NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

ON THE ACQUISITION AND TRANSMISSION OF TRUTH

Smooth ways of thought are like smooth ways of action: truth is never reached or held fast without friction and grappling.

To move in the direction where movement is easiest is not action or work: all action involves struggle and conquest.

We want not relaxation but bracing and binding: we are all abroad, never at home. We need to live with girded loins and lamps burning, ready instantly to throw ourselves on what is needed. Yet the time is gone by for gaining concentration by narrowness of aim.

We must beware of a slavery of the mind to its own tools, not the less tools that they are part of its furniture and frame.

All processes of logic and method are only mechanism, extending and correcting the inborn mechanism of the eye. Behind, and apart from all alike is the power of sight.

Vision

Its three qualities are clearness, completeness, proportion.

Vision is essentially personal and individual, involving selection and interpretation.

No hearsay can be a substitute. What we have ourselves seen and learned and known is the dominant and the vitalising factor in all real belief.