from outside nothing but the material of its operation, can be hampered in its operation only by the withdrawal of the material, only negatively, and we misconstrue the nature of a human spirit if we attribute to the sensuous passions the power of positively suppressing the freedom of the mind. Experience certainly affords plenty of examples where the rational powers appear to be suppressed in proportion to the violence of the sensuous powers; but instead of deducing this weakness of mind from the strength of the emotion, we should rather explain this overwhelming strength of emotion by the weakness of the mind; for the senses cannot represent an authority over a man except insofar as the mind has of its own free will neglected to establish itself as such.
But while I seek by means of this explanation to meet one objection, I have, it appears, become involved in another, and have secured the self-dependence of the mind only at the expense of its unity. For how can the mind find in itself at the same time the principles of inactivity and of activity, if it is not itself divided,

if it is not in opposition to itself?

At this point we must recall that we are considering the finite, not the infinite mind. The finite mind is that which only becomes active through passivity, only attains the absolute by means of limitations, only works and fashions insofar as it receives material. Such a mind will accordingly associate with the impulse towards form, or towards the absolute, an impulse towards the material, or towards limitation, as being the condition without which it could neither possess nor satisfy the first impulse. To decide how two such opposite tendencies can subsist together side by side in the same being, is a task that might indeed set the metaphysician—though not the transcendental philosopher—in sore perplexity. The latter does not presume to explain the possibility of things, but contents himself with establishing the knowledge from which the possibility of experience is apprehended. And as experience could as little exist without that opposition in the mind, as it could without the mind’s absolute unity, he maintains both concepts with complete justification as equally necessary conditions of experience, without troubling himself further about their compatibility. Moreover, this indwelling of two fundamental impulses in no way contradicts the absolute unity of the mind, as soon as we distinguish the latter itself from both the impulses. Certainly each impulse exists and operates within the mind, but the mind itself is neither matter nor form, neither sensuousness nor reason, a fact which does not always seem to have been considered by those who only allow the human mind to be active when it proceeds according to reason, and where it contradicts reason declare it to be merely passive.
Each of these two fundamental impulses, as soon as it has developed, strives by its nature and by necessity towards satisfaction; but just because both are necessary and both are yet striving towards opposite objectives, this twofold constraint naturally cancels itself, and the will preserves complete freedom between them both. It is therefore the will that maintains itself towards both impulses as an authority (as basis of actuality), but neither of the two can of its own accord act as an authority against the other. By the most positive inclination to justice, which he by no means lacks, the violent man is not withheld from injustice, and the strong-minded man is not led to a breach of his principles by the keenest temptation to enjoyment. There is in Man no other authority than his will, and only something that annuls the man himself—death, or some deprivation of his consciousness—can annul his inner freedom.
A necessity outside ourselves determines our condition, our existence in time, by means of sense perception. This is quite involuntary, and as it acts upon us so

we must abide it. Similarly a necessity inside ourselves reveals our personality, at the direction of that sense perception and through opposition to it; for consciousness of self cannot depend upon the will, which presupposes it. This primitive manifestation of the personality is no more a merit than the absence of it is a defect in us. Reason—that is to say absolute consistency and universality of consciousness—is required only from the man who is conscious of himself; before that he is not a man, nor can any act of humanity be expected from him. The metaphysician can no more account for the limits which the free and autonomous mind meets with in sensation, than the physicist can comprehend the infinity which is revealed in the personality through these limits. Neither abstraction nor experience will lead us back to the source from which our concepts of universality and necessity derive; its early appearance in time hides it from the observer, and its suprasensible origin from the metaphysical enquirer. It is sufficient that the consciousness of self is there, and together with its own unalterable unity the law of unity for everything that is for man, and for everything that is to come about through him, is established for his apprehension and his activity. Inescapable, incorruptible, inconceivable, the concepts of truth and right present themselves even in the age of sensuousness, and without being able to say whence and how it arose we are aware of the eternal in time and the necessary in the train of chance. So sensation and the consciousness of self arise, entirely without the assistance of the personality, and the origin of them both lies as much beyond our will as it lies beyond the sphere of our knowledge.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53709730Mon, 01 May 2023 20:40:13 +0000Steven J. CarinoNineteenth Letter WE may distinguish in mankind in general two different conditions of passive and active determinability, and as many conditions of passive and active determination. The explanation of this statement will be the shortest way to our... WE may distinguish in mankind in general two different conditions of passive and active determinability, and as many conditions of passive and active determination. The explanation of this statement will be the shortest way to our goal.
