The Crest-Wave of Evolution: A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19Morris, Kenneth
Philosophy
The Crest-Wave of Evolution: A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19
Morris, Kenneth
Theosophy
There you have one side of the outer man; and the most has
been made of it. "Always figuring, always posturing," we
hear. I merely point to the seventy noble generations, the
personality made up of that courtly heredity, whose smallest quite
spontaneous acts and habits seemed to men worth recording, as
showing how the perfect gentleman behaved: a model. Another
side is found in the lover of poetry, the devotee of music, the
man of keen and intense affections. Surely, if a _poseur,_ he
might have posed when bereavement touched him; he might have
assumed a high philosophic calm. But no; he never bothered to;
even though reproached for inconsistency. His mother died when
he was twenty-four; and he broke through all rites and customs
by raising a mound over her grave; that, as he said, he might
have a place to turn to and think of as his home whereever he
might be on his wanderings. He mourned for her the orthodox
twenty-seven months; then for five days longer would not touch
his lute. On the sixth day he took it and began to play; but
when he tried to sing, broke down and wept. One is surprised;
but there is no posing about it. Yen Hui was his saint John, the
Beloved disciple. "When Yen Hui died," we read, "the Master
cried, 'Woe is me! I am undone of Heaven! I am undone of
Heaven!' When Yen Hui died the Master gave way to grief. The
disciples said: 'Sir, you are giving way.'--'Am I giving way?'
said he. 'If for this man I do not give way, for whom shall I
give way?... Hui treated me as a son his father; I have failed
to treat him as a father his son.'" Confucius was old then, and
near his own death... But what I think you will recognise in his
speech, again and again, is the peculiarly spontaneous... indeed
impetuous ... ring of it. He had that way of repeating a
sentence twice that marks a naturally impetuous man.--Of his
sense of humor I shall speak later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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