STATE  OF  THE  WORLD  FORUM

DISCERNMENT  AND  QUALITIES

Lindsay  Mell

State  of  The  World  Forum
Occasional  Paper  2004/2

ACADEMY OF THE WORD
October  2004

The dependence of the degrees of beauty upon our nature is perceived,
while the dependence of its essence upon our nature is still ignored. (81)

When there is real profundity – when the living core of things is most firmly grasped – there will accordingly be a felt inadequacy of expression. (82)

A theory is a form of apperception.  (86)

Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.  (103)

We have … in the presence of two images a sense of their incongruity. (124)

Give a symbol a little intrinsic worth of form, line and colour, and it attracts like a magnet all the values of the things it is know to symbolise.  (129)

Our practical and intellectual nature is deeply interested in truth. (141)

While we think we can change the drama of history, and of our own lives,
we are not awed by our destiny. (145)

For reason, after all, is one convention picked out of a thousand (153) …
Reality is more fluid and elusive than reason. (154)

No atheism is so terrible as the absence of an ultimate ideal. (160)

… a great affection, a clear thought, a profound and well-tried faith,
are eternal possessions. (161)

If we had no expectations we should have no surprises. (164)

•	George Santayana:  quotes from The Sense of Beauty (1896)

Most people see what is, and never see what can be. – Albert Einstein

Dedicated  to  Ryoko

Many years ago, when bread was delivered by horse-and-cart, 
my Great Uncle Arthur conducted a bakery business, based at Wellington in New South Wales, with branch services at Warren, and later Dubbo.  
Uncle Arthur was legendary for his efforts in chasing and rounding up sheep in the paddocks of his country property, using his trusty little old T-Model Ford car! 

Meanwhile, my Dad was raised at Dubbo, living there with his family essentially for the duration of his primary school years, throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s.  

Dad used to talk of how, as a youngster then, he would confuse the wording of the ornate sign on Uncle Arthur’s cart, which announced proudly 
‘Quality Bread’, for a slightly more convoluted version – ‘Qualitity Bread’ – much to the amusement of his mother and father. 

There was more to this situation than just childhood indiscretion, I believe, through my sense of what may have been going on for Dad. 

The nature of the form of the word ‘Quality’ is that it essentially flows.  
It is characteristically fluid in form, shape and inference.  

However, the awareness or realisation of this reality requires accordingly implicit appreciation and acceptance of its essential fluidity. 

Now, the essence of Dad’s character and nature, from my memory and appreciation of him, was that his basic appreciation and most acute awareness was grounded in the structural realm and dimension – always alert and keenly aware of fine-grained detail as this contributed to some form of definitive structure and/or structural relations. 

Hence, the appreciation of life and being as an inherently fluid spontaneous phenomenological experience was not so predominant in his perception and discernment.  Consequently, he was more inclined to orient his discernment and sense of value around the activity of creating finely crafted items. Correspondingly, in this he would exercise his great propensity and aptitude for structure and measurement, such as in the design and building of the family home (even though his actual work profession was neither that of architecture nor building), the design and crafting of household items, such as furniture, and even in being a ‘wordsmith’, rather than being intuitively creative with words, such as might be expected of a poet or novelist. 

So that my deepest sense is that Dad would recognise and appreciate the word ‘Quality’ more innately through its structure, rather than its fluidity and its perceptual orientation in this sense, or what might well be actually characterised as its essential fluid ‘quality’.  Such a fluid appreciation might rather be considered a more intuitive appreciation of quality.  

My sense is that Dad’s appreciation derived from a more innate grounding and orientation than an intuitive one, even probably from his earliest years.  So that the more intuitive element in his nature was much less redolent, or perhaps resonant, for him in his awareness and appreciation of the idea or notion of quality.  He was more oriented to his recognition of the structure of the term.  So he focussed his insight and discernment on the respective elements of the word, rather than its broad form, shape, nature, and inference.  Hence he was perhaps somewhat prone to slip into the minor indiscretion through which he first interpreted the formation of this term. 

Flow or fluidity in the nature and character of a term is perhaps nowhere more evident in the contemporary context than through the brand name we have come to associate with a certain dark brown, reputably luscious and flavoursome, intoxicatingly effervescent, refreshing liquid.  

The qualities attributed to this beverage seem almost the epitome of quality as they are presented to us through a characteristically and intuitively fluid sense. 

Moreover, the brand name itself is so formed, shaped and written in a kind of intuitively spontaneous rococo style, such that this very name itself, along with its broad inference, sanctions its espoused preservation into perpetuity.  

This is an aspiration which is further promoted through the casually elegant tag of ‘Always’, which these days now appears to further venerate this omnipresent tonic elixir. 

Even without actual mention of this product, most people would probably be eminently aware of it simply through the suggestion of these familiar fluid qualities widely associated with this beverage. 

The intuitive spontaneous suggestion of these qualities tends to evoke a dimension of form and shape which is clearly recognisable as fluid and continuous in nature. 

What is really going on here is a form of discernment applied by whoever responds to this imagery, such that they spontaneously recognise these qualities in association with the particular product in question. 

Discernment is therefore a formidable and precious quality.  
Yet, in essence, a greater more acute sensitivity and appreciation – probably also maturity – is required to discern how discernment in itself can be applied optimally. 

Such discernment emanates from a form of perception which is grounded in the essence of whatever sustains humanity through every dimension of experience and reality. 

Inadequacy of discernment in relation to the respective intuited facets of qualities is a vital difficulty in the contemporary context.  Consequently, this lack of acceptance and appreciation of such qualities constrains their potential benefit. 

Perception and appreciation now seem to be predominantly, 
even overwhelmingly, grounded in the preference of structure and bounded parameters, as the emergent pragmatic mode and/or realm in this contemporary context.  So the whole form, shape, aspect, and ultimately inference, of any given quality, comes to be pervaded by this pragmatic turn to structure.  Hence the essential, yet often delicate, intuitive percept of any given quality often fades into a form of distant obscurity as the more apparent familiar stylised perception of the quality emerges into stark reality. 

Among the most emphatic impediments to perceptual appreciation and acceptance is resistance to the intuitive recognition of complexity and detail, along with mediocre sensitivity in the face of these realities.  The patently evident reality of paradox, and sometimes ambiguity, so palpable in contemporary experience, often culminates in a surfeit of duality, which can further deteriorate into superfluous polarity and contradiction. 

However, there is no evident necessity for paradox and ambiguity to be perceived through such a dualised orientation. 

Alienation through contra-distinction and duality

Such an experiential dilemma is evident in Anthea Paul’s recent affirmation of her notion of ‘girlosophy’ through her work Girlosophy – Soul Survival Kit (2000).  

In what she admits is an ‘increasingly pressured and competitive world’ (xii), Paul is inclined to exacerbate rather than moderate or deconstruct such a pervasive competitive ethos, or to openly analyse so-called ‘commonsense advice’, which is often grounded in pragmatic notions. 

Paul contends that ‘… the self-esteem of many … young women has been undermined, even at a time when they have, in theory, unprecedented freedom and opportunity …’ (xii)  But what is so-called ‘freedom’, really, in an existential sense?  Isn’t this really merely relative autonomy?  

Substantially, the autonomy and ‘opportunity’ women have attained has emanated from feminist reform and New Age independence, founded on presumed self-sufficiency.  However, such assumed advancement has often proceeded through the alienation of men in the interpersonal and 
socio-communal contexts, through the invocation of superficial duality and competition, culminating in a deep condition of polarity, contra-distinction, and thereby entrenched tension. 

Such deep anomaly is evident in Paul’s analysis from the outset.  
Paul maintains she is not focussed on ‘behavioural rules’ (xii).  
Conversely, she hopes for what she prescribes that:  ‘… These are things that [her] readers will do naturally’ in this respect through ‘greater awareness’ 
(xii-xiii)  So why does she insist on such ‘rules’, thereby bearing the personal responsibility of this insistence in her preference?!  ‘… The idea is to enable those who read [her] book to design their own codes of ethics and behaviour …’ (xiii)  But isn’t the adoption of any ‘code’ really just the adoption of ‘behavioural rules’ anyway?  So Paul is presumably either surreptitiously or subconsciously contradicting her own advice which, in itself, attests to the broad difficulty I’ve identified here.  

Paul eschews any approach which would ‘… operat[e] within some imposed rigid structure …’ (xiii)  And yet this, in effect, is precisely what she proposes, in some sense. 

All this may ‘… help women to take charge of their lives …’ (xiii), 
but most potentially at the expense of further alienating their interpersonal relations, particularly with men, through bounded contra-distinction and a competitive ethos.  

‘… Beauty is still the most narrowly subjective concept, the bandwidth for which needs urgent expansion, and while ‘girlosophy girls’ are each uniquely beautiful, they are more importantly beautiful in spirit …’ (xiii)  

But why is being ‘beautiful in spirit’ so ‘important’?  
Isn’t this, also, really only one form – albeit just as important – among myriad forms of beauty?  Won’t the preference or privilege of such beauty only serve to superficialise other forms of beauty which, in an equitable context, would basically be just as important? 

The more authentic position is that all women are ‘uniquely beautiful’, 
each in their respective forms and ways, whether or not they are respected, appreciated and accepted as such in this sense.  They are each as ‘important’ as each other, whatever their attributes and/or qualities of beauty.  

Meanwhile, ‘leaps of faith’ (xiii) aren’t really ventures into the realm of risk if they are contributions through destiny, and therefore not based on whim, chance, or fate.  If any purpose espoused is grounded in 
authentic assurance and integrity, well founded, then it is sure to transpire in some form or other.  However, the whole sense of the nature and character, or quality, of faith is in some sense abrogated by the insistence on ‘a solid platform’ (xiii) as a form of structural basis for faith. 

Vibrancy could well constitute the essence of the qualities chosen to characterise what is a girl from Anthea Paul’s perspective, as presented in her Girlosophy – Soul Survival Kit (5).  

Even the sequence  ‘Growing – Inspired – Radiant – Light’:  ‘… or, ‘girl’ (2-3), epitomises the basic quality of vibrance. 
     
While spirituality is more reminiscent of the ‘life’ qualities chosen (6) for the sequence  ‘Love – Infinite – Free-flowing – Energy:  ‘… or ‘life’ (6-7). 

Yet ‘life’ is the connection to ‘the physical world’, according to Paul’s chakra interpretation, while ‘girl’ is linked with ‘the Universe’ – even though ‘vibrancy’ is the essence of, and reminiscent of, ‘life’.  So there is a most 
profound paradox evident here at the very outset of Paul’s work. 

The qualities Paul cites as primary characteristics of being a girl (5) are indicative of spontaneity, intuition and colour for me.  While the emphatic motto of ‘… be prepared!  Expect the unexpected!’ (9) resounds as a fine noble and bold principle as the theme for any personal life journey.  

Chaos forms the existential ground through which we proceed through life, from my perspective.  The resonant principle through which to weave together the disparate threads of significance and meaning from this chaotic imbroglio is to ‘… be prepared’ (9); to be present in the moment of experience, and consequently ‘… expect the unexpected’ (9). 

The qualities Paul cites as the basic principles through which to realise 
‘the art of living’ accordingly provide primary insights in this respect:  ‘appreciation – preparation – consideration – cultivation – thankfulness (10).  As Paul explains:  ‘… Appreciate the smallest thing … Take care with the rituals of your life … Consider carefully the effects on other people of all your actions, words and thoughts … Cultivate an understanding of other cultures and viewpoints … Be thankful …’ (11)  And correspondingly:  ‘… Be gracious … Be courteous … Love and cherish your friends and family … Respect your planet and yourself …’ (12) 

Behaviour and ‘messages’ sent out to ‘the world’ (14) certainly reveal how concerned we are from the perspectives of others.  However, it is vital for each person to be able to reveal themselves as they are authentically for others, and live wholeheartedly in the continuity of their being in this sense.  

However, people only survive and thrive in the broad spirit of their authenticity, whether or not they perceive their lives to be ‘cluttered’ (15).  Complexity, even continuous change, is a form of clutter which cannot be avoided.  Correspondingly, to ground ‘commitment’ requires spiritual resilience and fortitude.  Belief and faith are therefore crucial in the evolution of purpose and meaning for commitment.  ‘Those who believe in nothing [in particular] will believe in anything’ – stated G K Chesterton (1874-1936), as paraphrased.  So ‘mental toughness’ (15), either in itself or in combination with other qualities, is not enough to sustain human endeavour. 

Hence, to construe ‘life’ as a ‘game’ (17) is a dangerous illusion – for life is authentic; it is real and actual, or an actual reality, not a virtual one.  

A game already purveys the context of virtual reality.  So ‘rules’ (17) are more pertinent when construed as principles, as it is through such principles the ‘laws’ or ‘codes’ (17) of life can be melded into prospective authentic initiatives and/or endeavours which emanate as distinctive contributions in life.  Such initiatives are specifically derived through our particular 
(inter)personal resources and propensities.  These can represent ‘outside’, ‘natural’ and/or ‘Universal’ laws (17), although only as Universal principles in this sense. 

Accordingly, it is so true that it is important for us each to have the means to express our authenticity throughout our lives.  However, being ‘polite’ (18) will not necessarily assist in this, as it detracts from integrity, honesty, sincerity, openness, and ultimately appreciation – all of which qualities are conducive to authenticity. 

Moreover, it is so true that an essential affirmation expressed in some form of written declaration, can admirably affirm qualities in a human relationship context:  ‘If someone’s promising you the world … If you believe it when you see it, then get it in writing!’ (18) 

‘Karma’ as ‘cause and effect’ (20) certainly applies in all human and other situations.  ‘Every new day is a chance to change your destiny’ (20), as Paul declares.  Yet, while everything has a certain ‘consequence(s)’ (20), we cannot truly exercise ‘free will’ (20) in this context – only our relative autonomy. 

Meanwhile, on ‘mind travel’:  through it you can ‘… enhance your creativity, experience other lives, educate yourself, make decisions, give perspective …’ (22)  However, situating ‘the mind’ as the driving agent in life can and may well occur in a form that detracts from a broader experience and 
realisation of perception, experience and spirituality, for instance. 

Thus even greater awareness may be required in life than simply being 
‘mind-full’ (25).  So, as Paul herself soon thereafter observes ‘… you may be capable of more than you think …’ (26) 

It is good that Paul promotes so affirmatively the reality and prospect that people can take ‘responsibility for their decision(s) to have and raise children – to decide and plan this, and not ‘just go on autopilot’ (29):  

‘Whatever you decide, children should ideally be planned for …’ (29)  However, it is misleadingly simplistic to infer that decisions can generally ‘… be changed simply by making another’ (30) … Primarily, this is because there is a real context to life, while all prospectively independent and autonomous decisions and initiatives are situated differently relative to the dynamics of this context. 

When it comes to the ‘steep and deep … path to self-determination’ (33), whatever ‘turns’, or directions, any person pursues in life, as long as there is evidence Providence with those concerned, then whatever turn they take may never need be designated as a ‘wrong turn’.  For Providence links with Destiny and, given anyone can perceive how their personal destiny is aligned with the greater pattern of collective destiny throughout life, then such an evolutionary trajectory can be said to link with the broader Universal Destiny.  Hence the presumption:  ‘Getting anything that’s worthwhile is always full of wrong turns, dead ends and sometimes dark despair.’ (33)  Yet such a ‘reality’ and experience will only appear if we choose to perceive it this way. 

The prescriptions Paul then presents to follow her journeying analogy are nevertheless worthy of deep consideration and sustained application:  
‘… never take advantage of another person’s time or good will … never forget where you came from … never give up (34) … The more questions you ask, the more you stimulate your mind and the more creativity you will reap from it in turn (36) …’ 

Yet, even if it can be said:  ‘… we are borrowing everything on the physical plane, even our bodies’ (39), nevertheless an essence which is distinctively who we really are surely remains, or there would be no purpose for our individuality and character. 

Correspondingly, ‘purpose’ is defined by Paul as ‘… to have an intention or be bound for a place or destination’ (40). 

So the notion of personal place within a broadly resonant context of universal destiny figures as a prominent continuous element and perspective for Paul in this respect. 

If ‘distractions’ come from ‘the Universe’ (42), then they must thence emanate from what can be considered as Providence, and/or providential, in this sense.  Therefore such so-called distractions would contribute to the evolution of destiny as this manifests from the (inter)personal and/or socio-communal perspectives.  Hence they would not be distractions as such, only progressive manifestations of destiny. 

It is more pertinent to explore, rather than to ‘experiment’ (46), in seeking to discern our ‘true calling’, as exploration is carried out in a context of greater purpose than experimentation.  

Then what we really ‘want to do’ can be more definitively fine-tuned with what we ‘are meant to do’, or our destiny.  

While, if destiny flows from a common source of Providence, then life is not a ‘game’ which requires a ‘game plan’, and there is no such entity as ‘luck’ (47), only destiny.  Moreover, ‘You can’t get lost on a straight road’ (44-45).  

True enough … But you can also become stifled into myopia on such a road.    

If a person is to apply this approach:  
‘… Develop your own expectations of yourself and measure yourself against yourself’ (48); while they:  ‘… Ignore other people’s agendas and stick to [their’s]’ (48), they may well eventually become ‘the one they created’ (48), yet paradoxically most likely through the outcome of forsaking respect, appreciation and acceptance of those around them, at least to some extent. 

Ultimately, life is not a game, which depends of ‘goals’ set in the context of such a game … Consequently, ‘just a belief in something’ (50) is enough in life … What really matters is what is that belief, along with the authenticity, continuity and consistency in significance, meaning, relevance and resonance of this belief.  

At least from the perspective of broad humility and destiny, we don’t actually ‘deserve’ (52) anything as such – nobody does … Because our destiny, as paradoxically both created as discovered by us, and yet predestined through Providence, is our journey and path through life anyway.        

However, that life is all about ‘… consistency, consistency, consistency …’ (52) is a truly marvellous insight from Paul, and resonant of my own earnest endeavour to elicit and praise with passion the virtues of consistency in the contemporary context over many years. 

But consistency is not just about repetition, as Paul infers.  
This is only effectively a mimetic response.  It is also about relentlessly endeavouring to discern and contribute distinctively to the inexorable kaleidoscopic pattern of life, existence and experience, and thence of humanity, as our evolutionary destiny.  Meanwhile, ‘… reflection will reveal [our] purpose’ and ‘calling’ (53) – another radiant insight! 

Further to the prospect:  
‘… You can change anything with a new attitude and a new mindset …’ (54); I would affirm attitude change can be so phenomenally reformative for a person in their life and experience, yet the ‘change’ in ‘anything’ they may perceive, discern, and thence realise, is really a change in them, which they may then purvey through to everyday life, experience and reality.  

Meanwhile , why ‘control versus success’ (56)?  

Why is such a perceived duality necessarily evident and/or applicable?  Such a duality only exists if it is configured in such a way, and in these terms.  There is no explanation provided by Paul of how she envisages these dynamics work out for her – only the prescription of how she considers everyone should be – which is actually assumed or attempted (projected) ‘control’! … After all, there is some aspect of control involved in every aspect of success. 

‘Creativity is … a work in progress’ (58-59)  So True!  

However, how do all the eclectic spontaneous elements Paul nominates here weave into the whole pattern and fabric of our lives, and thence of humanity … and thence to this continuous phenomenon of ‘consistency’ about which Paul was just previously so insistent?  We don’t have any specific sense of this advanced by Paul. 

Moreover, to assert and/or pretend ‘the mind’ can ‘soar above reality’ through ‘imagination’ (60) is essentially quite a perilous notion.  Reality is reality, ultimately … for a person to pretend they can dispense with, or extricate themselves from, the fundamental ground(ing) of reality is a broadly fanciful aspiration.  Ultimately, ‘staying grounded’ (62-63) is vital, and Paul palpably contradicts herself here. 

The bold invocation to individuality and authenticity Paul advocates with the resounding challenge ‘Follow Your Own Path’ (61) is most heartening, but the adversarial embrace of polarity enunciated through:  ‘Running against the pack will give you the leading edge’ (61) could only be considered as somewhat contradictory spurious advice.  What becomes crucial here are intent and motives.  It is important for people to be clear on why they want to do what they do, and to benefit humanity through their diverse endeavours. 

Consequently, it certainly does not follow that ‘… if you want something badly enough, all the Universal laws will conspire to give it to you.  It’s a matter of when, not if …’ (64)  This all depends on whether the person concerned is actually in tune with what emanates from the Universe – which may not necessarily emerge through a ‘legal’ context – along with the Providence through which this is expressed, and the personal and collective destiny which accompanies those circumstances and situations which emerge through this context.   Throughout all this, we will need to ‘deliver’, just as the Universe does this.  We have the responsibility to be open to intuitive and innovative perception. 

‘Success’ (66) is a difficult ideal to appreciate – and it is only an ideal – because any success only eventually culminates in further prospects.  

This is because the most profound form of success – fulfilment – cannot be completely achieved or realised.  

However, there is unlikely to be any more formidable authority on ‘success’ than Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who is one among my most intuitively favourite sages. 

Natural spontaneous laughter, ‘respect’ from those worthy to be respectful, ‘affection’, ‘appreciation’ – specifically from ‘honest critics’, and what I would consider to be the equivalent of equanimity in the face of ‘betrayal’ – ‘… To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better …’ and, in my case, hopefully through some form of ‘redeemed social condition … To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived …’ (66) 

Any extent to which I may be considered to have achieved success through the foregoing criteria would clearly be variable.  

However, these are facets of experience through which I have certainly aspired to fulfilment, and have hopefully proceeded some way towards this. 