The condition of the human spirit before any determination, the one that is given it through impressions of the senses, is an unlimited capacity for being determined. The boundlessness of space and time is presented to Man’s imagination for its free employment, and since ex hypothesi nothing in this wide realm of the possible is ordained, and consequently nothing is yet excluded, we may call this condition of indeterminability an empty infinity, which is by no means to be confused with an infinite emptiness.
And now his sense is to be touched, and out of the infinite number of possible determinations one single one is to attain actuality. A conception is to arise within him. What in the previous condition of mere determinability was nothing but an empty capacity now becomes an operative power that acquires a content; but at the same time it receives, as operative power, a limit, after being as mere capacity unlimited. So reality is there; but infinity is lost. In order to describe a shape in space, we must set limits to infinite space; in order to represent to ourselves an alteration in time, we must divide the totality of time. So we arrive at reality only through limitation, at the positive, or actually established, only through negation or exclusion, at determination only through the surrender of our free determinability.
But no reality would arise to all eternity from mere exclusion, and no idea would arise to all eternity from mere sense perception, unless there were something there from which the exclusion could be made, unless by an absolute act of the mind the negation were related to something positive, and from non- entity some entity arose; this activity of the mind is called judging or thinking, and its result is called thought.
Before we determine a position in space, there simply is no space for us; but without absolute space we should never be able to determine a position at all. It

is the same with time. Before we have the instant, there simply is no time for us; but without everlasting time we should never have a manifestation of the instant. Thus we arrive, to be sure, at the whole only through the part, at the unlimited only through limitation; but we also arrive at the part only through the whole, at limitation only through the unlimited.
So when it is asserted of the Beautiful, that it paves the way for mankind to a transition from sensation to thought, we are by no means to suppose by this that the Beautiful can fill up the gulf which separates sensation from thought, passivity from activity; this gulf is infinite, and without the intervention of a new and autonomous faculty nothing universal can to all eternity arise from the particular, nothing necessary from the fortuitous. Thought is the immediate operation of this absolute capacity, which must indeed be induced by the senses to declare itself, but in its actual declaration depends so little on sense perception that it rather reveals itself only through opposition to it. The self-dependence with which it acts excludes every outside influence; and it is not insofar as she helps reflection (which contains an obvious contradiction), but only insofar as she secures for the intellectual faculties the freedom to express themselves according to their own laws, that Beauty can become a means of leading Man from matter to form, from perception to principles, from a limited to an absolute existence.
But this presupposes that the freedom of the intellectual faculties can be restricted, which seems to conflict with the idea of an autonomous faculty. Because a faculty which receives from outside nothing but the material of its operation, can be hampered in...]]>413cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-26-22-the-gift-seneca--53624352 Sidebar - Friedrich Schiller / A necessity outside of us]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53624352Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:48:07 +0000Steven J. CarinoThe power of the gift. A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer Sidebar - Friedrich Schiller / A necessity outside of us Sidebar - Friedrich Schiller / A necessity outside of us]]>314failure,faith,god,patience,perseverance,philosophers,philosophy,self-improvement,seneca,strengthcleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-26-22-mr-truman-s-50th-anniversary--53624278https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53624278Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:38:58 +0000Steven J. CarinoThe destiny of a child.494destiny,patience,perseverance,philosophical,philosophy,president,trumancleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/schiller-letter-xxv-excerpts--53624194https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53624194Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:24:51 +0000Steven J. CarinoOn Contemplative reflection with Plotinus370cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-25-22-1st-class-good-seneca--53624152https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53624152Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:14:37 +0000Steven J. CarinoOn the powers of fortune and the mystery of