Hitherto Man Had To Live With The

Aggressiveness Is Not The Main Trouble With The Human Species, But Rather An Excess Capacity For Fanatical Devotion.

In The Social Equation, The Value Of A Single Life Is Nil; In The Cosmic Equation, It Is Infinite... Not Only Communism, But Any Political Movement Which Implicitly Relies On Purely Utilitarian Ethics, Must Become A Victim To The Same Fatal Error. It Is A Fallacy As Naïve As A Mathematical Teaser, And Yet Its Consequences Lead Straight To Goya's Disasters, To The Reign Of The Guillotine, The Torture Chambers Of The Inquisition, Or The Cellars Of The Lubianka.

Chemically Induced Hallucinations, Delusions And Raptures May Be Frightening Or Wonderfully Gratifying; In Either Case They Are In The Nature Of Confidence Tricks Played On One's Own Nervous System.

The Moment Of Truth, The Sudden Emergence Of A New Insight, Is An Act Of Intuition. Such Intuitions Give The Appearance Of Miraculous Flushes, Or Short-circuits Of Reasoning. In Fact They May Be Likened To An Immersed Chain, Of Which Only The Beginning And The End Are Visible Above The Surface Of Consciousness. The Diver Vanishes At One End Of The Chain And Comes Up At The Other End, Guided By Invisible Links.

In The Index To The Six Hundred Odd Pages Of Arnold Toynbee's A Study Of History, Abridged Version, The Names Of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes And Newton Do Not Occur Yet Their Cosmic Quest Destroyed The Medieval Vision Of An Immutable Social Order In A Walled-in Universe And Transformed The European Landscape, Society, Culture, Habits And General Outlook, As Thoroughly As If A New Species Had Arisen On This Planet.