Hence, more than criteria of success, as such, the aspirations Emerson nominates here are so resonant of what constitutes fulfilment in life and experience for me – or what is worthy of achievement.  Therefore, I feel I can acutely empathise with Emerson’s nomination of these criteria. 

However, ‘society’ cannot ‘want’ (67) anything for us – only people, 
not institutions as such, can ‘want’ anything specifically.  So it is important for ‘us’ to ‘want’ whatever it is we want for ‘society’, not the other way around … and for us to share and express, yet not impose, our aspirations for society.  Consequently, to define success as the ‘personal power … to do what you want on your terms …’ (67) is inherently a spurious aspiration.  

The ideal and consistency of ‘free-flowing love’ (71) is most pertinent to abundant human relations and potential mutual interaction.  

Yet ‘fondness’ and ‘devotion’, when emboldened through ‘desire or passion’ (70) subsists in a realm which is so much greater than any of these elements as realised together and in association.  ‘Ecstasy’ (70) may then be the ideal which emanates from this.  However, the sheer human reality which emerges may be more thoroughly described as a kind of ardency of feeling, emotion and energy. 

Sure, ‘trust’ (72) is the enduring continuous element or phenomenon through which this realisation of love prevails.  Moreover, in these circumstances, the notion of ‘falling in love’ (73) becomes superfluous and fanciful, as the reality of Love is always present as a phenomenon. 

Love just as … ‘falling in love’ is a derived notion contrived to explain a phenomenon which exists prior to any ‘falling’ experience.  

However, because ‘trust’ and ‘commitment’ (76) are the consistent elements through which love endures, it will be inevitable that some striving to retain this state will be required … Hence, it will be sometimes vital to ‘try hard’ to persevere in Love, converse to Paul’s advice on this. 

Consequently, ‘commitment’ (76) will already be evident in the phenomenon of Love, as Paul essentially discerns.  So the ‘action’ (76) insisted on by Paul as verification of Love also will be superfluous.  The ‘emotional intent’ (76) will be already evident.  However, suitable discernment may be required to elicit and realise this quality in another person. 

Actually, in reality we are continually exploring ourselves and our life context, and thereby finding out more about ourselves – this is our life journey, so we won’t ever truly reach an absolute destination in this, as Paul implies.  

Hence, where Paul asserts:  
‘The time will come when you are ready and the Universe will present someone …’ (75), in reality we each will contribute to this process distinctively, and our ‘ego’ will have some form of appropriate place in this, as it cannot be ever completely ‘surrendered’ in this sense.  

Love must be ‘nurtured’ and nourished to endure – this is true … 
And it is so that ‘… the rarest flower blossoms in adversity’ (75); although, in some sense, adversity is always evident as a perpetual human phenomenon … ‘Real intimacy’ (75) does require ‘honest … communication’ (75) in a spirit of openness, although it is the prerogative of each person to reveal themselves, each in their distinctive way and time, and extent. 

Whether, ‘Self-love – [is] the most important kind’ (77) is open to interpretation … However, the perpetually pertinent question raised emphatically in our contemporary cultural context through the classic popular Bee Gees’ song is indeed:  ‘How deep is your love?’ (79), where mutual interpersonal human relations are concerned. 

‘You know you are with the right person when they give as much as you’ (81) is a questionable proposition, as this tends to purport to enshrine a person’s own notion of ‘giving’ as the optimal standard.  It is probably better for us to each have a few good ‘close friends who are constant in our lives’ (82), rather than just ‘one or two’, as it is optimal to have a diversity of strength and advice from which to discern what is actual reality. 

However, it is important to be open about our expectations in all this.  Through a friend of such nature and substance:  ‘… Changes are welcomed and applauded when appropriate, sympathy is automatic and sincere, crises are attended to without judgment, and the willingness to help is in proportion to the ability to do so …’ (83) would be more pertinently considered as 
ideal qualities of a friend, than how a person can actually and feasibly be as an authentic human phenomenon.  Our expectations would need to be consistent with what we can feasibly expect of any friend to whom we may ascribe these considerable qualities.  Indeed, we could truly declare such ‘friendships are sacred’ (83).  Although all true friendships are sacred in some sense. 

It is important to realise that ‘sexuality’ is not the same as ‘sensuality’ (84-85), as Paul seems to infer here.  Sexuality is the expression of what emanates from a much deeper essence through which the senses are aroused and enlivened, which is beyond consciousness, and yet is the epitome and source of this energy – our sensuality.  Once shared, it is not only ‘up to you’ (84) as to what proceeds from this most precious quality. 

‘Men are not the enemy’ (86) – So True! … 
And yet the recognition and realisation of this seems impervious to our contemporary seemingly instinctively polarised culture.  This is just one of the many entrenched dualities which currently afflict our humanity.  Nevertheless, it remains vital for the perceptible differences in qualities among women and men to be realised, appreciated and valued. 

Paul outlines four options for ‘living together or marriage …’ (88-89)  
They are just this – options.  Any number of alternative or combinational options may be envisaged, and the ‘flowery bits’ (89) are all just as vital in this.  Neither Paul, nor anyone else, has a monopoly of knowledge on what are feasible options, even though her advice is good.  

Expectations, intentions and wants are crucial, as Paul recognises through what is the most pertinent statement of advice in this respect, from my perspective. 

‘Ask yourself and your partner what you expect from the new arrangement and whether it fits in with what you ultimately want in your lives.  
Think about the big picture …’ (88) 

Dealing with ‘heartbreak’ (93) incorporates the collaboration of what is brought forward through universal destiny in association with the continuous elucidation of personal destiny, which is inherent in the broad orientation of these respective streams of endeavour:  ‘… REALISE that whatever is happening … is part of the grand plan the Universe has divined for your highest good.  DECIDE that you will go through the grief, anger, disbelief and sadness, but ultimately you will recover, to be wiser … having grown …’ (93) 

Unfortunately, Paul’s ’12-step plan’ on ‘getting over a break-up’ (94) doesn’t accord enough respect to the perpetuity of memory, sentiment, experience, sensitivity, and other such elements or qualities in the context of destiny, life and reality.  Paul begins with an excellent practical admonition to leave precious mementoes and items with a trusted ‘friend or family member’ (94).  Even better would be to store these in a special place off-site from one’s residence – a bank safe or storage space, for instance.  Yet, many of Paul’s other points are symptomatic of the broad denial of significance of reflective and reflexive elements vital to our progressive continuity through our realised destiny. 

Consequently, ‘Get rid of anything you bought [or presumably acquired] with [and presumably ‘through’] your ex [which is a pejorative term]’ (94), for instance, would be to perpetuate denial … So would be to ‘Sell whatever you can and replace it …’ (94)  In some sense, it is impossible not to be influenced by what’s happened in the past – this is in part who we are.  

Accordingly, to ‘dish the dirt’ will only perpetuate denial, which is not conducive to the nurture of ‘self-esteem’, as Paul suggests (94).  Correspondingly, to ‘… Generate some new memories and you’ll stop taking trips into the past’, is not a feasible expectation.  While people will be stifled, and their spirit will die, if they dwell on the past, they must surely visit, and ultimately assimilate the past into the present by analysing and learning from their antecedents, which is the essential legacy of history and anthropology, for instance.  Accordingly, it is true that  ‘… Change is the only constant in this.’ (96)  ‘When one person changes in a relationship, the relationship itself changes,’ (96) as Paul asserts. 

‘Never forget that you are a queen …’ (97) is nevertheless vital generative advice for the feminine spirit and energy, in my view.  ‘Carefully inspect those who come to court your affections …’ (97); while the confluence of a king-like spirit and a queen-like energy and spirit can ‘… change the world’, as the legendary rock-blues performer, Eric Clapton, realises through his song 
If I Could Change The World. 

Beauty through the perception of eternal essence

If it can be asserted, with Paul, that ‘beauty’ means that ‘aesthetic qualities are filtered into emotions, creating recognition of the eternal in all that is physical …’ (101), then the essence of beauty, as with all other qualities, along with our perception of it, must reside in ‘the eternal’.  So that the essence of what we perceive as the quality of beauty derives from 
‘the eternal’.  Hence beauty as ‘… that characteristic in a material object or an abstraction which gratifies the intellect or the moral feeling …’ (100) must therefore also derive from this essence, and accordingly our perception of it.  This is the quintessence of why Paul can assert validly that beauty is  
‘being – ageless – uniquely – totally – yourself’ (100-101).  

Clearly, it can be truly posited with Paul that ‘… Real beauty is … a life force, an energy, which radiates from within and transcends the physical.  It’s a vibe – you feel it in those who truly know they have it … Real beauty is beauty in action …’ (104)  

Nevertheless, what is deemed to be physical reality through sense and/or perception is also therefore incorporated into what could be called the whole body of beauty.  Such beauty perpetuates in the form of images through elements and/or qualities such as discernment, sentiment, memory, imagination and perception.  Because the perception of such qualities is realised as having always been there with us as a phenomenon, then such beauty originates in a form which is perpetual to our perception.  

Therefore, Paul can validly assert ‘Real beauty may not always be visible at first glance, but it lasts forever’ (104) in that ultimate perception transcends the finite realm of awareness. 

Such perception of beauty incorporates what is ‘natural’ (109).  

Yet, it can also incorporate at least the image of what could be deemed any more physical form of beauty.  So that elements of beauty discerned 
in common among people, and therefore even what may be in ‘fashion’ (109) may be incorporated in such perception and reality as a generic form of image.  But this would only retain any form of predominance in as much as any individual or group of persons asserts such a form, which extends beyond its original form.  Therefore, any form of beauty will still retain its ‘natural’ essence and aspect, however this form is regarded or considered by people, individually and/or collectively, through their qualities of perception and/or discernment. 

This is why Paul can also validly assert that ‘… inner beauty is no illusion – 
it is reflected in your eyes and it never fades …’ (112), as any image which emanates from any form of essential beauty perpetuates throughout time, and its origins cannot be absolutely discerned through any perception which is only confined to the realm of humanity, and therefore depend only on finite awareness to substantiate its discernment.  Paul also validly, but probably mostly inadvertently, discerns the essential dilemma of any basically ‘games’ based, or competitive, approach and/or attitude when she reveals this perspective:  ‘… It’s as if we’re all competing in the X-Treme Beauty Games.  The pity is, there is no winner – except, of course, the cosmetic companies …’ (112) 

‘Joy’ (115) is among such qualities which epitomise the essence of what can be considered as beauty, or beautiful, in image in this sense.  It is through such qualities of perception the essence of this image can become apparent to awareness through the essence of perception.  This can be brought forward and formed in awareness through the perpetuity of Providence and the providential, for instance, through good fortune, or what we consider to be fortunate for us.  Without this serendipitously generative element, the revelation of beauty, or any other such beneficent element, will not retain significance, meaning, relevance and/or resonance, and these qualities would not reverberate for us through the perpetuation of what endures as an image of beauty. 

There is an implicit sense of authenticity in Paul’s observation:  
‘... Understand that you are connected to all that you admire in the physical world and that it is merely a manifestation and reflection of all that is beautiful within you …’ (115)  Hence the ultimate perception of any image of beauty is grounded in a greater form of perception which exists perpetually, and which can be considered essential, or the essence of beauty. 

This prescription exudes something of the essence of what I have originated and advanced as the quality and character of authentic equanimity:  
‘Don’t follow anyone or anything slavishly.  Set you own trends.  
Develop your own style.  What do you like?  What suits you?  Don’t just follow fashion:  take the elements that work for you.  Be true to what suits you and uniquely represents who you are in the world …’ (116) 

Inevitably, it is so that trenchant criticism of oneself can damage self-image and the sense of self.  As Paul expresses this:  ‘… Apart from the fact that you are showing yourself disrespect, thoughts and words are very powerful and can manifest the very things you are focussing on …’ (121)  
Or, as Christina Aguilera puts this in her famous popular song – 
‘Words can bring us down’.  

Yet such an outcome isn’t necessary, even given a reasonably firm and assertive orientation of oneself – or the self – in the everyday realm of experience and reality.  It remains possible for us to be assertive enough to affirm that reality of ourselves as we are aware of this, and 
perceive ourselves to be, incorporating each of our forms of potential as respective persons.  

Hence, to ‘… Will yourself to overlook a pimple or wrinkle and tell yourself you are a beautiful person …’ (121) may not be the most sagacious advice, because that ‘pimple or wrinkle’ is, after all, part of who ‘you’ are and have become.  It is incorporated in our character and nature through fortune and/or Providence, no matter how we regard it.  It may be we authentically do not consider ourselves to be ‘beautiful’ per se, yet we can all probably find facets and aspects of ourselves which either can or could be deemed or considered beautiful. 

Being ‘tight’-ly prescriptive about how a person must live their life (‘lifestyle’) – which is the equivalent of ‘discipline’ – may seem commendable (126-127).  However, the reality is that relative autonomy is vital in any context where democratic values prevail, and such tightly prescriptive lifestyle strategies are ultimately anathema to such autonomy.  We would do well to remember the Nazis applied similar values and standards in the operation of their concentration camps.  Donald Horne records the words of a sign he noticed in the administration block at the Dachau camp:  ‘There is one road to freedom.  It’s milestones are obedience, diligence, honesty, order, cleanliness, temperance, truth, sacrifice, and love of country’ 
(The Public Culture, Pluto Press, 1986: 76). 

‘Grace’ is ‘your natural state’ (128) evokes much more grounded, spontaneous and serendipitous values and qualities, without the interpersonal obligation of presumptive intervention.  However, ‘blend’, rather that ‘bend’, is preferable as a life strategy.  
 
Yet, injustices and inequities exist … 
We must all surely realise and remain aware of this, and contribute to the amelioration of these.  ‘… Rising above life’s injustices and still holding our head up …’ (130) may seem ‘beautiful’ from a basically limited 
myopic perspective.  However, extricating ourselves from the chaos around us, in a state of denial, is certainly no noble path through life.  How can we deal with injustices if we remain inured from the issues through which these injustices are purveyed? 

The quest and initiative ‘to reconcile’ (132), and from this situation 
‘to regenerate’ (132), is vital to the consistent continuity and perpetuity of life, culminating in purity and wholeness, as Paul wisely advises.  

How restorative interaction then proceeds to the ‘balancing’ of 
‘the emotions, relationships and creativity’ (133) is open to discernment and interpretation.  However, just as life is no game, so we can justly posit, along with Paul, that also ‘love is no game’ (133).  This principle is crucial. 

Moreover, ‘emotional baggage’ (135) can be inordinately limiting and/or confining.  This is true.  However, it is important for emotions to be expressed, recognised and validated, while there will always be a place for genuine authentic sentiment and reflection, through which all elements which are precious and treasured through perception and memory remain perpetually resonant for us and others. 

Our ‘heritage’ (136), or how we’ve become who we are, and our legacy, 
or who we are that we establish in perpetuity for others, are each vital elements for our lives and their antecedents, our evolution, and our teleology, as Paul recognises.  Our heritage is ‘unique’ (136).  

However, any ‘difficult upbringing’ and/or form of ‘disadvantaged background’ (136) must be realised and addressed in a spirit of responsibility and maturity if authentic restoration and regeneration in the form of justice is to prevail. 

Again, we would do well not to be too prescriptive about what we impose on ourselves as regimen or schedule (138).  For instance, to ‘slow the ageing process’ (138), even ‘naturally’, may not be a viable prospect.  

Providence ensures there are various ages and stages of life for us to experience.  Hence to try to avoid moving through the fullness of our experiential journey through each of these in this realm may somehow inhibit our further journey beyond this life. 

‘Forgiveness’ (140), and reconciliation in this sense, are vital to ‘healing’ (140) and regeneration, as Paul validly observes.  Our purpose and place may not necessarily be to be ‘flying high through life’ (140), however.  

There is also a place for us to experience life optimally in the fullness of our awareness, perception and discernment.  This may require broad and close analysis of the fine-grained detail of life, for which we will need to remain 
well-grounded, meticulous and patient, even perhaps stoical, in our quest. 

As Paul perspicaciously points out, ‘depression is an illness’ (142) in that, 
like any chronic extreme form of the human condition, it is a pathology to be regarded and responded to with circumspect sensitivity, compassion, and discernment, always.  

While ‘tears’ certainly potentially provide a ‘cleansing’ function for the soul (145), it is important for us not to drown in tears to the extent that these ‘wash away’ what is vitally precious and treasured for us, which will be grounded through our memory in some sense.  If all is washed away, then the person concerned is left with no real substance and/or basis for the consistent continuity and perpetuity of their lives.  After all, it is through Providence they have acquired the experience through which to proceed throughout their lives. 

‘Equilibrium’ (146) is the optimal position and/or state of being espoused by Paul, so it would seem her preference would be for a situation of balance.  Being ‘true to your instincts’ (146) can certainly be helpful, although it is as much important to be true to your intuition and imagination.  

Nevertheless, the inherent emphasis on integrity and authenticity here is commendable indeed.  ‘Open and honest communication’ is certainly the way to proceed, although openness must manifest at the time the person themselves deems appropriate.

‘Examine your own state of awareness’ (146) is most pertinent advice.  

While certainly:  ‘Simply honouring a commitment to yourself can help your self-esteem’ (146).  ‘You can only grow through experience and by regularly reviewing your progress’ (146) is the epitome of wise perspicacious counsel.  While ‘… Build better relationships, even if it means reframing your expectations’ (146) is a substantial providential insight for life and experience – ‘expectations’ require ‘reframing’ as a matter of course throughout life.  ‘Respect that others have a right to feel however they feel’, is accordingly crucial, although we will always feel this if we can truly appreciate and accept each person we come to meet in life. 

‘Laugh long’ (149) is good advice, although it is important for us to discern when it is appropriate to laugh and remain circumspect about the inadequacies and mercurial aspect of humour.  ‘Service’ (150) is always a noble, restorative, and ultimately mutually providential endeavour. 

‘Emotional neutrality’ (151) may not be a sustainable nor advisable state of being, nor will it necessarily prove to have a restorative place in this sense.  
G K Chesterton’s prescription is most pertinent here:  ‘If a man says God is dead, he won’t believe in nothing … He’ll believe in anything’ – or the first new belief/idea he thence encounters, for instance.  

Likewise, ‘… Sometimes being vulnerable or open can make you strong’ (151) – but only sometimes! 

‘Being vulnerable or open’ (151), yet also coming from a position of strength can also be fraught with danger!  The person concerned really needs to be well aware of their position and situation in this. 

‘Indifference’ (152) essentially means absence in denial of feeling, which is an artificial contrived virtual response to reality.  It is therefore not an attitude which derives from openness, integrity, authenticity, appreciation and/or sensitivity … Certainly, it is not an attitude which can be feasibly associated with ‘dignity’ … Even Paul admits, ‘It is often said that the opposite to love is not hate – it’s indifference’. (152)  

But why should it be that love or any other quality has any form of ‘opposite’ at all?  Especially given, as ostensibly in the case of love from Paul’s perspective, establishing a definitive opposite to love is fraught with such difficulty?  Why not let qualities and attributes basically remain in essence what they actually are, or how they are essentially constituted?  

If indifference is a ‘powerful tool’ (152) in the context Paul describes it, 
then it is also a diabolical tool. 

While ‘Music can be a heavy nostalgia vehicle’ (154), it can just as feasibly be a ‘vehicle’, or complement to, poignant reflection, which is a reframed substantive comprehensive and consistent way to consider music in the context of personal reflection, from which substantial 
(inter)personal socio-communal and cultural benefit can be derived, as proved through The Community Project resources, developed through the distinctive contributions of its participants. 

Consistently and continuously yearning to be ‘in a great mood’ (154) is not an authentic, genuine, or ultimately honest attitude or position in life … It is the essence of denial.  Correspondingly, the ‘past’ (157) is never ‘behind you’ (157) … Rather it is always with you, and actually always part of you, in that the past, present and future comprise a single broad sweep of time in the comprehensive context of life, experience and reality. 

The ‘dynamic’ quality of ‘energy’ (160) is certainly vital in the context of an holistic life emphasis and focus.  While the ‘integration of being’ could certainly become manifest when ‘personality aligns with spiritual and earthly planes’ (161) … Although ‘dimensions’ could be a preferable form through which to characterise ‘planes’.

‘Pure energy – it’s all you need’ (162-163), declares Paul, in a revised and reframed form of the Beatles maxim – ‘All You Need Is Love’.  

Certainly, ‘Love is all you need,’ from my perspective … 
And I truly believe and consider, in essence, John Lennon and 
Paul McCartney were closer through their deeper intuition and insight to the essential providential truth inherent here. 

The more profoundly analytical insight Paul presents when she admonishes to ‘Read between the lines …;  View up close and from afar.  
Question Everything.  Be Persistent.  Think.’ (166-167), is positioned as much more substantial, thorough, comprehensive and definitive advice than many of her previous prescriptions.  

Being ‘decisive’ (170) is also vital advice.  

The whole truly beneficent perspective of  ‘… Make a decision and put energy, belief and pure intention behind it …’ (170) is a great exhortation.  However, it is crucial for such a life strategy to be founded on, and grounded in, Love.  Also, we can’t ‘choose to deserve’ (170) anything, as there is no unqualified evidence, if any at all, that we deserve anything in life. 

When a person decides to so-call ‘edit’ their ‘life’ (173), they need to be very clear and sure about how they are revising and reframing their lives in the whole context of experience and reality, especially when they presume they need to ‘get rid of’ anything, otherwise it is likely they will suffer deep regret eventually. 

Paul asserts the primacy of ‘equilibrium’ (175).  