destiny.312destiny,history,humility,patience,philosophy,self-improvement,transcendentalcleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-25-22-on-chance-destiny--53624073https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53624073Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:03:33 +0000Steven J. CarinoExcerpts from Paracelsus and Schiller.303destiny,history,patience,philosophy,self,wisdomcleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-22-22-schiller-patience--53552345https://api.spreaker.com/episode/53552345Sat, 31 Dec 2022 02:37:28 +0000Steven J. CarinoThe Faithful Hands of Time.582self-improvementcleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/novalis-last-fragments-42-discussing-the-port--52319960https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52319960Sat, 31 Dec 2022 02:15:32 +0000Steven J. Carino378cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-16-22-emerson-on-truth--52319954 Ralph Waldo Emerson]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52319954Sat, 31 Dec 2022 02:13:15 +0000Steven J. CarinoThey entertain us for a time, but at the second or third encounter we have nothing more to learn. Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson]]>335faith,hope,patience,self-improvement,transcendencecleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-14-22-attractiveness-like-that-of-a-new-man-ralph-waldo-emerson--52308730https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52308730Thu, 29 Dec 2022 18:17:58 +0000Steven J. CarinoThere is no attractiveness like that of a new man. The sleepy nations are occupied with their political routine.288faith,hope,patience,self-improvement,transcendentalcleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-12-22-novalis-faith--52308665https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52308665Thu, 29 Dec 2022 18:10:05 +0000Steven J. CarinoNovalis - miscellaneous observations196faith,hope,patience,self-improvement,spiritual,spiritual-growth,transcendentalcleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-11-22-origins-of-thought--52285532https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52285532Tue, 27 Dec 2022 00:06:19 +0000Steven J. CarinoWhere do our thoughts come from? A brief segment from Mr. Emerson173destiny,dream,hope,patience,power-of-words,self-esteem,self-improvement,thought,thought-leadership,thought-process,transcendence,virtuecleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-10-22-to-my-dad-on-his-101st-birthday--52285479https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52285479Mon, 26 Dec 2022 23:58:56 +0000Steven J. CarinoDec. 10 - The love of a Father. A dedication161dad,divine-self,father,love,patience,self-improvement,spirit,spiritual,spiritual-growth,virtuecleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-9-22-pit-coal-emerson--52285461https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52285461Mon, 26 Dec 2022 23:52:35 +0000Steven J. CarinoMr. Emerson describes in his essay the necessities of pit-coal.233emerson,faith,hope,motivation,patience,self-help,self-improvement,transcendental, motivationalcleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-8-22-schiller-destiny--52285444
“In the case of the animal and the plant, nature not only designs, but likewise carries out the destiny of the being. In the case of man she simply determines the destiny, but leaves its realization to himself. That it is that makes him a man.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52285444Mon, 26 Dec 2022 23:45:26 +0000Steven J. CarinoDiscussion on the Destiny of man “In the case of the animal and the plant, nature not only designs, but likewise carries out the destiny of the being. In the case of man she simply determines the destiny, but leaves its realization to himself. That...
“In the case of the animal and the plant, nature not only designs, but likewise carries out the destiny of the being. In the case of man she simply determines the destiny, but leaves its realization to himself. That it is that makes him a man.]]>177destiny​,faith,faith-in-god,hope,integrity,self-acceptance,self-improvement,self-lovecleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/december-4-2022--52259290https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52259290Thu, 22 Dec 2022 17:17:24 +0000Steven J. CarinoRecognition of the four year anniversary of personal freedom.160cleanfullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/friedrich-schiller-ix-1759-1805--52259210 BUT are we perhaps not arguing in a circle? Is theoretical culture to bring about practical culture, and yet the practical is to be the condition of the theoretical? All improvement in the political sphere is to proceed from the ennobling of the character—but how, under the influence of a barbarous constitution, can the character become ennobled? We should need, for this end, to seek out some instrument which the State does not afford us, and with it open up well-springs which will keep pure and clear throughout every political corruption.
I have now reached the point to which all the foregoing considerations have been directed. This instrument is the Fine Arts, and these well-springs are opened up in their immortal examples.
