March 09, 2006

Santayana on the situation

"While we think we can change the drama of history, and of our own lives, we are not awed by our destiny. But when the evil is irreparable, when our life is lived, a strong spirit has the sublime resource of standing at bay and of surverying almost from the other world the vicissitudes of this.

The more intimate to himself the tragedy he is able to look back upon with calmness, the more sublime that calmness is, and the more divine the ecstasy in which he achieves it. For the more of the accidental vesture of life we are able to strip ourselves of, the more naked and simple is the surviving spirit; the more complete its superiority and unity, and, consequently, the more unqualified its joy."

The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory
by George Santayana, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1936, p. 178

Inertia supports being located without of it all. (Where does inertia come from!? What does it ultimately mean for an organism/self?)

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