Where diabolical developments are concerned, Paul adroitly senses something of what could be going on:  ‘… You probably had a gut feeling about it anyway, because the energy of the place or situation was beginning to expire …’ (175)  However, when she proposes:  ‘… It’s time to take charge of your life and be thrilled that you now have the personal power to change anything that you want …’ (175) what must be realised here is that destiny is not just a personal phenomenon.  It derives as much through the 
providential source and/or essence of existence and reality, of God and the Universe, as it does from ourselves.  Hence it is vital to respect and appreciate this situation. … We can’t always do just – or precisely – what we want.  

Basically, Paul seems to be often in a position where she could be more circumspect in dealing with the contingencies and sensitivities implicit in her position.  For instance, dealing with personal ‘pressure’ and ‘pain’ (176) is not the same as dealing with ‘conflict’ (176) and/or competition, which effectively invalidates the extension of this metaphor to the interpersonal realm.  What transpires in the personal realm in this respect is linked with our aspiration as we work this out and appropriate it ourselves. 

If we only seek to ‘defend [our] agenda[s]’ (176), this will only ultimately exacerbate conflict, which can only be addressed in an interpersonal and/or collective context, preferably in a collaborative way.  

Thence precisely because agendas ‘don’t always mesh’ (176), 
seeking to ‘keep [our] balance’ (177) in all this will prove ultimately untenable.  Rather, the optimally consistent and cohesive way forward is to proceed in a demeanour and attitude of authentic equanimity in an effort to blend and meld whatever options emerge, and grow to appreciate and accept these.  Incidentally, to ‘dig your own groove’ (179), if not meticulously, sensitively and appreciatively, can be to ‘dig your own’ grave! 

Moreover, ‘to name your fears …’ (180) is not necessarily to destroy them, from my perspective, but it is certainly to be aware of them, and thereby to know them to some extent.  Any attempt to destroy our fear could ultimately culminate in a pathology of conflict and/or denial of our fear.  In many ways, former US President, Franklin Roosevelt, originated a most sagacious maxim when he observed:  ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’  

This is quite a different perspective to what Paul advances here. 

It is notable that of each of the truly marvellous wondrous qualities Paul nominates as the epitome of what it is to ‘be real’ (192), she hasn’t alighted on intuition, as she is deeply aware of this quality, as she later documents (204).  Perhaps this was just an oversight on her part, which is fine.  
But it does reveal that, in her perspective and perception of what it is to ‘be real’, intuition is not a quality which looms substantially enough to be worthy of mention here, as is to be ‘instinctive’ (194).  Whereas, for me, intuition is a primary quality in this respect.  

Congratulations to Paul for identifying the prime phenomenon and 
principle of paradox (187) so often diminished in discourse around metaphysical matters of being, reality and experience in the everyday context.  However, paradox is not to be simply understood, as would be inherent from the glib statement of potentially superficial instances cited by Paul in this instance.  Unless there is some elaboration to distinguish the vital complexity and intricacy of paradox, which is not apparent here, then the whole purpose of citing it as crucial in the context of humanity can become a fraught, even potentially debilitating, endeavour. 

‘Awareness’ as ‘another – world – awakens – reality – expresses – nature – essence – spirit – soars’ (188-189) is a wondrous epitomisation, as it accords primacy of place to the vital element of ‘essence’ in the context of ‘nature’, life and spirituality.  The chakra encapsulation of ‘… recognition of the metaphysical aspect of ‘being’ and the connection of the individual to creation’ (189) also comprises such a pertinent expression of ‘awareness’, as is ‘… to be awake in a metaphysical way …’ (188), and to ‘… possess … a fine-tuned perception of detail …’ (188), along with ‘… the essential ingredient for a spiritual life …’ (188) 

A preferable principle for me is Savoir etre – to know, to be; 
rather than ‘Savoir faire – to know, to do’ (193), as it is so vital to just be, even learn to be, before learning how to do, or even to learn how to know.  However, some of the qualities Paul raises here are most insightful and resonant.  For instance, ‘… knowledge, poise and maturity’ (193) form something of the essence of the quality of authentic equanimity I have advanced in this context.  Meanwhile, ‘… grace and ability to harmonise’ (193) epitomise the essential interpersonal outgrowth of these qualities.  

We must also realise that what we consider to be ‘the right thing’ (193) will be so from our perspective.  Thus, however self-evident it may seem, it will required good grounding and substance in authenticity, as such, while the greater good will resonate far more authentically for many, myself included, than the expression ‘the greatest good’ (193). 

Moreover, ‘Is the essence of the thought pure?’ (195) is an excellent tenet of inquiry, although Paul again perpetuates unnecessary duality by proclaiming ‘… There can be no light without darkness …’ (195) 

Some most pertinent observations are raised by Paul through her perspective of contemporary life:  ‘… With so much information and thought from external sources coming into our conscious minds, there is more than ever a need to stem the influx and reduce stress (196) …’; and ‘… Modern living can be savage and you may feel a weird sense of being disconnected from your true self …’ (196)  Paul validly cites ‘meditation’ (196) as an authentic means through which to deal with and filter all these often personal extraneous influences.  And, indeed:  ‘… It’s not a competition, though’ (196).  

So, if competition, and the related resort to opposites and duality, emerges as a flawed principle, in this sense it would surely follow the essence of competition and duality is fundamentally defiled. 

Meanwhile, choice is optimal when it is filtered through deep authentic discernment, as Paul then infers (198). 

‘Desire begins in the mind’ (201) is a blighted notion, in some sense, 
as desire is as much feeling as thought.  Desire may even emanate from some form of dimension which is as much without us as within us as a field of reality.  ‘Wants and fears govern reactions.’ (201) … True … But also as evident as these is what is constituted through the essence of perception, in some sense.  Hence to maintain that ‘… It is the fear of not having that drives the state of wanting …’ (201) is not a truly sustainable position.  

The truth, consistent with desire as a form of essence, is that most often we probably fail to discern or feasibly verify what it is that we truly or really want … or else we substitute states such as compromise or denial as alternatives to such truth and/or knowledge. 

Rather, from the foregoing perspective I have advanced here, 
more pertinent is Paul’s admonition to ‘… step back to see if something is really what you want, or just what you say you want! …’ (204)  Here Paul falls into a basic inadequacy or fallacy in perception from my perspective, however, in that she confuses ‘instincts’ and ‘intuition’ (204) as presumptively the same quality inferentially.  

If instincts and intuition were the same these terms wouldn’t exist to distinguish them. 

Yet this advice from Paul clearly treats them as such:  
‘… Follow your INSTINCTS.  If you push away your intuition – which is there to help you – things tend to blow up in your face later! …’ (204) 

So, to link ‘basic instincts’ and ‘trust your intuition’ (204), as Paul does in titling this segment of her work, Paul is effectively originating an oversight in all this.  She omits any substantial derivation and interpretation of the respective differential aspects of significance, meaning and relevance of each of these distinctive respective characteristics.  Intuition is the spontaneous expression of perception as it emanates sporadically from its 
universal essence.  Whereas instinct is the basic manifestation of volition, which is ultimately grounded in ancestral anthropology and its antecedents. 

The Arthur Golding extract Paul presents here is most pertinent in all this.  Actually, we never truly ‘let go’ of anything in life, as once it happens there’s a sense in which it remains with us always, and may emerge personally through memory, or universally through teleology and ontology, at any time, in all manner of situations.  ‘Acting fluidly’ (206), thereby blending and melding facets of experience and reality in the universal context, will bring forward forms of opportunity’ for us.  However, what emerges from and for us in this will always remain our particular distinctive interpretation and perspective, not necessarily a universal one as such. 

Sure there are ‘patterns in everything’ (206), which are there for us to ‘recognise’ and to realise what is the actual pattern, what it signifies and implies, and what is its relevance.  Recognising the pattern is only the initial mode of awareness.  Only when what constitutes the pattern is perceived, interpreted, discerned and intuited can the broader fine-grained comprehensive perspective and its implications, be established. 

All this will not necessarily be discerned and elicited from ‘objectivity’ and ‘facts’ (206), as Golding infers will proceed.  Every perspective is personal, constrained, and ideologically framed in the spin which is distinctively generated around it.  Our humanity ensures these are elements which cannot ever be completely or comprehensively transcended.  

However, the key question, as always, as Golding discerns, is:  
‘What was your contribution?’ (206) … And I would express this as distinctive ‘contribution’. 

Meanwhile, we are all progressively learning ‘through’ our ‘experience’ … and it is inevitably so that … ‘a sign is only meaningful if you know how to interpret it’ (206).  Moreover, ‘the image’ or ourselves we ‘get back from others’ is inevitably ‘distorted’ (209).  So, indeed, it is important to:  
‘… Bear in mind that each image [or perspective] only tells part of the story, so it’s up to you to decide how much of another’s opinion …’ (209) is appropriate and/or pertinent, I maintain, rather than ‘truthful and accurate’, which is impossible to really know comprehensively from the perspective of flawed humanity. 

However, while it is true that ‘… reality is perception, and everyone sees reality differently’ (210), each from their distinctive perspective, which generates and sustains our distinctive perception, as realised through our perspectives.  This distinctive perception emanates from perception as an essence which proceeds and is beyond us, as evidenced through the providential nature and reality of this greater source of our personal perception.  

Accordingly, to ‘feel’ (210) is only a particular aspect of ‘perception’ and ‘reality’.  Intuition and discernment are just a couple of elements which transcend ‘feeling’, along with thought and the ‘mind’, even.  Perception is not merely personal, therefore we cannot ‘liberate’ perception in any sense, as the source of our personal perception is greater than us, personally and collectively.  Nevertheless, we do well to ‘… Let [our] soul do the seeing …’ (210) 

All this considered, Paul presents an insightful principle in proposing the importance of seeking to: ‘… Feel the answer to something …’ (213), although feeling is not always – even often – ‘silent’, as Paul infers (212-213).  However, it is as important to ‘listen’ (213), as to ‘feel’ something, as Paul soon acknowledges herself (215).  Actually, Paul seems to be somewhat confused on this … And, as I affirmed previously, it is important for her to realise the place of intuition as much as, perhaps more than, that of instincts.  Here, Paul exhorts us to ‘… Listen … to your instincts’ (214), but writes nothing of how vital is intuition in this context. 

‘The winds of change blow freely and constantly …’ (217)  

However, it is also true that ‘… The wind blows where it listeth …’ 
and only those with substantial intuition, discernment and insight can really appreciate the significance of this. 

For, whiile ‘the winds of change are blowin’ wild and free’, it also remains evident that ‘the storms are ragin’ … on the highway of regret’, as Bob Dylan notes in one of his most contemporary songs. 

Faith and values through Providence and destiny

– deep purpose and ‘treasured images’

Again, some vital positive principles are proposed here as criteria which constitute ‘growth’ (218-219):  ‘… cultivation of the essential being’ (218) is an excellent principle, as much as essence in itself is the progenitor of cultivation and growth as a natural process, along with ‘… to advance to maturity and understanding’ (218).  ‘The process of developing roots by which to gather nutrients to aid further intrinsic growth (218)’, is an assured affirmation of the grounding and substance of progressive organic growth, while ‘development, change in form and substance’ (218) are further important elements. 

‘If you want to be someone, be yourself’ (220) is most pertinent advice; 
as ‘the only person in the world worth being is yourself …’ (the text for a Wella promotional postcard I have)  And it is certainly true that ‘… other people’s expectations = pressure’ (222). 

However, ‘… Total self-reliance’ (224) is, of course, illusory.  

Total self-reliance is the antithesis of community, as well as interactive social and interpersonal relations.  It is sometimes important to fall back on self-reliance when interpersonal and communal relations are strained or difficult.  But the outcome of total self-reliance for each person, if it were possible, would be the erosion of socio-communal relations, which especially ensues when such a broadly unrealisable aspiration spreads to burn so virulently among the hearts and minds of young people. 

Correspondingly, it surely is so that ‘… DISCIPLINE is knowing deep down who you are and what your VALUES are’ (225).  While it can be said validly that ‘… Discipline is the behaviour that totally reflects those values’ (225).  However, it is inevitably determination and faith, rather than ‘will power’, which ‘… enables [those values] to have expression in every facet of life’ (225). 

Providence and destiny are the prime agents through which values are expressed, rather than will power.  Although each person will proceed on their quest to provide their distinctive contribution in this, which will always be derived from their particular character, individuality, personality and identity. 

If you only seek to ‘express yourself’ (228-229), you will not acquire and/or retain any substantial wherewithal to accept and appreciate the perspectives of others.  After all, such empathy is a key quality through which awareness and realisation prevail in our lives and experience. 

Hence it is important for us to appreciate the pure sentiment, initiative and integrity of anyone who would ‘… tell you how they like you’ (229).  Nevertheless, it is true ‘… There has never existed in history a person like you (229), even though not everyone of vital substance and consequence for you is likely to ‘bring out the best in you’, as much as it will be important for them to ‘… allow you to be yourself’ (229). 

Life is not always about choosing who we will be with.  

Sometimes, even often, through Providence and our destiny, we will have substantial time with people because there is some deeper purpose in this, or else basically because this is the pattern of our experience … And in this it is our responsibility and legacy to care for everyone we are with … 

So Paul’s platitude ‘… being with people who, in our hearts, we care little for …’ (231) is a miserly perspective to adopt.  Similarly, the injunction ‘… soon you’ll be guarding your privacy and space’ (131).  

Such mean-spirited sanctimonious behaviour is the key element through which the stranger and/or foreigner in ourselves is situated relative to others.  Given the prevalence of this, we would soon become 
‘strangers to ourselves’ [cf. Julia Kristeva]. 

Sometimes we will be ‘alone’; but not necessarily lonely.  

Paul fails to clarify the difference here, and probably lacks a certain awareness of this distinction.  This is evident in some sense through her observation:  ‘… In reality we are all alone, but at least we’re all in it together …’ (231)  So the paradox is we’re really not alone!  ‘… For loneliness is nothing …’ (231).  Well, it is real … But it’s not the same as being alone. 

‘What do you hang on the walls of your mind?’ (232-233) is a most pertinent form of enquiry.  However, given we have these ‘treasured images’ (234), and given they are recognised here as so precious, why would we need, or be inclined, to ‘be ruthless’ (234) in our approach and responsibility for the legacy of these images relative to the providence of these, along with their clearly continuous and resonant place in our lives, experience and destiny into perpetuity. 

Such a ‘ruthless’ spirit in this context is contradictory and dualistic.  

It is basically an affront to the spirit of paradox and authentic equanimity.  
The very reality we can revise our response to these images ‘… over time and see them anew …’ (234) means that being ‘ruthless’ or destructive with them is profligate and wilful.  Sure we can ‘edit’ and ‘revitalise’ (234) our images, but who are we, in such supreme arrogance, to determine any of these ‘no longer have any relevance’ (234) for us. 

Meanwhile, any permanent quest to ‘… constantly seek to find new imagery to stimulate [our] creativity …’ (234) is a potentially vacuous and superficial quest, through which our authenticity could be overwhelmed by the allure of fascination and entertainment, as most commonly occurs in these circumstances.  ‘Keeping a scrapbook’ or journal of our journey – as long as we don’t scrap it! – is an excellent means to affirm and validate our quest. 

However, most earnestly, it is crucial for us to accept and appreciate, 
rather than ‘release’ (235) the past.  For what is so often glibly refer to as 
‘the past’ is already our present and future, or at the very least, part of these in reality and relevance – as everything is all a complete comprehensive inclusive reality and experience, ultimately. 

‘Open the doors of perception’ (236) is a most pertinent and resonant maxim, for through it ‘perception’ can be situated as a source or essence or reality and experience in itself, located from without one’s being, which proceeds to the common essence within one’s being. 

Paul attempts to reframe what is the Franklin Roosevelt quote here by characterising or configuring this as ‘… you have nothing to fear but fear itself …’ (240) as a positive phenomenon, even though she designates ‘fear’ as something negative, even evil in the sense of being demonic, or taking the form of a ‘demon’ (240).  Despite this, Paul also characterises fear as a ‘friend’ and ‘motivator’, even an ‘ally’ (240).  

Through all these characteristics, Paul so palpably designates fear as something real and influential in this sense.  She then slips into a polarised contradictory definitional mode whereby fear is regarded by her as ‘just an illusion’ (240), substantiated through her palpable interaction with fear as ‘a mind game’ (240).  This strange alliance of opposites is not paradox, or paradoxical, as might be presumed.  Rather, the paradoxical is any phenomenon synergistically associated, not particularly as an opposite or perceived competitive confrontational phenomenon. 

What is going on here is a confused configuration of a phenomenon both virtual and authentic, yet not clearly represented as either of these by Paul, which is not an authoritative percept to invoke in any sense.  

Meanwhile, it is not feasible to assert: 
‘… Sometimes life gives you exactly what you are fearful of, to teach you …’ (240) in that we invoke and originate as much as we are ‘given’ through the providential, whatever we come to receive in life. 

As a response to ‘resistance’, ‘Think carefully:  What is happening exactly?’ (242) is a good source approach, although I would add ‘think’ and feel ‘carefully’;  ‘Change tack:  Maybe there’s resistance because it’s not the right path.  Try another one …’ (242)  Well, the resistance could have emanated from anywhere, and the optimal response may not be to ‘change tack’ because it may be the so-called ‘right path’, even though there is resistance (even precisely because there is resistance!); ‘Go back to being in flow … 
Let things take their natural course without you driving them so hard for a while …’ (242). 

Certainly, ‘being in the flow’ (242) is good – the optimal condition; 
but it is vital for each person to be well situated to provide each of their distinctive contributions in this context, however much ‘driving’ this may require; ‘… Hang in there until you’re in a rhythm again …’ (242) is wise advice. 

‘Don’t pretend.  Keep it real.  The truth will always be revealed’ (243), 
is a most pertinent prescription.  Authenticity and integrity are always the most emphatic of touchstones. 

‘Be discerning’ (245), is the most sagacious and relevant principle here … But to reduce discernment to a prescriptive economic perspective is to abhort the essence of its nature as a truly broad-ranging endeavour.  ‘Are they a real buyer or will they waste your time ‘just looking’?’ (245) really constitutes a travesty of genuine fine-grained consideration and appreciation. 

Again, yet another duality emerges as Paul considers ‘the practical girl and the spiritual girl’ (246) as inherently two respective dimensions.  

Whereas no incontrovertible evidence exists that these would have originated as respective distinctive dimensions.  Thus these may well have always been already ‘together forever’ (246) from inception.  

‘Spirit’ (248), or whatever is spiritual, is indeed ‘real meaning or intent’ (248) as a ‘pervading influence’ (248).  Accordingly, given the propensity ‘to animate’ (248) in a broad universal sense and perspective, such a quality or attribute would consequently be material in aspect and nature necessarily – and therefore not ‘immaterial’ (248). 

‘Passion’ as ‘the key ingredient for a beautiful life’ (252) certainly follows, 
and hence holds true to such a descriptive perspective. 

It is not mandatory, or even particularly advisable, to have a rebellious spirit in life (cf. 254).  While we will always ‘contribute to the world’ and ‘to [our] own spiritual growth’ by exploring, expounding and living out whatever we establish as our ‘destiny’, we don’t ‘have to design a higher purpose for’ our lives (254), because it’s already there as our destiny.  How we find this, explore it, interpret and establish it, is our responsibility, as it is to originate this distinctively and authentically.  Meanwhile, we do need ‘more than mere existence’ (254) to grow and develop authentically.  

While, indeed:  
‘… Believing in something and acting on that belief will nourish your soul.’ (254) 

‘Your spirit is your essence’ (256), just as everything has a spiritual essence in some form.  ‘The fields of truth are the heartland of your soul.’ (257)  
This is so true. 

‘Death’ is not truly ‘a chance for renewal’ (258) where the existence of destiny is evident, hence prevails, and is appreciated.  Rather, in this sense and context, death is renewal … Therefore, nor is death ‘an end’ in any sense; only a form of transition.  Just as what we call ‘death … and new beginnings are part of the evolution of your spirit’ (259), so it is that death can be integrated and accommodated into life, rather than necessarily being accepted as something we have ‘to let go’ of (259), as it wouldn’t be evident if it didn’t have a valid place and purpose.  

The process ‘… birth – life – growth – attachment – death – loss – grief – disengagement – rebirth …’ (259) can revert to a whole revitalised vista of dimension if ‘attachment’, and what follows as the consequence of this element, is reframed and situated as a positive and beneficial, rather than negative, element.  Moreover, it is also the reality that we not only ‘… each have a duty to carry on living our life the way the Universe, God or the Spirit intended’ (259).  Because we also are required to feed our distinctive intentions and purposes into this reality, and are responsible for this dimension of our lives. 

‘Show some emotion’ (260) is superlative advice.  

‘We are the living composite of the Universe.  
We are part flower, part shark and tiger, ape, tree, cloud, dog, part bird.  
We have it all within …’ (262)  This is an interesting perspective, and a valid one, I believe.  We would do well to remember this as a valid principle of how reality works out, or is configured, as a natural organic phenomenon. 

‘Unity’ may well equate with ‘spiritual strength’ (264-265).  

However, strength in itself is not the only evident characteristic, 
or natural aspect, of whatever is spiritual.  So unity is not necessarily the quintessential spiritual quality, par excellence.  It is also important to recognise that unity is something of a contrived quality, through which particular people, individually and/or collectively, can influence any situation for whatever purpose. 

Prayer is more than simply a ‘mechanism’ (268).  