Art, like Science, is free from everything that is positive or established by human conventions, and both of them rejoice in an absolute immunity from human lawlessness. The political legislator can enclose their territory, but he cannot govern within it. He can proscribe the friend of truth, but Truth endures; he can humiliate the artist, but Art he cannot debase. Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste. Where character is rigid and obdurate, we see Science keeping a strict watch over its frontiers, and Art moving in the heavy shackles of rules; where character is enervated and loose, Science will strive to please and Art to gratify. For whole centuries now philosophers and artists have shewn themselves occupied in plunging Truth and Beauty in the depths of vulgar humanity; they themselves are submerged there, but Truth and Beauty struggle with their own indestructible vitality triumphantly to the surface.
No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favourite. Let some beneficent deity snatch the infant betimes from his mother’s breast, let it nourish him with the milk of a better age and suffer him to grow up to full maturity beneath the distant skies of Greece. Then when he has become a man, let him return to his century as an alien figure; but not in order to gladden it by his appearance, rather, terrible like

Agamemnon’s son, to cleanse it. He will indeed take his subject matter from the present age, but his form he will borrow from a nobler time—nay, from beyond all time, from the absolute unchangeable unity of his being. Here, from the pure aether of his daemonic nature, flows forth the well-spring of Beauty, untainted by the corruption of the generations and ages which wallow in the dark eddies below it. A freak of temper can degrade his matter, as it has dignified it; but the chaste form is removed from its vicissitudes. The Roman of the first century had long bowed the knee before his emperors, while the gods’ statues still stood erect; the temples remained holy in men’s eyes when the gods had long since become objects of ridicule, and the infamous crimes of a Nero and a Commodus were put to shame by the noble style of the building which lent concealment to them. Humanity has lost its dignity, but Art has rescued and preserved it in significant stone; Truth lives on in the midst of deception, and from the copy the original will once again be restored. As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.
But how docs the artist secure himself against the corruptions of his time, which everywhere encircle him? By disdaining its opinion. Let him look upwards to his own dignity and to Law, not downwards to fortune and to everyday needs. Free alike from the futile activity which would gladly set its mark upon the fleeting moment and from the impatient spirit of extravagance which applies the measure of the Absolute to the sorry productions of Time, let him resign the sphere of the actual to the intellect, whose home it is; but let him strive, through the union of the possible with the necessary, to produce the Ideal. Let him stamp it on illusion and truth, coin it in the play of his imagination and in the gravity of his actions, in every sensuous and spiritual form, and quietly launch it into infinite Time.
But not everyone with this ideal glowing in his soul has been endowed with creative tranquillity and the great patient temper to imprint it upon the silent stone or to pour it into the sober word and entrust it to the faithful hands of Time. Much too impetuous to proceed by such quiet means as this, the divine creative impulse often plunges immediately into the present and into the practical business of life, and attempts to transform the formless substance of the moral world. The unhappiness of his generation speaks urgently to the sensitive man, its degradation still more urgently; enthusiasm is kindled, and glowing desire strives impatiently for action in vigorous souls. But has he also asked

himself whether these disorders in the moral world offend his reason, or whether they do not rather grieve his self-love? If he does not yet know the answer, he will discover it in the eagerness with which he presses for definite and rapid results. The pure moral impulse is directed at the Absolute; time does not exist for it, and the future is its present, as soon as it necessarily develops out of the present. For a reason having no limits direction is also completion, and the road has been travelled when once it has been chosen.
