Dear, very dear, to himself, he [the plebeian] would be hard put to say anything about this self which would explain why he, or anyone, should hold i… - R. W. K. Paterson

Artist, philosopher, lover, mystic—these words name levels of consciousness which are accessible to all of us. It is not a question of training, education, or degree of sophistication. It is rather a question of openness, of courage and endeavour, of willingness to dwell elsewhere than in the midst of demeaning preoccupations with material fortune, status, and power.

It is rare to find the ideal of the patrician standing alone, not joining hands, albeit unavoidably and sometimes most reluctantly, with the ideals of very different human types. Even Plato’s Guardians, who have had the vision of The Good, are presented first of all as ideals rulers of earthly men, although Plato will soon openly declare that the commonwealth of which they are master is ‘set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, to found one in himself, and whether it exists or ever will exist is no matter, for this is the only commonwealth in who politics he can ever take part’.

A world in to whose settled meaning he [the egoist] had committed himself would be a world to which he had alienated himself. His self-possession would be at an end, for the world which he had begun by possessing would at last have come to possess him.