Such a reductive notion of prayer is a throwback to the absolute mechanistic worldview.  Prayer is the channel or conduit of communication with the spiritual realm, and consequently the universal dimension.  It is not something created independently by us which can be invoked at any time.  

It does matter ‘who or what you pray to’ (268) – because it is important to be able to sustain authentic belief through prayer.  Consistency and 
‘purity of intention’ (268), as in every facet of life, are vital in this.  

However, nothing will be achieved through prayer as presumed or envisaged as a perceived independent agent. 

‘You affect everyone and everything’ (270) – this is so true.  

However, again Paul perpetuates implicit duality through her insistence on ‘two clear-cut choices in any situation’ (271).  There are myriad elements of choice available to anyone in any situation.  Any attempt to implicitly constrain such abundant diversity to only a bi-dimensional perspective serves to stifle available options. 

Alternatively, Paul essentially respects and accepts the rich diversity and complexity of paradox when she proposes that we proceed through life and experience as ‘cosmic dancers’ (273), ‘… keeping our own perspectives but always in the context and in awareness of others …’ (273)  

However, we are not ‘… duty bound to act universally’ (273).  

We will ‘act [and more vitally] perceive universally to the extent we are tuned in and open to whatever is the universal essence of each situation, perspective and aspect of reality and being.  Humanity is evident and emergent at any given time.  Moreover, we don’t really proceed with our lives out of duty unless we inanely put ourselves in such a situation.  

We proceed with our lives on the basis and pretext of whatever is our distinctive contribution.  Such an essence of originality is not derived through duty. 

The great paradox is that ‘you are – your body; you are – your mind; you are – the eternal spirit …’ (274), even though it may seem we are not these dimensions or facets of our being in life, as we are accustomed to accept in this contemporary realm of humanity.  Just as we do ‘… connect with the spirit – the universal power that created [us] …’ (275), so we realise that even now we are associated with reality beyond the material realm, in some sense … And so we come to an awareness, and some realisation, of ‘the meaning of [our] life’ (275). 

The pertinence of river imagery as metaphorical for the life journey is bountifully resonant as a fertile source of (inter)personal continuity.  

This is revealed through the wondrous Hitopadesa extract Paul quotes:  
‘The spirit within you [and hence without you] is a river.  Its sacred bathing place is contemplation; Its waters are truth; Its banks are holiness; 
It’s waves are love.  Go to that river for purification; your soul cannot be made pure by mere water.’ (276).  This tranquil precept flows in acute resonance with the spirit of a published poem I wrote in 1970, while at Teacher’s College in Armidale, NSW, as a life journey image which remains perpetually pertinent for me, as does the ‘road’ metaphor. 

‘Passing  Rivers

‘There reclines the sleeping river, 
Allowing the weight of its will
To plot its cryptic ride;
Submerged in omnipotent sea.

‘Insatiably it eats Knowledge
From building bordering backs, 
Consuming its dwindling prey
With muffled convulsions. 

‘Mountains of misty Experience
Haunt its weary valley;
Pillars asserting Permanence
Defying Existence with Time.

‘Human progress embodies
Rivers of swallowed Space, 
Lost by deprived perception
In mountains of gloom.’

Lindsay Mell, 1970 

‘Hope’ is ‘an expectant desire’ which can constitute ‘a confidence in a future event’ and/or ‘a ground for trust and confidence’ (280) for Paul, whereas for me it is faith which provides this ground.  While what Paul describes as ‘hope’ is actually faith for me.  In short, for Paul it’s all about hope; whereas for me, it’s all about faith. 

Paul asserts that ‘hope’ is:  ‘heaven – opens – personal – expression’ 
(280-281).  This is a valid progression which reflects what constitutes hope, from my perspective.  However, Paul adds an arrow after the ‘e’ of hope, and this arrow proceeds to faith for me, faith being the culmination of the personal expression of hope, as I discern this.  

Correspondingly, ‘… the individual experiences totality and a connection to the Universe beyond the confines of intellect merging with the pure consciousness …’ (281), through faith, as I perceive this.  

Thus, faith is the pre-eminent predominant quality and/or attribute here for me, whereas for Paul, this is more about hope.  The locus of culmination and continuity into perpetuity rests with the hope, whereas for me faith is the more robust substantial ground of being and experience in this sense.  

Faith is sure and grounded, whereas hope is at least potentially variable and vacillating in nature and quality. 

Paul does later acknowledge ‘faith’ (285) as also vital in this context, 
but her heart and the ground of her being are clearly focussed on hope.  

Why Paul seems to alight on this position is that she doesn’t seem to appreciate the place of Providence and the providential in substantiating the ground of being and continuity, in my view.  Rather, she allows ‘chance’ to be the pre-eminent promotive influence in this respect.  Paul puts it this way:  
‘… There is always a chance for something else to happen and you need to have faith that it will,’ (285) 

Accordingly, Paul concludes:  
‘… Hope is the final word.  Hope is the driving factor in helping us to stay on course in life.’ (285)  So, to put it bluntly, hope gazumps or trumps faith in life, for Paul.  Whereas, in these terms, it would be the other way around for me, which follows from the more comprehensive evidential perspective.  

So that where Paul applies the term ‘hope’ here, I maintain the greater truth would emerge if ‘faith ‘ were substituted for ‘hope’ here by Paul, and 
vice versa. (184). 

Meanwhile, ‘where [we’ve] been’ (184) will always remain incorporated into, and therefore vital to ‘where [we’re] going …’  Basically this does ‘matter’ – comprehensively! 

There are some perspectives through which Paul’s ‘Daily affirmation’ (286) can be considered:  ‘I love and trust myself in every way, and I accept myself without judging …’  But what if a person actually doesn’t ‘love and trust’ themselves, in reality?!  While, as discernment is such an embedded phenomenon and/or quality in all we do, ‘judgement’ will always emerge from this situation. 

‘I can manifest all of my dreams and desires …’ (286)  

Yet, in reality, we know we can’t have everything we want in life, 
and/or that life will work out just as we would want or like it.   

Expectations are always continuously tempered, adjusted, monitored and modified.  What we want today may not necessarily be the same as what we would want tomorrow.  Moreover, it may be that while ‘… beauty, power and harmony abound in my heart and in my mind …’ (286), it is important to realise these are ideals subject to the dimensional limits associated with any ideal … Yet they remain perpetually pertinent, among all other potential considerations. 

Indeed, ‘… the part in between, what happened there and what you did here …’ (290), or the transition times of our lives, do resonate as what ‘really counts’ (290) for us. 

Moreover, indeed, blessings are our providence and constitute the substance of what becomes manifest for us through Providence, and therefore the evidence of this phenomenon and quality.  What Providence provides is therefore clearly a form of  ‘gift’, as Pablita Velarde puts this (293), as it is something provided which we wouldn’t have otherwise. 

‘… Your future’ (274) is as much evident now as it is ‘ahead of you’.  

This is in part why the past, present and future is all a 
common phenomenon, and therefore a common moment in time, in some sense.  Even Paul admits:  ‘The future is now.’ (294)  Therefore, in this sense, we can never really ‘start again’ (294), as where we are is as relevant as where we’ve been and where we’re headed in this continuous journey of life. 

While it may be possible to ‘make headway … swimming against the tide’ (295), such a form of experience may also overwhelm us.  ‘Progress’ may be ‘relative’ (295) in a purely existential sense.  However, this is only a basically myopic form through which to consider progress.  Meanwhile, the ‘inner child’ (296) is a vital and fundamental element through which our perspectives form and become manifest. 

After what comes across as a predominantly ‘individual’ focus and theme of Paul’s analysis thus far, finally there is a belated initiative to consider a more direct experientially collective realm of existence.  ‘Each one of us has the potential to make a positive contribution to the world.  It is our responsibility to do what we can while we’re here …’ (298)  

However, to be this way is to broach our perception and perspectives beyond a preoccupation with ourselves, which would in some sense challenge the core values of Paul’s ‘girlosophy’.  Also, in ‘… helping in whatever capacity we can to improve the lives of others’ (298), it is vital for us to authentically accept and appreciate the respective distinctive contributions of others, rather than presuming our perspective(s) to be absolute in their distinctiveness, and immune from modification. 

It is at least a paradox, and potentially contradictory, to maintain:  
‘… we live in the Age of Aquarius, which symbolises community with the ultimate vision of shining individualism at its core …’ (299)  It is imperative to know precisely what Paul means by this, and how she would tease out the anomalies, and the respective diverse threads of meaning and significance, implied here.  These aren’t developed in the context of this work, which therefore renders Paul’s analysis misleading in this respect. 

‘Individualism’ (299), as it stands, is an ideology, which implies ideological positioning in a contemporary context.  While the substance of such positioning of ‘individualism’ throughout this Girlosophy work has emerged as fundamentally ideological.  ‘A positive mark of your greatness …’ (299) is a worthy observation, echoing the substance of my own earlier analysis in this respect.  However, for Paul to proceed to maintain:  ‘… Having reaped the benefit of our life experience …’ (299) it is beholden on her as her responsibility here to explain how she considers such a benefit is ‘reaped’, what is specifically this ‘benefit’, and how does its significance and meaning work out for our lives collectively, as well as individually.  These are all concerns which are explored continuously and meticulously through the auspices and resources of The Community Project, through which I am comprehensively involved, together with my colleagues and associates, as our ‘passion’ in life.

The reality that ‘feeling’ (300) exists means there is some sense at least in which it cannot be ‘an illusion’.  Whether it be a case of ‘form over function’, or whatever, the reality is that feelings such as fear and insecurity do exist as real phenomena.  Therefore these need to be accepted and appreciated as real if any authentic perspective of reality is to prevail.  Hence, to assert:  ‘… You have nothing to fear anymore.  There is no more pain.  There is no more need for insecurity.  There is only possibility …’ (300) constitutes a most aberrant denial of reality – this is acutely myopic, and quite an emphatic prescribed perspective.  Our respective life journeys are always lived in the context of prevalent influential situations, circumstances, and realities. 

As a poem I wrote while at Teacher’s College, in 1971 reveals, while we may seek to convince ourselves to ‘… don’t look back …’, as Paul puts this (304), the reality is that perception, memory and sentiment, which are always melding, blending and morphing into new modified forms, mean that we are perpetually in touch with our past, whether we like this or not.  May we truly accept and appreciate this phenomenon and reality comprehensively and substantially, to thence proceed with our lives and experience in an earnest spirit of authentic equanimity. 

‘Looking  Back

‘You ask me
Where I’ve been
And how I’ve lived
But I don’t look back.

‘The pools in your eyes
Deepen with the years,
Our perception 
Tarnishes in minutes. 

‘As my personality 
Disguises ash 
– Remnants of yesterday – 
My coffee is colder. 

‘You were right, 
Yet I want to run, 
But have been brought back
Into your arms, again.’ 

Lindsay Mell, 1971

Meanwhile, certainly it is vital for us to ‘stick together’ (307) through all this.  While it is clearly evident, as a pervading principle, that ‘… the limitations of the self are overcome by the merging of cosmic energies with pure consciousness …’ (309)  However, this is as much true for men as it is for women, and it would be blatant presumption to infer that only women have ‘… absolute and total connection with the Universe …’ (309) 

The way through which functional and structural parameters, concerns, 
values and issues, can be most palpably integrated into the broad context of life and experience is through the acceptance and appreciation of the phenomenon of paradox, from my perspective. 

Discernment and contra-distinction 

– from dynamic equilibrium to authentic equanimity

Duality and contradiction are states which remain basically impervious to broad consistent continuity in the context of existential being, as is evident from the foregoing analysis of Anthea Paul’s ‘girlosophy’.  

Any form of discernment which emerges from the juxtaposed imperatives of duality and contradiction really evokes a sense of contra-distinction, 
I propose.  Duality and contradiction emanate from a particular penchant to polarise and distinguish what is real through whatever may be proclaimed as a presumed opposite form, condition or situation in the experiential sense. 

Essentially, humanist analysis and approaches, as evident through the perspectives of George Santayana (1863-1952), tend to recognise and respect the predominance of balance as a prospective means through which to resolve the presumed duality and contradictions of everyday life and experience, such that the classic ideal of harmony might be realised more comprehensively. 

However, Santayana realises that harmony as a promotive ideal is mercurial in nature, and therefore better appreciated as fluid and fundamentally mutable.  Any form of interposed structural perspective in this context becomes anathema to the fluid mercurial nature of mutable balance. 

As reflected through the reverberating perspectives of analysts since Santayana, such as through the work of the contemporary popular intellectual, John Ralston Saul, Santayana seeks to resolve the duality, contra-distinction and polarised perspective of structure and fluidity through the notion of equilibrium, more lately expressed as ‘dynamic equilibrium’ to encompass the ever-flowing and forming mutability of this continuous phenomenon. 

Balance is essentially an ideal.  

Through the notion of dynamic equilibrium, this ideal can be infused into the realm of life and experience, thereby becoming resonant as a vital element of being and reality in the context of humanity.  Thus through the agency of perception such an ideal can become a vital facet of our existence. 

However, while the essential quality of fluidity is evident through the notion of dynamic equilibrium, it requires another form to be apparent in the interpersonal realms of behaviour and mutual interaction.  How we can be aware of this element of perception and being through our interpersonal endeavours is to consider the quality of authentic equanimity I have proposed and established in this respect. 

Equanimity is the (inter)personal quality which seems to epitomise most resonantly the essentially fluid state of dynamic equilibrium.  The way through which such fluidity can resonate through our lives, collectively and interpersonally, is through the quality of authentic equanimity, through which we can earnestly enable this quality to pervade our being and experience such that it is evident in all facets of our existence.  The essence of such authentic equanimity is realised through the further qualities of appreciation and acceptance.  It is realised continuously and consistently through the integrity of our being and perception, and is evident through the quality of our interpersonal relations into perpetuity. 

The broad initiative to proceed with our lives and behaviour through genuine intent and purpose, always given this essential demeanour of basic appreciation and acceptance, would epitomise these qualities as resonant in our everyday lives and experience. 

Perception – realisation and appreciation through spontaneous experience

George Santayana proposes that ‘the plastic arts, with poetry and music, 
are the most conspicuous monuments of [aesthetic] human interest’ in his work The Sense of Beauty (1896: 3 [1955 ed.]).  These arts ‘appeal only to contemplation, and yet have attracted an amount of effort, genius, and honour, little inferior to that given to industry, war, or religion … 
There must therefore be in our nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it.’ (3). 

Consequently ‘aesthetic theory’ is deplete because of ‘… lack of an adequate motive for speculating upon it …’ according to Santayana.  

Hence, studies of aesthetics have been either ‘direct’ or ‘thematic’ – 
‘the problems of nature and morals have attracted the reasoners, and the description and creation of beauty have absorbed the artists …’ (4).  

While ‘the phenomenon’ of ‘subjectivity’ which absorbs ‘aesthetic speculation’ remains problematic.  ‘Man has a prejudice against himself:  anything which is a product of his mind seems to him to be unreal or comparatively insignificant.  We are satisfied only when we fancy ourselves surrounded by objects and laws independent of our nature.’ (4) 

Yet, Santayana remonstrates ‘… the great world of perception derives all its value, if not also its existence’ from the ‘despised feelings of human … imagination and emotion … Things are interesting because we care about them, and important because we need them.  Had our perceptions no connection with our pleasures, we should soon close our eyes on this world’ (4). 

Our ‘aesthetic feelings’ can be ‘perceptions or discoveries, just as our intellectual activity is, in men’s opinion, a perception or discovery of external fact (4) … A judgment is not trivial … because it rests on human feelings; on the contrary, triviality consists in abstraction from human interests’ (5).  

‘Both ethics and aesthetics have suffered much from the prejudice against the subjective, ‘ from Santayana’s perspective.  ‘Ethics deals with conduct as much as with emotion, and therefore considers the causes of events and their consequences as well as our judgments of their value.’ (5) 

Accordingly, for Santayana, there are three key approaches for the study of ethics and aesthetics.  ‘The first is the exercise of the moral or aesthetic faculty itself, the pronouncing of judgment and giving of praise, blame, and precept.  This is not a matter of science but of character … 

‘The second method consists in the historical explanation of conduct or art as a part of anthropology, and seeks to discover the conditions of various types of character.’ (5) 

Meanwhile, the third method is ‘psychological’, whereas the previous two methods were ‘didactic and historical’ respectively. 

This method ‘… deals with moral and aesthetic judgments as phenomena of mind and products of mental evolution.  The problem here is to understand the origin and conditions of these feelings (5) … We shall therefore study human sensibility itself and our actual feelings about beauty … in certain moments of contemplation, when much emotional experience lies behind us, and we have reached very general ideas both of nature and of life, our delight in any particular object may consist in nothing but the thought that this object is a manifestation of universal principles …’ (7)      

Consequently, there is much to be derived from spontaneous lived experience.  ‘…Those institutions which we call Platonic are seldom scientific, they seldom explain the phenomena or hit upon the actual law of things, but they are often the highest expression of that activity which they fail to make comprehensible.  The adoring lover cannot understand the natural history of love, for he is all in all at the last and supreme stage of its development.’ (7) 

Santayana also considers the aspect of duality in this context:  
‘It is one of the attributes of God, one of the perfections which we contemplate in our idea of him, that there is no duality or opposition between his will and his vision, between the impulses of his nature and the events of his life … (8) 

‘To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it.  
To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be … (8-9) 

‘… Reflection is indeed a part of life … 
Its specific value consists in the satisfaction of curiosity, in the smoothing out and explanation of things … We do not often indulge in retrospect for the sake of a scientific knowledge of human life, but rather to revive the memories of what once was dear (9) … But if what we desire is to increase our knowledge rather than to cultivate our sensibility, we should do well to close all those delightful books [of the poets] …’ (10) 

While Santayan characterises ‘the philosophy of beauty’ as 
‘a theory of values’, he also finds that orientation and ‘place’ are as vital in establishing what is beauty when he proclaims that any ‘definition’ of beauty ‘… must be nothing less than the exposition of the origin, place, and elements of beauty as an object of human experience’ (11)  

Already here Santayana ‘objectifies’ beauty.  

Yet, ‘perception’ and appreciation then constitute how we realise beauty, for Santayana.  

‘Aesthetics … is the theory of perception or of susceptibility … 
We thus reach the sphere of critical or appreciative perception … aesthetics is concerned with the perception of values.  The meaning and conditions of value is, then, what we must first consider …’ (12) 

Consciousness is seminal in all this, for Santayana.  

In ‘the most perfect organisation’ there would be ‘… no thinking, no expectation, and no conscious achievement in the whole process (12-13) … In removing consciousness, we have removed the possibility of worth …
We might … have a world of idea without a world of will.  In this case, as completely as if consciousness were absent altogether, all value and excellence would be gone.  So that for the existence of good in any form it is not merely consciousness but emotional consciousness that is needed.  Observation will not do, appreciation is required.’ (13) 

‘… We may therefore at once assert this axiom, important for all moral philosophy … that there is no value apart from some appreciation of it, and no good apart from some preference of it before its absence or its opposite.  
In appreciation, in preference, lies the root and essence of all excellence …’ (13) 

Feeling is therefore crucially situated in this analysis.  

‘If we appealed more often to actual feeling, our judgments would be more diverse, but they would be more legitimate and instructive … 
Values spring form the immediate and inexplicable reaction of vital impulse, and from the irrational part or our nature.  The rational part is by its essence relative; it leads us from data to conclusions, from parts to wholes …’ (14) 

Ultimately, ‘facts’ are considered to have their own ‘value’, and therefore confuse ‘scientific value’, according to Santayana.  

‘We learn to value truth more and more as our love and knowledge of nature increase.  But fidelity is a merit only because it is in this way a factor in our pleasure … That facts have a value of their own, at once complicates and explains this question.  We are naturally pleased by every perception, and recognition and surprise are particularly acute sensations … 

‘Truth and realism are therefore aesthetically good, but they are not equally pleasing and effective … Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends … Even the scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute.  It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests (15) … intuition runs equally into truth and into error, and can settle nothing if not controlled by experience … To know the truth about the composition and history of things is good … because of the enlarged horizon it gives us … Aesthetic and moral judgments are accordingly to be classed together in contrast to judgments intellectual [which are ‘judgments of fact’] …’ (16) 

Considered from my perspective, Santayana then drifts into the fallacy of dualist analysis in asserting that ‘aesthetic judgments are mainly positive’ while ‘moral judgments are mainly and fundamentally negative’ (16).  

Thence, from this precarious position, he proceeds to deny ‘moral authority’, yet reveals a keen discernment of human attributes and potential.  

‘The forms that life will farther assume are not to be imposed by moral authority, but are determined by the genius of the race, the opportunities of the moment, and the tastes and resources of individual minds.’ (17) 

Santayana then jousts between the duality of ‘work’ as ‘useful’, and ‘play’ as ‘useless … frivolity’ (17-18).  But how would he deal with the other often touted duality of ‘work’ and ‘life’?!  Just as, for me, my life is my work, as I often express, so also play may actually be work, and work play, even in a continuous sense. 

Soon Santayana becomes lost in his accentuation of freedom and the prospective elimination of conflict he primarily cites.  

Predictably, safety and prosperity then emerge as his preferred or privileged emphasis.  ‘… we may measure the degree of happiness and civilisation which any race has attained by the proportion of its energy which is devoted to free and generous pursuits, to the adornment of life and the culture of the imagination (18-19) … For with the elimination of all the conflicts and errors of instinct, the race would do spontaneously whatever conduced to its welfare and we should live safely and prosperously without external stimulus or restraint.’ (19)  

As in Utopia?! … Somehow I think and feel I prefer the ideal of Camelot!  