Give then, I shall reply to the young friend of Truth and Beauty who wants to learn from me how he can satisfy the noble impulse in his breast in the face of all the opposition in his century—give the world on which you are acting the direction towards the good, and the quiet rhythm of time will bring about its development. You have given it this direction, if by your teaching you elevate its thoughts to the necessary and the eternal, if by your actions or your creations you transform the necessary and eternal into the object of its impulses. The fabric of error and lawlessness will fall, it must fall; it has already fallen as soon as you are certain that it is leaning over; but it must lean in the inner, not merely in the outward man. In the modest stillness of your heart you must cherish victorious truth, display it from within yourself in Beauty, so that not merely thought may pay homage to it, but sense too may lay loving hold on its appearance. And lest by any chance you may receive the pattern you are to give it from actuality, do not dare to enter its doubtful society until you are assured of an ideal following in your heart. Live with your century, but do not be its creature; render to your contemporaries what they need, not what they praise. Without sharing their guilt, share with noble resignation their penalties, and bow with freedom beneath the yoke which they can as ill dispense with as they can bear it. By the steadfast courage with which you disdain their good fortune, you will prove to them that it is not your cowardice that submits to their sufferings. Think of them as they ought to be when you have to influence them, but think of them as they are when you are tempted to act on their behalf. Seek their approbation through their dignity, but impute their good fortune to their unworthiness; thus on the one hand, your own nobility will awaken theirs, and on the other, their unworthiness will not defeat your purpose. The gravity of your principles will scare them from you, but in play they will continue to tolerate them; their taste is purer than their heart, and it is here that you must lay hold of the timorous fugitive. In vain you will assail their maxims, in vain condemn their deeds; but you can try your fashioning hand upon their idleness. Drive away lawlessness, frivolity and coarseness from their pleasure, and you will imperceptibly banish them from their actions, and finally from their dispositions.

Wherever you find them, surround them with noble, great and ingenious forms, enclose them all round with the symbols of excellence, until actuality is overpowered by appearance and Nature by Art.13]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/52259210Thu, 22 Dec 2022 17:10:21 +0000Steven J. CarinoNinth Letter BUT are we perhaps not arguing in a circle? Is theoretical culture to bring about practical culture, and yet the practical is to be the condition of the theoretical? All improvement in the political sphere is to proceed from the ennobling... BUT are we perhaps not arguing in a circle? Is theoretical culture to bring about practical culture, and yet the practical is to be the condition of the theoretical? All improvement in the political sphere is to proceed from the ennobling of the character—but how, under the influence of a barbarous constitution, can the character become ennobled? We should need, for this end, to seek out some instrument which the State does not afford us, and with it open up well-springs which will keep pure and clear throughout every political corruption.
I have now reached the point to which all the foregoing considerations have been directed. This instrument is the Fine Arts, and these well-springs are opened up in their immortal examples.
Art, like Science, is free from everything that is positive or established by human conventions, and both of them rejoice in an absolute immunity from human lawlessness. The political legislator can enclose their territory, but he cannot govern within it. He can proscribe the friend of truth, but Truth endures; he can humiliate the artist, but Art he cannot debase. Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste. Where character is rigid and obdurate, we see Science keeping a strict watch over its frontiers, and Art moving in the heavy shackles of rules; where character is enervated and loose, Science will strive to please and Art to gratify. For whole centuries now philosophers and artists have shewn themselves occupied in plunging Truth and Beauty in the depths of vulgar humanity; they themselves are submerged there, but Truth and Beauty struggle with their own indestructible vitality triumphantly to the surface.
No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favourite. Let some beneficent deity snatch the infant betimes from his mother’s breast, let it nourish him with the milk of a better age and suffer him to grow up to full maturity beneath the distant skies of Greece. Then when he has become a man, let him return to his century as an alien figure; but not in order to gladden it by his appearance, rather, terrible like

Agamemnon’s son, to cleanse it. He will indeed take his subject matter from the present age, but his form he will borrow from a nobler time—nay, from beyond all time, from the absolute unchangeable unity of his being. Here, from the pure aether of his daemonic nature, flows forth the well-spring of Beauty, untainted by the corruption of the generations and ages which wallow in the dark eddies below it. A freak of temper can degrade his matter, as it has dignified it; but the chaste form is removed from its vicissitudes. The Roman of the first century had long bowed the knee before his emperors, while the gods’ statues still stood erect; the temples remained holy in men’s eyes when the gods had long since become objects of ridicule, and the infamous crimes of a Nero and a Commodus were put to shame by the noble style of the building which lent concealment to them. Humanity has lost its dignity, but Art has rescued and preserved it in significant stone; Truth lives on in the midst of deception, and from the copy the original will once again be restored. As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.
But how docs the artist secure himself against the corruptions of his time, which everywhere encircle him? By disdaining its opinion. Let him look upwards to his own dignity and to Law, not downwards to fortune and to everyday needs. Free alike from the futile activity which would gladly set its mark upon the...]]>661faith,god,love,perseverance,philosophical,philosophy,transcendental,truthcleanfull