Bright the World

Bright the World You asked me where the light, that springs anew Each lovely morning of the world, is born. But ready answer had I none to view ; My mind so misted, thoughtless and forlorn That I was sightless to the inner ‘scape Where sense and reason meet to make a blend Of that [...]

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I know that face

People are constantly talking of reality.  How often do we hear words such as : “get real” : “the reality is” : “it really is true”.  It is as if we believe that the human senses and the human mind possess a mystical quality that enables them to transcend the material world and take a [...]

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We have changed the world

Before Descartes, roses were red and violets were blue.  Since Descartes, that has changed.  Since Descartes, body and mind have been split asunder ; the world and the person have become two distinct (and some say incompatible) things ; matter and spirit have been divorced.  This was not all Descartes’ fault ; it was not [...]

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Mindful of pain

The life of Man is the life of the mind.  Not for us the unconscious or semi-conscious world that the lesser creatures inhabit.  We are not automatons that simply ‘behave’ ; we are much more than our instincts and biological drives.  It was one of those frightful eighteenth-century agricultural scientists who remarked, “What is a [...]

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Stars don’t count

Hardly a day passes without some sign of the profound mystery of the world coming to mind.  Thinking of its origins : the universe, in its early stages of evolution, is completely invisible to us. It is known to us only by essentially geometrical expressions and, because the universe had no objects in at that [...]

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Richness and the measure of all things

I can remember words Pascal the wise Left us to ponder , which gave rise To other ideas, much paler than his own. All worlds and suns, and even yet The brightest stars that nature did beget, Compare with dust in light of human mind.

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Where was Noah’s rainbow?

It’s Monday morning, and the overcast sky encourages a meditation of sorts.  How much kinder the world would be if Nature gave us a rainbow to contemplate on every cloudy day.  But she doesn’t ; for she waits until there is a particular disposition of sunshine and of particular kinds of clouds.  And sometimes she [...]

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