However, Santayana retains a keen sense for the place and veracity of the nature of ‘essence’ in all this, along with its definitive relevance in the whole socio-cultural realm.  

‘Evidently all values must be ultimately intrinsic [and therefore ‘the sources of all worth’].  The useful is good because of the excellence of its consequences; but these must somewhere cease to be merely useful in their turn, or only excellent as means; somewhere we must reach the good that is good in itself and for its own sake, else the whole process is futile, and the utility of our first object illusory (19) … essences … like beauty, make us happy only in contemplation … Even the knowledge of truth, which the most sober of theologians made the essence of the scientific vision, is an aesthetic delight; for when truth has no further practical utility, it becomes a landscape.  
The delight of it is imaginative and the value of it aesthetic.’ (20) 

According to Santayana: ‘… morality is a means and not an end … 
It is the compression of human conduct within the narrow limits of the safe and possible.  Remove danger, remove pain, remove the occasion of pity, and the need of morality is gone …’ (20) 

Santayana resolutely warns of the myopia inherent in the glib acceptance of ‘representative principles’ when ‘principles acquire an immediate authority’ and ‘our attitude to these … becomes aesthetic … this tendency of representative principles to become independent powers and acquire intrinsic value is sometimes mischievous.  It is the foundation of the conflicts between sentiment and justice, between intuitive and utilitarian morals …  

‘Every human reform is the reassertion of the primary interests of man against the authority of general principles which have ceased to represent those interests fairly, but which still obtain the idolatrous veneration of mankind (21).’  

Consequently, without such reform:  
‘Minute knowledge is proved at the expense of largeness of mind, and rules at the expense of comfort and freedom.’ (21)  

Yet my contention is the dualities need not be realised as such strictly polarised phenomena if the aspect of paradox also inherent in their nature is accepted and appreciated.  

The tendency to venerate ‘balance’ in the modernist context of humanity is aptly characterised by Santayana.  ‘Obedience to God … or reason can originally recommend itself to a man only as the surest and ultimately most painful way of balancing his aims and synthesising his desires …  

‘So necessary is this sanction even to the most impetuous natures, that no martyr would to the stake if he did not believe that the powers of nature, in the day of judgment, would be on his side.’ (22).  

Which is probably why truly modernist western democratic martyrs are so hard to identify, if they exist at all.  As Bob Dylan laconically proclaims on behalf of St Augustine: ‘No martyr is among ye now, whom yer can call yer own.’ (I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine, a song from Dylan’s 
John Wesley Harding album). 

However, as Santayana alludes through the orientation of his analysis here, the preferred principle of a form of blended reality, as I have established previously, may figure as a more feasible alternative: 

‘… the absolutist conscience … as in the passion of love … in all these a certain individuality, definiteness, and exclusiveness is given to the pursued object which is very favourable to zeal, and the heat of passion melts together the various processes of volition into the consciousness of one adorable influence (22) …  

‘… Evidently what value general goods do not derive from the particular satisfactions they stand for, they possess in themselves as ideas pleasing and powerful over the imagination.  This intrinsic advantage of certain principles and methods is none the less real for being in a sense aesthetic (22-23) …’ 

Santayana then broadens out the duality he earlier raised in this context in his effort to elucidate the nature of perception.  

‘All pleasures are intrinsic and positive values, but all pleasures are not perceptions of beauty.’ (23)  Although, he admits:  ‘Pleasure is indeed the essence of that perception …’ (23)  

Yet how can he sustain such a categorical polarisation of ‘pleasure’ and ‘perception of beauty’?  Sensation, in itself, as an attribute or a principle, may certainly coexist with ‘perception’ of ‘beauty’, or anything else, and even be commingled in this sense – just as such an attribute and/or principle can be derived through or from any given perception. 

Something of the complexity which emerges to confuse Santayana’s periodic attempts to sustain polarised analysis are evident in his treatment of the distinction of pleasure as pure gratification, while ‘the contemplation of beauty’ as an aesthetic phenomenon culminates in our being ‘raised above ourselves’, even with the prospect that ‘the passions are silenced’ (24).  Rather, as Santayana proposes:  ‘Appreciation of a picture is not identical with the desire to buy it, but it is, or ought to be closely related and preliminary to that desire.’ (25) 

This brings us to the challenge of superficiality in any quest to compartmentalise and distend pleasure, aesthetic appreciation, and ‘the self’ – which is a challenge through which Santayana’s tendency to compartmentalise and structure his analysis, and such phenomena, becomes inadequate from my perspective.  

‘… Every real pleasure is in one sense disinterested.  
It is not sought with ulterior motives, and what fills the mind is no calculation, but the image of an object or event, suffered with emotion …   

‘A sophisticated consciousness may often take the idea of self as the touchstone of its inclinations; but this self, for the gratification and aggrandisement of which a man may love, is itself only a complex of aims and memories, which once had their direct objects, in which he had taken a spontaneous and unselfish interest … The content of selfishness is a mass of unselfishness …’ (25) 

Yet the patent reality is that, particularly in the contemporary western democratic context, ostensibly much more complex than United States society and culture in the 1890s, ‘ulterior motives’ do abound in every situation.  While the ‘complex of aims and memories’ form dimensions of reality, perceived personally or otherwise, which are inextricably linked with these ‘ulterior’ motives.  Hence, ‘the content of selfishness is as much selfish as it is unselfish.  However, this phenomenon is complex, somewhat chaotic and spontaneous, and is considerable and/or formidable, as Santayana implies. 

Santayana ultimately eventually seems to come around to such a perspective somewhat.  

‘But as impersonal thoughts are such only in their object, not in their subject or agent, since all thoughts are the thoughts of somebody:  So also unselfish interests have to be somebody’s interests … The disinterestedness of this pleasure is therefore, that of all primitive and intuitive satisfactions, which are in no way conditioned by a reference to an artificial general concept, like that of the self, all the potency of which must itself be derived from the independent energy of its component elements.  I care about myself because ‘myself’ is a name for the things I have at heart …’ (26) 

Yet ‘myself’ is also something of an autonomous authentic reality and phenomenon in itself, which is realised as merged with ‘the things’ that it has ‘at heart’, and yet to which it contributes distinctively in this context. 

Ultimately, Santayana seems to tacitly recognise the patent paradox evident in all this, but maintains we can venture beyond it. 

‘… All aesthetic precepts would be impossible, and all criticism arbitrary and subjective, unless we admit a paradoxical universality in our judgment, the philosophical implications of which we may then go on to develop.  But we are fortunately not required to enter the labyrinth into which this method leads …’ (26) 

Rather, we can ‘… analyse the assertion before us and seek its basis in human nature …’ (26) 

Santayana then proceeds to characterise how aesthetic discernment works out from his perspective. 

‘It is unmeaning to say that what is beautiful to one man ‘ought’ to be beautiful to another … If their natures are different, the form which to one will be entrancing will be to another even invisible, because his classifications and discriminations in perception will be different … no two men have exactly the same faculties, nor can things have for any two exactly the same values (27) … 

‘What is loosely expressed by saying that any one ought to see this or that beauty is that he would see it if his disposition, training, or attention were what our ideal demands for him; and our ideal of what anyone should be has complex [and yet] discoverable sources …’  [For instance] people who have no sensations, and do not know why they judge, are always trying to show that they judge by universal reason (27) … Thus the frailty and superficiality of our own judgments cannot brook contradiction.  We abhor another man’s doubt when we cannot tell him why we ourselves believe …’ (27) 

However, as Santayana reveals:  
‘… Nothing has less to do with the real merit of a work of imagination than the real merit of all men to appreciate it; the true test is the degree and kind of satisfaction it can give to him who appreciates it most.  The symphony would lose nothing if half mankind had always been deaf, so nine-tenths of them actually are to the intricacies of its harmonies; but it would have lost much if no Beethoven had existed …’ (28) 

Santayana asserts the propensity to ‘universality’ in judgment proceeds beyond mere ‘generalisation’.  

Also evident here ‘… is the expression of a … well-known psychological phenomenon, viz, the transformation of an element of sensation into the quality of a thing.  If we say that other men should see the beauties we see, it is because we think these beauties ‘are in the object’ …’ (28-29)  

But,  ‘… Beauty … is a value; it cannot be conceived as an independent existence which affects our senses and which we consequently perceive.  
It exists in perception, and cannot exist otherwise.  A beauty not perceived is a pleasure not felt, and therefore is a contradiction … External objects usually affect various senses at once, the impressions of which are thereby associated … But this percept, once formed, is clearly different from those particular experiences out of which it grew.  It is permanent, they are variable.  They are but partial views and glimpses of it.  The constituted notion therefore comes to be the reality, and the materials of it merely the appearance …   

‘The distinction between substance and quality, reality and appearance, matter and mind, has no other origin (29) …  

‘The objects thus conceived and distinguished from our ideas of them, are at first compacted of all the impressions, feelings, and memories, which offer themselves for association and fall within the vortex of the amalgamating imagination.  Every association we get from a thing is originally treated as one of its qualities (29) …’ 

Moreover, minimisation and reductionism then become prevalent and prominent. 

‘Convenience and economy of thought alone determine what combination of our sensations we shall continue to objectify and treat as the cause of the rest … The qualities we now conceive to belong to real objects are for the most part images of sight and touch … In ourselves, where meanness makes observation difficult, in the intricate chaos of animal and human life, we still appeal to the efficacy of will and ideas, as also in the remote night of cosmic and religious problems … Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of things (30) … The scientific idea of a thing is a great abstraction from the mass of perceptions and reactions which that thing produces; the aesthetic idea is less abstract since it retains the emotional reaction, the pleasure of the perception, as an integral part of the conceived thing (30-31) …’ 

Whereas ‘beauty’ is concerned with the ‘quality’ of something, it is therefore considered to be distinguished from the definitive aspect of ‘fact’ or ‘relation’, from Santayana’s perspective.  Thereby this directly opens out a basic duality in his perspective of perceived beauty and its elements.  This perception is distinguishable from the quality of beauty. 

‘… Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing ... 

‘Beauty is a value, that is, it is not a perception of a matter of fact or of a relation; it is an emotion, an affection of our volitional and appreciative nature …’ (31) 

Meanwhile ‘moral evil’ is regarded as either negative ethics, or else the absence of ethics or morality.  

Whereas, beauty as an ‘ultimate good’ is ‘… a positive value that is intrinsic; 
it is a pleasure.  These circumstances sufficiently separate the sphere of aesthetics from that of ethics.  Moral values are generally negative, and always remote.  Morality has to do with the avoidance of evil and the pursuit of good:  aeasthetics only with enjoyment … Finally, the pleasures of sense are distinguished from the perception of beauty, as sensation in general is distinguished from perception:  by the objectification of the elements and their appearance as qualities rather of things than of consciousness …   

‘The passage from sensation to perception is gradual, and the path may be sometimes retraced:  so it is with beauty and the pleasures of sensation.  There is no sharp line between them …’ (32) 

It is this distinction Santayana raises I contest, for it relies on a fundamentalist assertion of perception specifically objectified when actually the nature and aspect of perception cannot be verified categorically as being so specific in any authoritative sense.  Whereas, if perception is accepted as a given state, the ultimate source of which cannot be described in specifically categorical terms, but that perception is gradually realised from the human aspect through the senses, or sensation, or the sensual, then perception becomes the source of sensation, rather than the other way around.  
This then serves to realise the whole ontology Santayana advances. 

Every ‘function of our nature’ contributes distinctively to the whole, 
as Santayana discerns. 

‘There is no function of our nature which cannot contribute something … 
but one function differs very much from another in the amount and directness of its contribution.  The pleasures of the eye and ear, of the imagination and memory, are the most easily objectified and merged with ideas …’ (35)  

However, and this serves to substantiate my foregoing analysis and assertion of perception as the source and origin of sensation, 
even Santayana realises a dimension or realm beyond ‘the five senses’ which serves as the ‘source’ of ‘consciousness’. 

‘… For the five senses and the three powers of the soul, which play so large a part in traditional psychology, are by no means the only sources or factors of consciousness, they are more or less external divisions of its content, and not even exhaustive of that.  The nature and changes of our life have deeper roots, and are controlled by less obvious processes …’ (35) 

Meanwhile the ‘vital functions’ or ‘forces’ of our being, 
which Santayana deems to be physiological in nature, are ‘particularly important … for the values of our experience … The aesthetic value of vital functions differs according to their physiological concomitants:  those that are favourable to ideation are of course more apt to extend something of their intimate warmth to the pleasures of contemplation, and, thus to intensify the sense of beauty and the interest of thought …’ (36) 

Santayana then turns his analysis to the phenomenon of passion and love, revealing something of the definitive orientation through which love is refined as an experience. 

‘If we were dealing with the philosophy of love, and not with that of beauty, 
our problem would be to find out by what machinery this fundamental susceptibility, common to animals of both sexes, is gradually directed to more and more definite objects:  first, to one species and one sex, and ultimately to one individual …’ (37) 

Correspondingly, Santayana establishes starkly the fundamental aspect of difficulty associated with this experience. 

‘The case of lifelong fidelity to one mate – perhaps even to an unsatisfied and hopeless love – is the maximum of differentiation, which even overleaps the utility which gave it a foothold in nature and defeats its own object (37-38) … While this differentiation is not complete … there is a great deal of groping and waste; and the force and constancy of the instinct must make up for its lack of precision.  A great deal of vital energy is thus absorbed by this 
ill-adjusted function … For it is precisely from the waste from the radiation of sexual passion, that beauty borrows warmth.  As a harp, made to vibrate to the fingers, gives some music to every mind, so the nature of man, necessarily susceptible to woman, becomes simultaneously sensitive to other influences, and capable of tenderness towards every object.  The capacity of love gives our contemplation that glow without which it might often fail to manifest beauty; and the whole sentimental value of our aesthetic sensibility – without which it would be perceptive and mathematical rather than aesthetic – is to our sexual organisation remotely stirred … The attraction of sex could not become efficient unless the senses were first attracted. (38) 

‘… sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, 
which carries the body and soul continually towards matter; makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a comparison … these effects are here powerful and profound.  The soul is stirred to its depths.  Its hidden treasures are brought to the surface of consciousness …   

‘The imagination and the heart awake for the first time.  

‘All these new values then crystallise about the objects offered to the mind … The object becomes perfect and we are said to be in love … If the stimulus does not appear as a definite image, the values evoked are dispersed over the world, and we are said to have become lovers of nature, and to have discovered the beauty and meaning of things (39) … 

‘When love lacks its specific object, when it does not yet understand itself, or has been sacrificed to some other interest, we see the stifled fire bursting out in various directions … We may say, then, that for man all nature is a secondary object of sexual passion, and that to this fact the beauty of nature is largely due …’ (40)  

‘Social instincts’ are thence invoked by Santayana as ‘constituting’ prevalent grounds for analysis in this context of the aesthetic. 

‘These social feelings, the parental, the patriotic, or the merely gregarious, 
are not of much direct value for aesthetics, although, as is seen in the case of fashions, they are important in determining the duration and prevalence of a taste once formed.  Indirectly they are of vast importance and play a great role in arts like poetry, where the effect depends on what is signified more than what is offered to sense … Thus comprehension of the passion of love is necessary to the appreciation of numberless songs, plays, and novels, and not a few works of musical and plastic art …’ (40) 

Correspondingly, those who further their creative initiative in this context often become afflicted through their quest:  ‘… poets and artists, with their immediate and aesthetic joys, are not thought to be happy men; 
they themselves are apt to be loved in their lamentations, and to regard themselves as eminently and tragically unhappy.  This arises from the intensity and inconstancy of their emotions, from their improvidence, and from the eccentricity of their social habits (41) … 

‘But man is pre-eminently a political animal, and social needs are almost as fundamental in him as vital functions, and often more conscious …   Friendship, wealth, reputation, power, and influence, when added to family life, constitute surely the main elements of happiness.  Now these are only very partially composed of definite images of objects.  The desire for them, the consciousness of their absence or possession, comes to inform us only when we reflect …’ (41)  

However, ‘… ‘home’, which in its social sense is a concept of happiness, when it becomes materialised in a cottage and a garden becomes an aesthetic concept, becomes a beautiful thing.  The happiness is objectified, and the object beautified … Social objects, however, are seldom thus aesthetic, because they are not thus definitely imaginable.  They are diffuse and abstract, and verbal rather than sensuous in their materials (41) … 

‘If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them … Yet the happiness of loving beauty is either too sensuous to be stable, or else too ultimate, to sacramental, to be accounted happiness by the worldly mind (42) …’ 

Santayana distinguishes between the qualities and functions of each particular sense attribute. 

‘… The senses of touch, taste and smell, although capable no doubt of a great development, have not served in man for the purposes of intelligence so much as those of sight and hearing … The objectification of musical forms is due to their fixity and complexity:  like words, they are thought of as existing in a social medium, and can be beautiful without being spatial.  But tastes have never been so accurately or universally classified and distinguished (42) … 

‘But the time may be near when … our poetry, with our other arts, 
will dwell nearer to the fountain-head of all inspiration.  For if nothing not once in sense is to be found in the intellect, much less in such a thing to be found in the imagination (43) … From these real sensations imagination draws its life, and suggestion its power (44) … 

‘There is … some justification in Schopenhauer’s speculative assertion that music repeats the entire world of sense, and is a parallel method of expression of the underlying substance, or will.  The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and were our sense developed, of infinite extensions; and it has as much as the world of matter the power to interest us and to stir our emotions.  It was therefore potentially as full of meaning.  
But it has proved the less serviceable and constant apparition; and, therefore, music, which builds with its materials, while the purest and most impressive of the arts, is the least human and instructive of them (44-45) … 

‘… The principle of purity must make some compromise with another principle, which we may call that of interest.  The object must have enough variety and expression to hold our attention for a while, and to stir our nature widely (45) … the master of technique who should give a performance wholly without sensuous charm would be a gymnast and not a musician, and the author whose novels and poems should be merely expressive, and interesting only by their meaning and moral, would be a writer of history or philosophy, but not an artist.  The principle of purity is therefore essential to aesthetic effect, but the principle of interest is subsidiary (45-56) …’ 

However, for primary of place in perception, Santayana proclaims the quality of ‘sight’:  ‘… we must attribute the primacy of sight in our perception, a primacy that makes light the natural symbol of knowledge.  When the time came for our intelligence to take the great metaphysical leap, and conceive its content as permanent and independent, or, in other words, to imagine things, the idea of these things had to be constructed out of the materials already present to the mind (46-47) … Sight is a method of presenting psychically what is practically absent; and as the essence of the thing is its existence in our absence, the thing is spontaneously conceived in terms of sight … 

‘Sight is, therefore, perception par excellence, since we become most easily aware of objects through visual agency and in visual terms …’ while ‘… the values of perception are those we call aesthetic … And, in fact, form, which is almost a synonym of beauty, is for us usually something visible:  it is a synthesis of the seen (47) …’ 

Moreover, the ‘effect of colour’ is prior to ‘the effect of form’, 
according to Santayana (47). 

‘… The stimulation of fireworks, or of kaleidoscopic effects, seems to us trivial.  But everything which has a varied content has a potentiality of form and also of meaning.  The form will be enjoyed as soon as attention accustoms us to discriminate and recognise its variations; and meaning will accrue to it, when the various emotional values of these forms ally the new object to all other experiences which involve similar emotions, and thus give it a sympathetic environment in mind (48) …’ 

Form in the context of beauty – values, balance and symmetry

Thence Santayana proceeds to establish how a sense of beauty is essentially derived. 

‘… For the outer senses are but a portion of our sensorium, and the ideas of each are of all together, but a portion of our consciousness (48) … 

‘There is, however, a remainder of emotion as there is a remainder of sensation (48-49) … It is only the beauty of the materials of things which is drawn from the pleasures of sensation.  By far the most important effects are not attributable to these materials, but to their arrangement and their ideal relations (49) … 

‘Form cannot be the form of nothing …   
‘If, then, in finding or creating beauty, we ignore the materials of things, and attend only to their form, we miss an ever-present opportunity to heighten our effects … Sensuous beauty is not the greatest or most important element of effect, but it is he most primitive and fundamental, and the most universal (49) … The senses are indispensable instruments of labour, developed by the necessities of life; but their perfect development produces a harmony between the inward structure and the instinct of the organ and the outward opportunities for its use; and this harmony is the source of continual pleasures.  In the sphere of sense, therefore, a certain cultivation is inevitable in man …’ (49-50) 
Even a basic appreciation provides the means for such cultivation, Santayana explains. 
‘Taste, when it is spontaneous, always begins with the senses …’ which is ‘… proof of sincerity.  Such simplicity is not the absence of taste, but the beginning of it (50) … 
‘A people with genuine aesthetic perceptions creates traditional forms and expresses the simple pathos of its life, in unchanging but significant themes, repeated by generation after generation.  When sincerity is lost, and a snobbish ambition is substituted, bad taste comes in (50) … there is a true and healthy taste, which only needs experience to refine it.  If a man demands light, sound, and splendour, he proves that he has the aesthetic equilibrium; that appearances as such interest him, and that he can pause in perception to enjoy (51) …’ 
Thence, Santayana considers the phenomenon of ‘form’ in the context of beauty, describing this as ‘the most remarkable and characteristic problem of aesthetics (53).  

‘Where there is a sensuous delight, like that of colour, and the impression of the object is in its elements agreeable, we have to look no farther for an explanation than the charm we feel.’ (53) 
According to Santayana, when the same set of straight lines are arranged to represent different faces respectively, the ‘… effects are due to the expression of the lines; not only because they make one think of fair or ugly faces, but because, it may be said, these faces would in reality be fair or ugly, according to the vital and moral associations of the different types … 
‘Nevertheless, beauty of form cannot be reduced to expression without denying the existence of immediate aesthetic values altogether, and reducing them all to suggestions of moral good.  For if the object expressed has itself beauty of form … this would of course be some practical or moral good.  Moralists are fond of such an interpretation, and it is a very interesting one …   
‘It puts beauty in the same relation to morals in which morals stand to pleasure and pain; both would be intuitions, qualitatively new, but with the same materials; they would be new perspectives of the same object (54) … 
‘The impression of a straight line differs in a certain almost emotional way from that of a curve, as those of various curves do for one another …   
‘The quality of the sensation is different, like that of various colours or sounds.  There is a distinct quality and value, often a singular beauty, in these simple lines that is intrinsic in the perception of their form … It would be pedantic, perhaps, anywhere but in a treatise on aesthetics to deny to this quality the name of expression … Such expression expresses nothing; it is really im-pression … The common emotional tinge is rather what enables them to suggest one another, and what makes them comparable (55) …’ 
Physiological principles associated with the perception of form are advanced by Santayana to affirm his observations on perception. 
‘… The charm of a line evidently consists in the relation of its parts; in order to understand this interest in spatial relations, we must inquire how they are perceived … But when the perception is through a medium, a difficulty arises (55) …’ 

Accordingly, through the sense of sight via the eyes:  
‘… The presence of the lens, with its various coatings, has made representation of point by point possible for the eye … Each point of the retina might send to the brain a detached impression; these might be comparable, but not necessarily in their spatial position … The eye, by an instinctive movement, turns so as to bring every impression upon that point of the retina, near its centre, which has the acutest sensibility.  A series of muscular sensitivities therefore always follows upon the conspicuous excitement of any outlying point (56) … There feelings henceforth revive together; it is enough that a point in the periphery of the retina should receive a ray, for the mind to feel, together with that impression, the suggestion of a motion, and of the line of points that lies between the excited point and the centre of vision (56-57) … 
‘Every visible point becomes thus a point in a field, and has a felt radiation of lines of possible motion about it (57) … 
‘The sense, then, of the position of any point consists in the tensions in the eye, that not only tends to bring that point to the centre of vision, but feels the suggestion of all the other points which are related to the given one in the web of visual experience (57) …’ 
Each figurative form acquires certain characteristics Santayana calls ‘values’.  For instance, the circle ‘… is a form which, although beautiful in its purity and simplicity, and wonderful in its continuity, lacks any stimulating quality (57) …’  While:  ‘… The straight line offers a curious object for analysis.  It is not for the eye a very easy form to grasp.  We bend it or we leave it (57) …’ 
‘The straight line, when made the direct object of attention, is, of course, followed by the eye and not seen by the outlying parts of the retina in one eccentric position (58) …’ 
Hence, there is ‘a surviving sense of the previous position’ through which ‘the tensions of the … various positions overlaps’ (58).  Whereas, ‘… In the curves we call flowing and graceful, we have, on the contrary, a more natural and rhythmical set of movements in the optic muscles; and certain points in the various gyrations make rhymes and assonances, as it were, to the eye that reaches them (58) …’ Hence, Santayana points out:  ‘… Suffice it that measure, in quantity, in intensity, and in time, must involve that physiological process, whatever it may be the consciousness of which is pleasure (58) …’
Thence Santayana establishes a linkage of symmetry and balance in the attribute of sight. 
‘… The comfort and economy that comes from muscular balance in the eye, is therefore in some cases the source of the value of symmetry … 

‘In other cases symmetry appeals to us through the charm of recognition and rhythm … The parts, thus coalescing, form a single object, the unity and simplicity of which are based upon the rhythm and correspondence of its elements … Symmetry is here what metaphysicians call a principle of individuation … If there were no recurrent impressions, no corresponding points, the field of perception would remain a fluid continuum, without defined and recognisable divisions … Their symmetry is the condition of their unity, and their unity of their individuality and separate existence (59) … 
‘Experience, to be sure, can teach us to regard unsymmetrical objects as wholes, because their elements move and change together in nature; but this is a principle of individuation, a posteriori, founded on the association of recognised elements … The category of unity, which we are so constantly imposing upon nature and its parts, has symmetry … 
‘If symmetry, then, is a principle of individuation [it] helps us to enjoy the perception.  For our intelligence loves to perceive … 
‘Symmetry clarifies, and we all know that light is sweet.  At the same time, we can see why there are limits to the value of symmetry … Symmetry … loses its value when it cannot, on account of the size of the object, contribute to the unity of our perception.  The synthesis which it facilitates must be instantaneous (60) … 
Variety and difference are retained through such perception of symmetry, but only through a basic respect for a classical appreciation of form. 
‘Symmetry is evidently a kind of unity in variety, where a whole is determined by the rhythmic repetition of similars … Unity would thus appear to be the virtue of forms … a form is an aggregation, it must have elements, and the manner in which the elements are combined constitutes the character of the form.  A perfectly simple perception, in which there was no consciousness of the distinction and relation of parts, would not be a perception of form, it would be a sensation … Form, therefore does not appeal to the unattentive … they do not stop to survey the parts or to appreciate their relation, and consequently are insensible to the various … unifications; they can find in objects only the value of material or of function, not that of form (61) … 
‘The indulgence in sentiment and suggestion, of which our time is fond, to the sacrifice of formal beauty, marks an absence of cultivation as real … 
‘The synthesis, then, which constitutes form is an activity of the mind; the unity arises consciously, and is an insight into the relation of sensible elements separately perceived … The variety of forms depends upon the character of the elements and on the variety of possible methods of unification (62) … 

‘The radical and typical case of the first kind of unity in variety is found in the perception of extension itself … Forms are seen, and if we think of the origin of the perception, we may well call this vision a sensation.  
‘The distinction between a sensation of form, however, and one which is formless, regards the content and character, not the genesis of the perception.  A distinction and association, or an influence, is a direct experience, a sensible fact; but it is the experience of a process … it is a feeling of relation (62) … The perception of extension is therefore a perception of form, although of the most rudimentary kind … The emotion is primary and has undoubtedly a physiological ground, while the idea of size is secondary and involves associations and inferences … There is also, to be sure, a moral and practical import in the known size of objects, which, by association, determines their dignity … Now, of all forms, absolute uniformity in extension is the simplest and most allied to the material; it gives the latter only just enough form to make it real and perceptible (63) … 
‘The idea of the insignificance of our earth and of the incomprehensible multiplicity of worlds is indeed immensely impressive; it may even be intensely disagreeable (64) … The intellectual suggestion of the infinity of nature can, moreover, be awakened by … experiences which are by no means sublime … The difference [associated with ‘the infinitesimal’ and ‘the aesthetic’] lies in the different immediate effect of the crude images which give us the type and meaning of each; the crude image that underlies the idea of the infinitesimal is the dot … while the crude image that underlies the idea of infinity is space, multiplicity in uniformity, and this, as we have seen, has a powerful effect on account of the breadth, volume, and omnipresence of the stimulation …   
‘Every point in the retina is evenly excited, and the local signs of all are simultaneously felt.  This equable tension, this balance and elasticity in the very absence of fixity, give the vague but powerful feeling that we wish to describe … Nothing is objectively impressive; things are impressive only when they succeed in touching the sensibility of the observer, by finding the avenues to his brain and heart (65) … 
‘So far is the object from giving value to the impression, that it is here, as it must always be, the impression that gives value to the object.  For all worth leads us back to actual feeling somewhere, or else evaporates into nothing – into a word and superstition … The variety of local signs, without becoming organised into forms, remains prominent and irreducible … 
‘This material beauty adds incalculably to the inwardness and sublimity of the effect (66) … In a word, the infinity which moves us is the sense of multiplicity in uniformity (67) …’ 

Having revealed ‘the power of multiplicity in uniformity’, Santayana then considers the problematic tendency to ‘monotony’ which can emerge from this context, when those concerned become deplete in their perception of any particular environment and/or context. 
‘… this long analysis will be sufficient illustration of the power of multiplicity in uniformity (67) … When … repeated impressions are acute, and cannot be forgotten in their endless repetition, their monotony becomes painful (67-68). … The pleasures, therefore, which a kindly but monotonous environment produces, often fail to wake it beautiful, for the simple reason that the environment is not perceived … But it is of some practical importance to remark that this indifference of monotonous values is more apparent than real.  The particular object ceases to be of consequence; but the congruity of its structure and quality with our faculties of perception remains, and its presence in our environment is still a constant source of vague irritation and function, or of subtle and pervasive delight (68) …’ 
However,  ‘… A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness.’ (68)  Whereas,  ‘… What is in itself uniform cannot have a great diversity of relations (68) … Perfect taste is itself a limitation, not because it intentionally excludes any excellence, but because it impedes the wandering of the arts into those bypaths of caprice and grotesqueness in which, although at the sacrifice of formal beauty, interesting partial effects might still be discovered.  And this objection applies with double force to the first crystallisations of taste, when tradition has carried us but a little way in the right direction (69) … 
‘… Every idea which is formed in the human mind, every activity and emotion, has some relation, direct or indirect, to pain and pleasure [or ‘aesthetic principles’] … this aesthetic colouring[‘s] influence upon us is none the less real, and often accounts for a great deal in our moral and practical attitude … In the leading political and moral idea of our time, in the idea of democracy, I think there is a strong aesthetic ingredient, and the power of the idea of democracy over the imagination is an illustration of that effect of multiplicity in uniformity which we have been studying … Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.  The consequence was that democracy, prized at first as a means to happiness and as an instrument of good government, was acquiring an intrinsic value; it was beginning to seem good in itself, in fact, the only intrinsically right and perfect arrangement …   
‘A utilitarian scheme was receiving an aesthetic consecration … 
‘Equally natural and noble, but no less superstitious, is our own belief in the divine right of democracy.  Its essential right is something purely aesthetic … Such aesthetic love of uniformity, however, is usually disguised under some moral label:  we call it the love of justice, perhaps because we have not considered that the value of justice also … must be intrinsic, or … aesthetic …’ (70)

‘There is in the senses … a certain form of stimulation, a certain measure and rhythm of waves with which the aesthetic value of the sensation is connected … Our apperception of form varies not only with our constitution, age, and health, as does the apperception of sensuous values, but also with our education and genius.  The more indeterminate the object, the greater share must subjective forces have in determining our perception … (71)
‘The great difference [in aesthetic types] lies in their affinities …   
‘What will decide us to like or not to like the type of our apperception will be not so much what this type is, as its fitness to the context of our mind …’ (72) 
Thence Santayana reviews the linkage of ‘types’ with the preponderance of ‘ideals’. 
‘A most [vital] thing, therefore, in the perception of form is the formation of types in our mind … Eternal types are the instrument of aesthetic life, not its foundation.  Take the aesthetic attitude, and you have for the moment an eternal idea; an idea, I mean, that you treat as an absolute standard, just as when you take the perceptive attitude you have an external object which you treat as an absolute existence (73) … such transcendent realities, if they exist, can have nothing to do with our ideas of them (73-74) … 
‘Our idea of an individual thing is a compound and residuum of our several experiences of it … Particular impressions have by virtue of their intrinsic similarity or of the identity of their relations, a tendency to be merged and identified, so that many individual perceptions leave but a single blurred memory that stands for them all, because it combines their several associations … the reason why a name can represent a class of objects is that the name is the most conspicuous element of identity in the various experiences of objects in that class … (74)
‘Th[e] sound [of a subject word] … is the content of our general idea, and to it cling all the associations which constitute our sense of what the word means … these percepts, as they are called, springing up in the mind like flowers from the buried seeds of past experience, would inherit all the powers of suggestion which are required by any instrument of classification … 
‘A generic idea or type usually presents to us a very inadequate and biased view of the field it means to cover.  As we reflect and seek to connect this inadequacy, the percept changes on our hands.  The very consciousness that other individuals and other qualities fall under our concept, changes this concept, as a psychological presence, and alters its distinctness and extent (75) … Evidently, the ideal has been formed by the habit of perception; it is, in a rough way, that average form which we expect and most readily apperceive.  The propriety and necessity of it is entirely relative to our experience and faculty of apperception.  The shock of surprise, the incongruity with the formed percept, is the essence and measure of ugliness …’ (76)

Santayana shows that ideals are formed inevitably through subjective bias. 
‘… We have already observed that a percept seldom gives an impartial compound of the objects of which it is the generic image … If some interest directs our attention to a particular quality of objects, that quality will be prominent in our percept … Our percepts are thus habitually biased in the direction of practical interest (76) … In the same manner our aesthetic ideals are biased in the direction of aesthetic interest (76-77) … The ideal will thus deviate from the average in the direction of the observer’s pleasure … 
‘For this reason the world is so much more beautiful to a poet or an artist than to an ordinary man … Criticism and idealisation involve each other …   
‘The habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things … But this demand for perfection becomes at the same time the nucleus of our observation … Many imperfect things crystallise into a single perfection.  The mind is thus peopled by general ideas in which beauty is the chief quality; and these ideas are at the same time the types of things … (77)
‘Similarly the eyes, in themselves beautiful, will be enlarged also … 
‘The generic image has been constructed under the influence of a selective attention, bent upon aesthetic worth … We know what the ideal is because we observe what pleases us in the reality … Ideals have their uses, but their authority is wholly representative.  They stand for specific satisfactions, or else they stand for nothing at all … They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy.  We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices … 
‘Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact …’ (78)
 
Perception of beauty ultimately resides in a propensity for relativity and difference: 
‘… the perception of a thing is therefore, under normal circumstances, when the senses are not fatigued, rather agreeable than disagreeable … But we are not … obliged to assert that all gradations of beauty and dignity are a matter of personal and accidental bias … If we could strip ourselves of our human nature, we should undoubtedly find ourselves incapable of making these distinctions as well as of thinking, perceiving, or willing in any way which is now possible to us.  But how things would appear to us if we were not human is, to a man, a question of no importance (77) … 

‘If things are beautiful not by virtue of their differences but by virtue of an identical something which they equally contain, then there could be no discrimination in beauty … Relativity to our partial nature is therefore essential to all our definite thoughts, judgments, and feelings … Everything is beautiful because everything is capable in some degree of interesting and charming our attention; but things differ immensely in this capacity to please us in the contemplation of them, and therefore they differ immensely in beauty …   
‘Could our nature be fixed and determined once for all in every particular, the scale of aesthetic values would become certain … As a matter of fact, however, human nature is a vague abstraction; that which is common to all men is the least part of their natural endowment … (80) 
‘Human nature branches into opposed and incompatible characters …   
‘And taste follows this bifurcation … 
‘The ideal enlargement of human capacity, therefore, has no tendency to constitute a single standard of beauty.  These standards remain the expression of diverse habits of sense and imagination … 
‘The dependence of the degrees of beauty upon our nature is perceived, while the dependence of its essence upon our nature is still ignored [my emphasis].  All things are not equally beautiful because the subjective bias that discriminates between them is the cause of their being beautiful at all … (81)
‘The principle of personal preference is the same as that of human taste; real and objective beauty, in contrast to a vagary of individuals, means only an affinity to a more prevalent and lasting susceptibility, a response to a more general and fundamental demand (81-82) … It is the free exercise of the activity of apperception that gives so peculiar an interest to indeterminate objects, to the vague, the incoherent, the suggestive, the variously interpretable (82) … 
‘The consciousness that accompanies this characteristic is the sense of profundity, of mighty significance [my emphasis].  And this feeling is not necessarily an illusion.  The nature of our materials – be they morals, colours, or plastic matter – imposes a limit and bias upon our expression …   

‘The reality of experience can never be quite rendered through these media.  The greatest mastery of technique will therefore come short of perfect adequacy and exhaustiveness; there must always remain a penumbra and fringe of suggestion if the most explicit representation is to communicate a truth.  When there is real profundity – when the living core of things is most firmly grasped – there will accordingly be a felt inadequacy of expression [my emphasis], and an appeal to the observer to piece out our imperfections with his thoughts.  But this should come only after the resources of a patient and well-learned art have been exhausted (82) … Our age is given to … self-indulgence … Our public, without being really trained … is well informed and eagerly responsive to everything … It becomes a point of pride with it to understand and appreciate everything (83) …’ 
However, ‘… The crudity we are too distracted to refine, we accept as originality, and the vagueness we are too pretentious to make accurate, we pass off as sublimity [my emphasis] (83) …’ 
Starkly, Santayana characterises how raw instinct and intuition blend with experiential appreciation in the context of our flawed humanity. 
‘… The natural landscape is an indeterminate object … 
‘A landscape to be seen has to be composed, and to be loved has to be moralised.  That is the reason why rude or vulgar people are indifferent to their natural surroundings.  It does not occur to them that the work-a-day world is capable of aesthetic contemplation … The far more beautiful daily aspects of their environment escape them altogether.  When, however, we learn to apperceive … when, above all, the subtler influences of places on our mental tone are transmuted into an expressiveness in those places … then we feel that the landscape is beautiful … This is a beauty dependent on reverie, fancy, and objectified emotion.  The promiscuous natural landscape … has no real unity, and therefore requires to have some form or other supplied by the fancy (83) … 
‘In fact, psychologically speaking, there is no such thing as a landscape; what we call such is an infinity of different scraps and glimpses given in succession … Only the extreme of what is called impressionism tries to give upon canvas one absolute momentary view … The opposite school – what might be called discursive landscape painting – collects as so many glimpses and gives so fully the sum of our positive observations of a particular scene, that its work is sure to be perfectly intelligible and plain (84) …’ 

We are alerted to the exigencies of our human condition by Santayana. 
‘… We need to be free, our emotion suffices us; we do not ask for a description of the object which interests us as a part of ourselves … 
‘Aesthetic education consists in training ourselves to see the maximum of beauty.  To see it in the physical world, which must continually be about us, is a great progress towards that marriage of the imagination with the reality which is the goal of contemplation … We treat human life and its environment with the same utilitarian eye with which he [the peasant] regards the field and mountain.  That is beautiful which is expressive of convenience and wealth; the rest is indifferent … What we love is the stimulation of our own personal emotions and dreams; and landscape appeals to us, as music does to those who have no sense for musical form (85) …’
Accordingly, ‘experience’ and ‘theory’ vary in nature and aspect. 
‘All theory is a subjective form given to an indeterminate material …   
‘The material is experience; and although each part of experience is, of course, perfectly definite in itself, and just that experience which it is, yet the recollection and the relating together of the successive experience is a function of the theoretical faculty.  The systematic relations of things in time and space, and their dependence upon one another, are the work of our imagination.  Theory can therefore never have the kind of truth which belongs to experience … It is conceivable that two different theories should be equally true in respect to the same facts.  All that is required is that they should be equally complete schemes for the relation and prediction of the realities they deal with … A theory is a form of apperception [my emphasis] (86) … 
‘The case of two alternative theories of nature, both exhaustive and adequate, may seem somewhat imaginary … Yet the philosophers, who are the scouts of common sense, have come in sight of this possibility of a variety of methods of dealing with the same facts … In these minds only that have a speculative turn, that is, in whom the desire for unity of comprehension outruns practical exigencies, does the conflict become intolerable … 
‘The final victory of a single philosophy is not yet won, because none as yet has proved adequate to all experience.  If ever unity should be attained, our unanimity would indicate that … the truth had been discovered … 
‘To have reached a final philosophy would be only to have formulated the typical and satisfying form of human apperception; the view would remain a theory, or instrument of comprehension and survey fitted to the human eye … utterly unrepresentative of any of these experiences which it would artificially connect and weave into a pattern (87) … 

‘History, for instance, which passes for the account of facts, is in reality a collection of apperceptions of an indeterminate material; for even the material of history is not fact, but consists of memories and words subject to ever-varying interpretation.  No historian can be without bias, because the bias defines the history.  The memory in the first place is selective; official and other records are selective, and often intentionally partial (88) … 
‘The indeterminate is by its nature ambiguous; it is therefore obscure and uncertain in its effect, and if used, as in many arts it often is, to convey meaning, must fail to do so unequivocally (?) … meaning is conveyed by the form and order of words, not by the words themselves, and no precision of meaning can be reached without precision of style … In fact, the absence of form in composition has two stages:  that in which, as in the works of Emerson, significant fragments are collected, and no system, no total thought, construed out of them; and secondly, that in which, as in the writings of the Symbolists of our time, all the significance is kept back in the individual words, or even in the syllables that compose them (89) … 
‘The indeterminate in form is also indeterminate in value …   
‘It needs completion by the mind of the observer and as this completion differs, the value of the result must vary … We can respond only with those forms of apperception which we already are accustomed to …   
‘A formless object cannot inform the mind, cannot mould it to a new habit.  That happens only when the data, by their clear determination, compel the eye and imagination to follow new paths and see new relations.  Then we are introduced to a new beauty, and enriched to that extent …   
‘But the indeterminate, like music to the sentimental, is a vague stimulus …   
‘It calls forth at random such ideas and memories as may lie to hand, stirring the mind, but leaving it undisciplined and unacquainted with any new object …’ (90) 
‘Discrimination’ and ‘precision’ is required to realise beauty authentically, according to Santayana (94).  
‘The great advantage, then, of indeterminate organisation is that it cultivates that spontaneity, intelligence, and imagination without which many important objects would remain unintelligible, and because unintelligible, uninteresting.  The beauty of landscape, the forms of religion and science, the types of human nature itself, are due to  this apperceptive gift.  Without it we should have a chaos (90) … And yet the effort in this very activity is to reach determination; we can only see beauty in so far as we introduce form …   
‘The instability of the form can be no advantage to a work of art … 
‘In reality, perfection is a synonym of finitude …   
‘Neither in nature nor in the fancy can anything be perfect except by realising a definite type, which excludes all variation, and contrasts sharply with every other possibility of being … (91)
‘And one reason why the idea cannot emerge from … obscurity is that it is not alone in the brain; a thousand other ideals, a thousand other plastic tendencies of thought, simmer there in confusion … 
‘Each thing, without being a beauty in itself, by stimulating our indeterminate emotion, seems to be a hint and expression of infinite beauty …   
‘That infinite perfection which cannot be realised, because it is self-contradictory, may be thus suggested (92) … emotion is seldom wholly pleasant; it is disquieting and perplexing; it brings a desire rather than a satisfaction … Sentimentalism in the observer and romanticism in the artist are examples of this aesthetic incapacity (‘… the importance of the imagination’).  Whenever beauty is really seen and loved, it has a definite embodiment:  the eye has precision, the work has style, and the object has perfection (93) … the feeling of significance signifies little.  All we have in this case is a potentiality of imagination; and only when this potentiality begins to be realised in definite ideas, does a real meaning, or any object which that meaning can mean, arise in the mind.  The highest aesthetic good is not that vague potentiality, contradictory, infinite perfection so strongly desires; it is the greatest number and variety of finite perfections … Progress lies in the direction of discrimination and precision, not in that of formless emotion and reverie (94) …’ 
Evolutionary theory is Santayana’s reference point in the explanation of perceptional elucidation. 
‘… According to evolutionary theory, mechanical necessity has, however, brought about a distribution and aggregation of elements such as, for our purposes, constitutes individual things.  Certain systems of atoms move together as units; and these organisms reproduce themselves and recur so often in our environment that our senses have become accustomed to view their parts together.  Their form becomes a natural and recognisable one …   
‘An order and sequence in which the corresponding impressions have come to our senses.  We can remember, reproduce, and in reproducing vary, by kaleidoscopic tricks of fancy, the forms in which our perceptions have come (94) … awakening has come whenever there has been a return to nature, for a new form of apperception and a new ideal.  Of this return there is continual need in all the arts; without it our apperceptions grow thin and worn, and subject to the sway of tradition and fashion (95-96) … The remedy is to go back to the reality, to study it patently, to allow new aspects of it to work upon the mind, sink into it, and beget there an imaginative offspring after their own kind.  Then a new art can appear (96) … 

The precedence of perception
– beauty and sentiment: dynamic elements

Hence, at least a prospective synthesis of the mimetic tendency is feasible! … And this can proceed through fine-grained analysis.
‘Only certain aggregations of matter are in equilibrium with the prevailing forces of the environment.  Gravity, for instance, is in itself a chaotic force; it pulls all the particles indiscriminately together without reference to the wholes into which the human eye may have grouped them.  But the result is not chaos, because matter arranged in some ways is welded together by the very tendency which disintegrates it when arranged in other forms …   
‘These forms, selected by their congruity with gravity, are therefore fixed in nature, and become types (96) … The tendency of everything to maintain and propagate its nature is simply the inertia of a stable juxtaposition of elements, which are not enough distributed by ordinary accidents to lose their equilibrium (97) … 
Thus, in the (inter)personal realm and dimension, the quality of authentic equanimity is required so that what is considered to be our dynamic equilibrium can remain whole in a truly consistent and cohesive sense. 
‘Sometimes we are told that utility is itself the essence of beauty, that is, that our consciousness of the practical advantages of certain forms is the ground of our aesthetic admiration of them (97) … The beautiful does not depend on the useful; it is constituted by the imagination in ignorance and contempt of practical advantage; but it is not independent of the necessary, for the necessary must also be the habitual and consequently the basis of the type, and of all its imaginative variations (98) … 
‘Beauty and rightness are relative to our judgment and emotion; they in no sense exist in nature or preside over her.  She everywhere appears to move by mechanical law.  The types of things exist by what, in relation to our approbation, is mere chance, and it is our faculties that must adapt themselves to our environment and not our environment to our faculties.  Such is the naturalistic point of view which we have adopted …’ (98) 
There is a basic sense in which Santayana tends to confirm the precedence of perception as a phenomenon a priori. 

‘Most things that are perceivable are not perceived so distinctly as to be intelligible, nor so delightfully as to be beautiful … As it is, the degree of determination needed for perception is much less than that needed for comprehension or ideality.  Hence there is room for hypothesis and for art …   
‘As hypothesis organises experiences imaginatively in ways in which observation has not been able to do, so art organises objects in ways to which nature, perhaps, has never condescended … The chief thing which the imitative arts add to nature is permanence (99) … If we seek the principle by which these objects are organised, we shall generally find that it is likewise utility (100) … 
‘Beauty of form is the last to be found or admired in artificial as in natural objects.  Time is needed to establish it, and training and nicety of perception to enjoy it … In music we observe the same gradation; first, we appreciate its sensuous and sentimental value, only with education can we enjoy its form … The aesthetic pleasure is in the richness of the material, the profusion of the ornament, the significance of shape – in everything, rather than in the shape itself … There is here a great field, of course, for variety of combination and compromise (101) … We may thus oscillate between decorative and structural motives, and only in one point, for each style, can we find the ideal equilibrium, in which the greatest strength and lucidity is combined with the greatest splendour (102) … 
‘Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention [my emphasis].  When the mind is absorbed and dominated by its perceptions, it incorporates into them more and more of its own functional values, and makes them ultimately beautiful and expressive … The only kind of reform usually possible is reform from within; a more intimate study and more intelligent use of traditional forms.  Disaster follows rebellion against tradition or against utility, which are the basis and root of our taste and progress … 
‘For the better we know a given thing, and the more we perceive its strong and weak points, the more capable we are of idealising it … (103)
‘The main effect of language consists in its meaning, in the ideas which it expresses.  But no expression is possible without a presentation, and this presentation must have a form … [which] is, moreover, a condition of the kind of expression possible, and often determines the manner in which the object suggested shall be apperceived (103) … The single word is but a stage in a series of formations which constitute language, and which preserve for men the fruit of their experience, distilled and concentrated into a symbol (104) … 
‘This formation begins with the elementary sounds themselves, which have to be discriminated and combined to make recognisable symbols … 

‘Speech would be an absolute and unrelated art, like music, were it not controlled by utility … The structure of language, unlike that of music, thus becomes a mirror of the structure of the world as presented to the intelligence … Grammar, philosophically studied, is akin to the deepest metaphysics, because in revealing the constitution of speech, it reveals the constitution of thought, and the hierarchy of categories by which we perceive the world … Nevertheless, language is primarily a sort of music, and the beautiful effects it produces are due to its own structure, giving, as it crystallises in a new fashion, and unforseen form to experience … Poets may be divided into two classes:  the musicians and the psychologists … (104)
Ultimately, Santayana discerns a dynamic primary place in all this for ‘beauty and sentiment’. 
‘… If equal beauty is ever attained, it comes from the wealth of suggestion, or the refinement of sentiment.  The art of words remains hopelessly inferior.  And what best proves this, is that when, as in our time, a reawakening of the love of beauty has prompted a refinement of our poetical language, we pass so soon into extravagance, obscurity, and affectation (107) …’ 
In literary form:  ‘… The plot … is the formal element of the drama as such:  the ethos and sentiments are the expression, and the versification, music, and stage settings are the materials.  It is in harmony with the romantic tendency of modern times that modern dramatists … excel in ethos rather than in plot; for it is the evident characteristic of modern genius to study and enjoy expression – the suggestion of the not-given – rather than form, the harmony of the given (108) … 
‘Ethos is interesting mainly for the personal observations which it summarises and reveals, or for the appeal to one’s own actual or imaginative experience, it is portrait-painting … But the plot is the synthesis of actions, and is in reproduction of those experiences from which our notion of men and things is originally derived; for character can never be observed in the world except as manifested in action … Indeed, it would be more fundamentally accurate to say that a character is a symbol and mental abbreviation for a peculiar set of acts, than to say that acts are a manifestation of character.  For the acts are the data, and the character the inferred principle … The plot, moreover, is what gives individuality to the play, and exercises invention … And this plot, giving by its nature a certain picture of human experience, involves and suggests the ethos of its actors … 
‘What the great characterisers, like Shakespeare, do, is simply to elaborate and develop … the suggestion of human individuality which that plot contains … (108)

‘We have just come upon one of the unities most coveted in our literature, and most valued by us when attained – the portrait, the individuality, the character … a character is not a presentation to sense, but a rationalistic synthesis of successive acts and feelings, not combinable into any image … 
‘The subjective element, the spontaneous expression of our own passion and will, here counts for so much, that the creation of an ideal character becomes a new and peculiar problem … (109)
‘At every moment experience is leaving in our minds some trait, some expression, some image, which will remain there attached to the name of the person, a class, or a nationality.  Our likes and dislikes, our summary judgments on whole categories of men, are nothing but the distinct survival of some such impression.  These traits have vivacity (110) … we should reflect that the standard of materialness, individuality, and truth is in us …   
‘A real person seems to us to have character and consistency when his behaviour is such as to impress a definite and simple image upon our mind.  In themselves, if we could count all their undiscovered springs of action, all men have character and consistency alike:  all are equally fit to be types.  But their characters are not equally intelligible to us, their behaviour is not equally deducible, and their motives are not equally appreciable … (111)  
‘The standard of naturalness being thus subjective, and determined by the laws of our imagination, we can understand why a spontaneous creation of the mind can be more striking and living than any reality, or any abstraction from realities … This method of originating types is what we ordinarily describe as artistic creation.  The name indicates the suddenness, originality, and individuality of the conception thus attained.  What we call idealisation is often a case of it (111) … 
‘Imagination, in a word, generates as well as abstracts; it observes, combines, and cancels:  but it also dreams.  Spontaneous syntheses arise in it which are not mathematical averages of the images it receives from sense; they are effects of diffused excitements left in the brain by sensations … Imaginary forms then differ in dignity and beauty not according to their closeness to fact or type in nature, but according to the ease with which the normal imagination reproduces the synthesis they contain (112) … 

‘The same condition determines the worth of imaginary personalities … we constantly dream of new situations, extravagant adventures, and exaggerated passions. Even our soberer thoughts are very much given to following the possible fortunes of some enterprise, and foretasting the satisfactions of love and ambition.  The mind is therefore particularly sensitive to pictures of action and character; we are easily induced to follow the fortunes of any hero, and share his sentiments … Our will, as Descartes said in a different context, is infinite, while our intelligence is finite; we follow experience pretty closely in the ideas of things … There seems to be a boundless capacity of development in each of us, which the circumstances of life determine to a narrow channel (113) … The poet has only to study himself, and the art of expressing his own ideals, to find that he has expressed those of other people [my emphasis] … individuality is a thing acquired in the mind by the congeries of its impressions (114) … 
‘The greatest of these creations have not been the work of any one man.  They have been the slow product of the pious and poetic imagination.  Starting from some personification of nature or some memory of a great man, the popular and priestly tradition has refined and developed the ideal; it has made it an expression of men’s aspiration and a counterpart of their need (114) … The belief in the reality of an ideal personality brings about its further idealisation (115) … 
‘The materials of history and tradition have been melted and recast by the devout imagination into those figures in the presence of which our piety lives … That is the reason why the reconstructed logical gods of the metaphysicians are always an offence and a mockery to the religious consciousness.  There is here, too, a bare possibility that some one of these absolutes may be a representation of the truth [my emphasis] (116) … 
‘From the beginning to the end of our perceptive and imaginative activity, we are synthesising the material of experience into unities the independent reality of which is beyond proof, nay, beyond the possibility of a shadow of evidence … It is also possible that changes in the character of the facts, or in the powers of intelligence, should necessitate a continual reconstruction of our world.  But unless human nature suffers an inconceivable change, the chief intellectual and aesthetic value of our ideas will always come from the creative action of the imagination (117) … 
Expression then enters the volatile flux of all these elements as they become apparent in consciousness, as Santayana then explains. 

‘… Our ideas half emerge for a moment from the dim continuum of vital feeling and diffused sense, and are hardly fixed before they are changed and transformed, by the shifting of attention and perception of new relations, into ideas of really different objects.  This fluidity of the mind would make reflection impossible, did we not fix in words and other symbols certain abstract contents; we thus become capable of recognising in one perception the repetition of another, and of recognising in certain recurrences of impressions a persistent object …   
‘This discrimination and classification of the contents of consciousness is the work of perception and understanding … But our hold upon our thoughts extends even further.  We not only construct visible unities and recognisable types, but remain aware of their affinities to what is not at the time perceived … The quality thus acquired by objects through association is what we call their expression … (119) 
‘Expression may … make beautiful by suggesting things in themselves indifferent, or it may come to heighten the beauty which they already possess. … Expression is not always distinguishable in consciousness from the value of material or form, because we do not always have a distinguishable memory of the related idea which the expressiveness implies … The revival of a pleasure and its embodiment in a present object which in itself might have been indifferent, is here patent and acknowledged … Thus the mementoes of a lost friend do not become beautiful by virtue of the sentimental associations which may make them precious.  The value is confined to the images of the memory … Yet, ‘We say explicitly:  ‘I value this trifle for its associations’ (120) …  
 ‘Expression then differs from material or formal value only as habit differs from instinct – in its origin (120) … A word, for instance, is often beautiful simply by virtue of its meaning and associations; but sometimes this expressive beauty is added to a musical quality in the world itself …   
‘In all expression we may thus distinguish two terms:  the first is the object actually presented, the word, the image, the expressive thing; the second is the object suggested, the further thought, emotion, or image evoked, the thing expressed … These lie together in the mind, and their union constitutes expression.  If the value lies wholly in the first term, we have no beauty of expression … 

‘Indeed, if expression were constituted by the external relation of object with object, everything would be expressive equally, indeterminately, and universally … What constitutes the individual expressiveness of these things is the circle of thoughts allied to each in a given mind; my words, for instance, express the thoughts which they actually arouse in the reader; they may express more to one man than to another, and to me they may have expressed more or less than to you.  My thoughts remain unexpressed, if my words do not arouse them in you (121) … the beauty of expression is as inherent in the object as that of material or form, only it accrues to that object not from the bare act of perception, but from the association with it of further processes, due to the existence of former impressions (122) … 
‘The pleasures and pains of cerebration, the delight and fatigue of it, are felt exactly like bodily impressions … Their seat is not open to our daily observation, and therefore we leave them disembodied … Or we try to think that they flow by some logical necessity from the essences of objects simultaneously in our mind.  We involve ourselves in endless perplexities in trying to deduce excellence and beauty, unity and necessity, from the describable qualities of things; we repeat the rationalistic fiction of turning the notions which we abstract from the observation of facts into the powers that give those facts, character and being (123) … We have for instance, in the presence of two images a sense of their incongruity … whatever the historical conditions of any state of mind may be said to be, it exists, when it does exist, immediately and absolutely; each of its distinguishable parts might conceivably have been absent from it; and its character, as well as its existence, is a mere datum of sense (124) … 
‘The pleasure of association is an immediate feeling, which we account for by its relation to a feeling in the past, or to cerebral structure modified by a former experience; just as memory itself, which we explain by a reference to the past, is a peculiar complication of present consciousness (124) … 
‘The transformation of practical values into aesthetic has often been noted, and has even led to the theory that beauty is utility seen at arm’s length; a premonition of pleasure and prosperity … The transformation of negative values into positive has naturally attracted even more attention, and given rise to various theories of the comic, tragic, and sublime.  For these three species of aesthetic good seem to please us by the suggestion of evil; and the problem arises how a mind can be made happier by having suggestions of unhappiness stirred within it (124-125) … 

‘The child smiles … when he feels pleasure; and the nurse smiles back; his own pleasure is associated with her conduct, and her smile is therefore expressive of pleasure.  The fact of his pleasure at her smile is the ground of his instinctive belief in her pleasure in it.  For this reason the circumstances expressive of happiness are not those that are favourable to it in reality, but those that are congruous with it in idea (125) … Analogy of bodies helps us to distribute and classify the life we conceive about us; but what leads us to conceive it is the direct association of our own feeling with images of things, an association which precedes any clear representation of our own gestures and attitude (125) … 
‘For the sake of greater clearness we may begin by classifying the values that can enter into expression; we shall then be better able to judge by what combinations of them various and well-known effects and emotions are produced … Beauty in the first term – beauty of sound, rhythm, and image – will make any thought whatever poetic, while no thought whatever can be so without that immediate beauty of presentation (126) …’ 
Santayana proceeds to reveal how this analysis of values and beauty applies to Homeric poetry. 
‘… The whole Homeric world is clean, clear, beautiful, and providential, and no small part of the perennial charm of the past is that he thus immerses us in an atmosphere of beauty; a beauty not concentrated and reserved for some extraordinary sentiment, action, or person, but permeating the whole and colouring the common world of soldiers and sailors, war and craft, with a marvellous freshness and inward glow … 
‘Something of this quality meets us in all simple and idyllic compositions.  There is, for instance, a popular demand that stories and comedies should ‘end well’ … We hide the ugly and disagreeable portion of our lives, and do not allow the least hint of it to come to light upon festive and public occasions  … (127)
‘But as contemplation is actually a luxury in our lives, and things interest us chiefly on passionate and practical grounds, the accumulation of values too exclusively aesthetic produces in our minds an effect of closeness and artificiality … The beauty that is associated only with other beauty is therefore a sort of aesthetic dainty … The charm of such an idealisation is undeniable; but the other important elements of our memory and will cannot long be banished.  Thoughts of labour, ambition, lust, anger, confusion, sorrow and death must needs mix with our contemplation and lend their various expressions to the objects with which in experience they are so closely allied (128) …

 
‘Our interest in facts and theories, when not aesthetic, is of course practical; it consists in their connection with our interests, and in the service they can render us in the execution of our designs.  Intellectual values are utilitarian in their origin but aesthetic in their form, since the advantage of knowledge is often lost sight of, and ideas are prized for their own sake …   
‘Curiosity can become a disinterested passion, and yield intimate and immediate satisfaction like any other impulse … (129) 
‘Give the symbol a little intrinsic worth of form, line, and colour, and it attracts like a magnet all the values of the things it is known to symbolise.  It becomes beautiful in its expressiveness [my emphasis] (129) … When we say admiringly of anything that it is characteristic, that it embodies a whole period or a whole man, we are absorbed by the pleasant sense that it offers innumerable avenues of approach to interesting and important things (129-130) … The profit of travel, and the extraordinary charm of all visible relics of antiquity, consists in the acquisition of images in which to focus a mass of discursive knowledge, not otherwise felt together (130) … 
‘… great as is the sensuous beauty of gems, their rarity and price adds an expression of distinction to them (130) … We have a natural interest in what is rare and affects us with unusual sensations (131) …’  
However:  ‘Let the thoughts wander back and consider the elements of value, and our appreciation, from being verbal and commercial, becomes poetic and real (131) … Our sense of what lies behind, unlovely though that background may be, gives interest and poignancy to that which is present; our attention and wonder are engaged, and a new meaning and importance is added to such intrinsic beauty as the presentation may possess (131-132) … 
Principles of utility and morality eventually inevitably influence the aspect of ‘form’ such that these influence how beauty is constituted. 
‘… Utility … in its place, is thus the guiding principle in the determination of forms (132) … This principle is, indeed, not a fundamental, but an auxiliary one; the expression of utility modifies effect, but does not constitute it …   
‘There would be a kind of superstitious haste in the notion that what is convenient and economical is necessarily … beautiful (132-133) … 
‘The sternness of moral forces lies precisely in this, that the sacrifices morality imposes upon us are real, that the things it renders impossible are still precious … The highest instincts tend to disorganisation as much as the lowest, since order and benefit is what practical morality everywhere insists upon, while sanctity and genius are as rebellious as vice (133) … the senses and imagination are inhibited by the conscience … 

For this reason, the doctrine that beauty is essentially nothing but the expression of moral or practical good appeals to persons of predominant moral sensitiveness, not only because they wish it were the truth, but because it largely describes the experience of their own minds, somewhat warped in this particular ... (134) 
‘… the function of practical reason is to compare, combine and harmonise all our interests, with a view to attaining the greatest satisfactions of which our nature is capable … But no moral precept can require one species or individual to change its nature in order to resemble another, since such a requirement would have no power or authority over those on whom we would impose it.  All that morality can require is the inward harmony of each life (134) … Our sense of practical benefit not only determines the moral value of beauty, but sometimes even its existence as an aesthetic good … If things of moment are before us, we cannot stop to play with symbols and figures of speech (135) … 
‘There is no situation so terrible that it may not be relieved by the momentary pause of the mind to contemplate it aesthetically … Grief itself becomes in this way not wholly pain; a sweetness is added to it by our reflection …   
‘The saddest of scenes may lose their bitterness in their beauty … 
‘By finding grandeur in our disasters, and merriment in our mishaps, the aesthetic sense thus mollifies both, and consoles us for the frequent impossibility of a serious and perfect beauty … (136) 
‘Art does not seek out the pathetic, the tragic, and the absurd; it is life that has imposed them upon our attention, and enlisted art in their service, to make the contemplation of them, since it is inevitable, at least as tolerable as possible (136) … There is, in reality, no such paradox in the tragic, comic, and sublime, as has been sometimes supposed.  We are not pleased by virtue of the suggested evils, but in spite of them, and if ever the charm of the beautiful presentation sinks so low, or the vividness of the represented evil rises so high, that the balance is in favour of pain, at that very moment the whole object becomes horrible, passes out of the domain of art, and can be justified only by its scientific and moral uses (136-137) … 
‘The term ‘evil’ is often a conventional epithet [my emphasis]; a conflagration may be called an evil, because it usually involves loss and suffering … There is, in this sense, nothing in all nature, perhaps, which is not an evil; nothing which is not unfavourable to some interest, and does not involve some infinitesimal or ultimate suffering in the universe of life (137) …  
‘A great deal of brutal tragedy has been endured in the world because the rudeness of the representation, or of the public, or of both, did not allow a really sympathetic reaction to arise [my emphasis]… 

‘The treatment and not the subject is what makes a tragedy …   
‘A parody of ‘Hamlet’ or of ‘King Lear’ would not be a tragedy … (138)
‘This emotion must therefore be complex; it must contain an element of pain overbalanced by an element of pleasure; in our delight there must be a distinguishable touch of shrinking and sorrow; for it is the conflict and rending of our will, this fascination by what is intrinsically terrible or sad, that gives these turbid feelings their depth and pungency (138-139) … 
‘There is no noble sorrow except in a noble mind, because what is noble is the reaction upon the sorrow, that attitude of the man in its presence, the language in which he clothes it, the associations with which he surrounds it, and the fine affections and impulses which shine through it … 
‘The more terrible the experience described the more powerful must the art be which is to transform it [my emphasis] … (139) 
‘The sensuous harmony of words, and still more the affects of rhythm, are indispensable at this height of emotion.  Evolutionists have said that violent emotion naturally expresses itself in rhythm … This breadth and rationality are necessary to art, which is not skill merely, but skill in the service of beauty (140) … 
‘Indeed, one of the chief charms that tragedies have is the suggestion of what they might have been if they had not been tragedies [my emphasis] The happiness which glimmers through them, the hopes, loves, and ambitions of which it is made, these things fascinate us, and win our sympathy (140) … 
‘Our practical and intellectual nature is deeply interested in truth [my emphasis}.  What describes fact appeals to us for that reason; it has an inalienable interest.  However unpleasant truths may prove, we long to know it, partly perhaps because experience has shown us the providence of this kind of intellectual courage, and chiefly because the consciousness of ignorance and the dread of the unknown is more tormenting than any possible discovery … We covet truth, and to attain it, amid all accidents, is a supreme satisfaction (141) … An intellectual value stands ready to be transmuted into an aesthetic one, if once its discursiveness is lost, and it is left hanging about the object as a vague sense of dignity and meaning (141-142) … To this must be added the specific pleasure of recognition, one of the keenest we have, and the sentimental one of nursing our own griefs and dignifying them by assimilation to a less inglorious representation of them (142) … 

‘… Many people, in whom the pursuit of knowledge and the indulgence in sentiment have left no room for the cultivation of the aesthetic sense, look in art rather for this expression of fact or of passion than for the revelation of beauty (142) … But the sudden inundation of science and sentiment which has made the mind of the nineteenth century so confused, by overloading us with materials and breaking up our habits of apperception and our ideals, has led to an exhaustive sense of the value of expressiveness, until this has been almost identified with beauty (143) … 
‘The pathetic is a quality of the object, at once lovable and sad, which we accept and allow to flow in upon the soul; but the heroic is an attitude of the will (143) … We must remember that the object is always but a portion of our consciousness; that portion which has enough coherence and anticipation to be recognised as permanent and projected into the outside world …   
‘But consciousness remains one, in spite of this diversification of its content … The aesthetic effect of objects is always due to the total emotional value of the consciousness in which they exist.  We merely attribute this value to the object by a projection which is the ground of the apparent objectivity of beauty … But among the ideas with which every object has relation there is one vaguest, most comprehensive, and most powerful one, namely, the idea of self [my emphasis].  The impulses, memories, principles, and energies which we designate by that word baffle enumeration; indeed, they constantly fade and change into one another … 
‘Now, it is the essential privilege of beauty to so synthesise and bring to focus the various impulses of the self, so to suspend them in a single image … 
‘But there are always two methods of securing harmony:  one is to unify all the given elements, and another is to reject and expunge all the elements that refuse to be unified.  Unity by inclusion gives us the sublime … 
‘The one identifies us with the world; the other raises us above it … (142) 
‘The shipwreck observed from the shore does not leave us wholly unmoved; we suffer, also, and if possible, would help … But those movements of sympathy are quickly inhibited by despair of success … While we think we can change the drama of history, and of our own lives, we are not awed by our destiny [my emphasis] (145) … 

‘There remains little in us, then, but that intellectual essence, which several great philosophers have called eternal and identified with the Divinity (145) … The height of passion is naturally complex and rhetorical.  Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers …   
‘When a man knows that his life is over, he can look back on it from a universal standpoint.  He has nothing more to live for … He speaks of himself as he is, or rather as he was … This comprehensive and impartial view, this synthesis and objectification of experience, constitutes the liberation of the soul and the essence of sublimity (146) … subdued and objectified terror is what is commonly regarded as the essence of the sublime … 
‘The suggestion of terror makes us withdraw into ourselves; there with the supervening consciousness of safety or indifference comes a rebound, and we have that emotion of detachment and liberation in which the sublime really consists … (147) 
‘Thoughts and actions are properly sublime … 
‘What we objectify in beauty is sensation …   
‘What we objectify in the sublime is an act …
We are commonly too much engrossed in objects and too little centred in ourselves and our inalienable will, to see the sublimity of a pleasing prospect … This is the office of art and love; and its partial fulfilment is seen in every perception of beauty … (147) 
‘… The immense is sublime as well as the terrible … [while] … 
‘Infinity, like hostility, removes us from things, and makes us conscious of our independence.  The simultaneous view of many things, innumerable attractions felt together, produce equilibrium and indifference, as effectually as the exclusion of all … It is impossible to desire everything at once, and when all is offered and approved, it is impossible to choose everything … 
‘This is the attitude of all minds to which breadth of interest or length of years has brought balance and dignity … We cannot venerate anyone in whom appreciation is not divorced from desire.  And this elevation and detachment of the heart need not follow upon any great disappointment; it is finest and sweetest where it is the gradual fruit of many affections now merged and mellowed into a natural piety.  Indeed, we are able to frame our idea of the Deity on no other model (148) … nature, reduced to the unity it would assume in an omniscient mind, is no longer nature, but something simple and impossible, the exact opposite of the real world (148) … 

The effect after comprehensiveness of view reduces things to unity; but this unity stands out in opposition to the manifold phenomena which it transcends, and rejects as unreal [my emphasis] (149) … 
‘Now this destruction of nature … is but a theoretical counterpart and hypostasis of what happens in every man’s conscience when the comprehensiveness of his experience lifts him into thought, into abstraction.  The sense of the sublime is essentially mystical:  it is the transcending of distinct perception in favour of a feeling of unity and violence … 
‘But the sublime is not the ugly … it is the supremely, the intoxicatingly beautiful … For while in the beautiful we find the perfection of life by sinking into the object, in the sublime we find a purer and more inalienable perfection by defying the object altogether (149) … For the suggestion of our own danger would produce a touch of fear; it would be a practical passion … if it could by chance be objectified enough to become aesthetic (149-150) … 
‘The object is sublime when we forget our danger, when we escape from ourselves altogether, and live as it were in the object itself … 
‘This passage into the object, to live its life, is indeed a characteristic of all perfect contemplation.  But when in translating ourselves we rise and play a higher personage, feeling the exhilaration of a life freer and wilder than our own, then the experience is one of sublimity.  The emotion comes not from the situation we observe, but from the powers we conceive … (150) 
‘The excellence of comedy lies in the invitation to wander along some by-path of the fancy, among scenes not essentially impossible, but not to be actually enacted by us on account of the fixed circumstances of our lives.  
‘If the picture is agreeable, we allow ourselves to dream it true … 
‘We indulge an illusion which deepens our sense of the essential pleasantness of things (150) … Everywhere, when we are dealing with pretension or mistake, we come upon sudden and vivid contradictions; changes of view, transformations of apperception which are extremely stimulating to the imagination (150-151) … when the transformation is back to common sense and reality, and away from some fiction, we have a very different emotion.  We feel cheated, relieved, abashed, or amused, in proportion as our sympathy attaches more to the point of view surrendered or to that attained … The orientation of mental forms and their reintegration is the life of all imagination [my emphasis].  It is a spiritual process of birth and death, nutrition and generation.  The strongest emotions accompany these changes, and vary infinitely in their variations (151) … 

‘The most conspicuous headings under which comic effects are gathered are perhaps incongruity and degradation.  But clearly it cannot be the logical essence of incongruity or degradation that constitutes the comic; for then contradiction and deterioration would always amuse.  Amusement is a much more directly physical thing … There must therefore be nervous excitement on which the feeling of amusement directly depends … Nor can we suppose that particular ideational excitement to be entirely dissimilar to all others; which is often hardly distinguishable from brilliancy, as humour from pathos.  We must, therefore, be satisfied with saying vaguely that the process of ideation involves various feelings of movement and complexity, and ranging from sublimity to tedium and from pathos to uncontrollable merriment (151) … 
‘We have a passive background of common sense and everyday reality; upon this background an unexpected idea suddenly impinges.  But the thing is a futility.  The comic accident falsifies the nature before us, starts a wrong analogy in the mind, a suggestion that cannot be carried out.  In a word we are in the presence of an absurdity; and man, being a rational animal, can like absurdity no better than he can like hunger or cold … Fun is a good thing, but only when it spoils nothing better.  The best place for absurdity is in the midst of what is already absurd (152) … Nonsense is good only because common sense is so limited.  For reason, after all, is one convention picked out of a thousand [my emphasis].  We love comparison, not disorder … 
‘The excellence of wit can dispense with absurdity … (153) 
‘Wit also depends upon transformation and substitution of ideas …   
‘It has been said to consist in quick association by similarity … 
‘Wit often seems malicious because analysis in discovering common traits and universal principles assimilates things as the poles of being … 
‘We commonly keep the departments of experience distinct; we think the different principles hold in each and the dignity of spirit is inconsistent with the explanation of it by physical analogy and the meanness of matter unworthy of being an illustration of moral truths.  Love must not be classed under physical cravings, nor faith under hypnotisation.  When, therefore, an original mind overleaps these boundaries and resists its categories, mixing up our old classifications, we feel that the values of things are also confused …   
‘But these depended upon a deeper relation, upon their response to human needs and aspirations (153) … Reality is more fluid and elusive than reason [my emphasis], and has, as it were, more dimensions than are known even to the latest geometry.  Hence the understanding, when not suffused with some glow of sympathetic emotion or some touch of mysticism, gives but a dry, crude image of the world.  The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence.  It is a merit we should miss little in any one we love … 

‘The same principle, however, can have more sentimental embodiments.  When our substitutions are brought on by the excitement of generous emotion, we call wit inspiration … (154)
‘A different mood can give a different direction to the same process …   
‘The sympathy by which we reproduce the feeling of another is always very much opposed to the aesthetic attitude to which the whole world is merely a stimulus to our sensibility … The less sympathy we have with men the more exquisite is our enjoyment of their folly … The more this inhuman attitude yields to sympathy and reason, the less are folly and error capable of amusing us.  It would therefore seem impossible that we should be pleased by the foibles and absurdities of those we love.  And in fact we never enjoy seeing our own persons in a satirical light … Nevertheless, the essence of what we call humour is that amusing weaknesses should be combined with an amicable humanity (155) … 
‘The juxtaposition of [‘aesthetic and sympathetic reactions’] produces just that tension and complication in which the humorous consists … 
‘Don Quixote is mad; he is old, useless, and ridiculous, but he is the soul of honour, and in all his laughable adventures we follow him like the ghost of our better selves … At the same time, it does us good to see the courage of his idealism, the ingenuity of his wit, and the simplicity of his goodness …   
‘But how shall we reconcile our sympathy with his dream and our perception of its absurdity?  The situation is contradictory … ‘ (156) 
Rather, I would maintain this situation is profoundly paradoxical.
‘Something analogous to humour can appear in plastic forms, when we call it the grotesque.  This is an interesting effect produced by such a transformation of an ideal type as exaggerates one of its elements or combines it with other types (156-157) … The incongruity with the conventional type then disappears, and what was impossible and ridiculous at first takes its place among recognised ideals … And the grotesqueness of an individual has essentially the same nature.  If we like the inward harmony, the characteristic balance of his features, we are able to disengage this individual from the class into which we were trying to force him; we can forget the expectation which he was going to disappoint … What appears as grotesque may be intrinsically inferior or superior to the normal … But until the new object impresses its form on our imagination, so that we can grasp its unity and proportion, it appears to us as a jumble and distortion of other forms … The analogy to the comic is very close, as we can readily conceive that it should be.  In the comic we have this same juxtaposition of a new and an old idea (157) … 

‘Expressiveness may be found in any one thing that suggests another, or draws association with that of any other of its emotional colouring …   
‘There may, therefore, of course be an expressiveness of evil, but this expressiveness will not have any aesthetic value … Tragedy and comedy please in spite of this expressiveness and not by virtue of it … The effect of the pathetic and comic is therefore never pure; since the expression of some evil is mixed up into these elements by which the whole appeals to us (158) … the creative and imitative impulse is indiscriminate … 
‘This critical incapacity has always been a cause of failure and a just ground for ridicule; but it remained for some thinkers of our time – a time of little art and much undisciplined production – to [put] this abuse into a principle and declare that the essence of beauty is to express the artist and not to delight the world … Art exists and has value by its adaptation to these universal conditions of beauty … (159)
‘Nothing but the good of life enters into the texture of the beautiful … 
‘What charms us in the comic, what stirs us in the sublime and touches us in the pathetic, is a glimpse of some good … Could the labours and sufferings of life be reduced, and a better harmony between man and nature be established, nothing would be lost to the arts … it sometimes happens, in moments less propitious, that the soul is subdued to what it works in, and loses its power of idealisation and hope.  By a pathetic and superstitious self-deprecation, we then punish ourselves for the imperfections of nature (159) … We confuse the causal connection of these things in nature which we call good or evil by an adventitious denomination with the logical opposition between good and evil themselves, because one generation makes room for another (159-160) … 
‘Th[e] incapacity of the imagination to reconstruct the conditions of life and build the frame of things nearer to the heart’s desire is very fatal to a steady loyalty to what is noble and fine.  We surrender ourselves to a kind of miscellaneous appreciation, without standard or goal … We need to clarify our ideals, and enliven our vision of perfection.  No atheism is so terrible as the absence of an ultimate ideal [my emphasis]… For we have faculties, and habits, and impulses.  These are the basis of our demands …   
‘And these demands, although variable, constitute an ever-present intrinsic standard of value by which we feel and judge.  The ideal is imminent in them … Perfection would be nothing but life under these conditions.  Accordingly our consciousness of the ideal becomes distinct in proportion to the vigour and definiteness with which our faculties work.  When the vital harmony is complete, when the act is pure, faith in perfection passes into vision … (160) 
‘The perfection thus revealed is relative to our nature and faculties; if it were not, it could have no value for us.  It is revealed to us in brief moments, but it is not for that reason an unstable or fantastic thing … 
  
‘Human attention inevitably flickers; we survey things in succession, and our acts of synthesis and our realisation of fact are only occasional [my emphasis] (160) … What wonder, then, that we are not constantly conscious of that perfection which is the implicit ideal of all our preferences and desires … The instability of our attention, the need of rest and repair in our organs, makes a round of objects necessary to our minds; but we turn from a beautiful thing, as from a truth or a friend, only to return incessantly, and with increasing appreciation … the tone of the mind is permanently raised … Knowledge, affection, religion, and beauty are not less constant influences in a man’s life because his consciousness of them is intermittent … 
‘They have a continual efficacy, as well as a perennial worth … the disorganisation of our nature … drives us in contrary directions and is at war with itself … (161) 
‘That true goods exist is nevertheless a fact of moral experience …   
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”, a great affection, a clear thought, a profound and well-tried faith, are eternal possessions [my emphasis].  And this is not merely a fact to be asserted upon the authority of those who know it by experience.  It is a psychological necessity (161-162) … The sun is not now unreal because each one of us in succession, and all of us in the end, must close our eyes upon it; and yet the sun exists for us only because we perceive it [my emphasis]… 

‘… In surveying so broad a field [‘the sense of beauty’] we stand in need of some classification … and we have chosen the familiar one of matter, form, and expression, as least likely to lead us into needless artificiality (162) … Psychology attempts what is perhaps impossible, namely, the anatomy of life.  Mind is a fluid; the lights and shadows that flicker through it have no real boundaries, and no possibility of permanence (162-163) …   
‘Our whole classification of mental facts is borrowed from the physical conditions or expression of them.  The very senses are distinguished because of the readiness with which we can isolate their outer organs.  Ideas can be identified only by identifying their objects.  Feelings are recognised by their outer expression, and when we try to recall an emotion, we must do so by recalling the circumstances in which it occurred (163) … 
‘In distinguishing, then, in our sense of beauty, an appreciation of sensible material, one of abstract form, and another of associated values, we have been merely following the established method of psychology, the only one by which it is possible to analyse the mind.  We have distinguished the elements of the object, and treated the feeling as if it were composed of corresponding parts (163) … 

‘Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable:  what it is or what it seems can never be said.  By appealing to experiment and memory we can show that this feeling … varies with the frequency, for instance, with which a form has been presented, or with associates which that form has had in the past.  This will justify a description of these objects.  But the feeling itself knows nothing of composition nor contributions.  It is an affection of the soul, a consciousness of joy and security, a pang, a dream, a pure pleasure … Beauty exists for the same reason that the object which is beautiful exists. … It is an experience:  there is nothing more to say about it [my emphasis].  Indeed, if we look at things teleologically, and as they ultimately justify themselves to the heart; beauty is of all things what least calls for explanation (163) … We may describe what actually is, but it might have been otherwise, and the mystery of its being is as baffling and dark as ever (163-164) … 
‘But we – the minds that ask all the questions and judge the validity of all answers – we are not ourselves independent of this world in which we live.  We sprang from it, and our relations in it determine all our instincts and satisfactions … Now we only ask for reasons when we are surprised …   
‘If we had no expectations we should have no surprises [my emphasis].  And what gives us expectation is the spontaneous direction of our thought, determined by the structure of our brain and the effects of our experience …   
‘If our spontaneous thoughts came to run in harmony with the course of nature, if our expectations were then continually fulfilled, the sense of mystery would vanish (164) … 
‘This satisfaction of our reason, due to the harmony between our nature and our experience, is partially realised already.  The sense of beauty is its realisation.  When our senses and imagination find what they crave, when the world so shapes itself or so moulds the mind that the correspondence between them is perfect … The duality which is the condition of conflict disappears.  There is no inward standard different from the outward fact with which that outward fact may be compared (164) … 
‘A manifestation of this kind is the goal of our intelligence and of our affection … Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility … Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good [my emphasis].’ (164) 

Conclusion:
Sustained balance and equilibrium through paradox and equanimity
 – the place of discernment and fine-grained analysis  

If the structural static dimensions of balance are to be infused with the more dynamic elements of equilibrium and fluidity, then it is important for appreciation and acceptance of the correspondingly more subtle dynamic of paradox to proceed in this context. 
Further, if the polarised element of duality and contra-distinction, as evident most palpably through the tension of competitive relations, is to be suitably worked through, then it is vital at least for the elements of dynamic equilibrium and fluidity to thoroughly infuse aspects of everyday experience and being. 
However, it is important in this for the integrity of aesthetic and authentic equanimity to prevail as the essential emphasis in human relations, as a further development again from dynamic equilibrium, and as a particular facet of human interaction from an interpersonal aspect. 
All these perspectives become particularly pertinent and resonant where the consideration of human qualities, such as beauty and autonomy, are concerned.  This reality emerges through the greater awareness implicit here of the particular discernment required to elicit and clarify the multi-faceted nature and aspect of such qualities.  Such discernment is required to tease out the inherent complexities and sensitivities associated with these qualities, so that a more broad and deeply intricate appreciation of such qualities may prevail. 

Many of the ideas and perspectives presented by Anthea Paul seem to lack such a considerable depth and extent of discernment, as the ideas and perceptions broached through her work are often not substantially presented in ways that would encourage critical consideration and analysis. 
Clearly such a prospect would be difficult, given the broad scope of Paul’s ‘girlosophy’, and the style of her work, which only really provides the context for brief emphatic statements of perspective. 
However, when the work as a whole statement is considered, it becomes evident there are particular themes and broad perspectives expressed through Paul’s work which reflect extended ideas and insights developed sporadically throughout the whole aspect of it.  It will be hopefully apparent from my fine-grained analysis of these broad thematic ideas how I consider these relate to the whole aspect of the work. 

Many of Paul’s insights are certainly contentious in their blatant pursuit of competitive approaches and relations.  However, there are other insights which bring forward many pertinent perspectives in the realm of interpersonal relations.  These are worthy of appreciation and consideration, with a view to their being applied in the everyday context of mutual endeavour. 

REFERENCES

Mell, Lindsay  1972:		From Life To Love, 
				Volume of poems which include:
				Passing Rivers  1970; and 
				Looking Back  1971.
These poems appear in this seminar paper on pages 32 and 36 respectively. 

Paul, Anthea  2000:		Girlosophy – A Soul Survival Kit,
				Allen & Unwin,
				Crows Nest, Sydney, Australia.

Santayana, George  1896:		The Sense of Beauty – 
Being the outline of aesthetic theory, 
Dover Publications, New York, USA.
1955 Edition.