The Prerequisite Of Originality Is The Art

All "if" Statements About The Past Are As Dubious As Prophecies Of The Future Are. It Seems Fairly Plausible That If Alexander Or Ghengis Khan Had Never Been Born, Some Other Individual Would Have Filled His Place And Executed The Design Of The Hellenic Or Mongolic Expansion; But The Alexanders Of Philosophy And Religion, Of Science And Art, Seem Less Expendable; Their Impact Seems Less Determined By Economic Challenges And Social Pressures; And They Seem To Have A Much Wider Range Of Possibilities To Influence The Direction, Shape And Texture Of Civilizations.

Coincidence May Be Described As The Chance Encounter Of Two Unrelated Causal Chains Which - Miraculously, It Seems - Merge Into A Significant Event.

When Reality Becomes Unbearable, The Mind Must Withdraw From It And Create A World Of Artificial Perfection. Plato's World Of Pure Ideas And Forms, Which Alone Is To Be Considered As Real, Whereas The World Of Nature Which We Perceive Is Merely Its Cheap Woolworth Copy, Is A Flight Into Delusion.

The More Backwoodish A Social Group, Juvenile Or Adult, The Stricter Its Conception Of The Normal, And The Readier It Will Ridicule Any Departure From It.

The Integrative Tendencies Of The Individual Operate Through The Mechanisms Of Empathy, Sympathy, Projection, Introjection, Identification, Worship- All Of Which Make Him Feel That He Is A Part Of Some Larger Entity Which Transcends The Boundaries Of The Individual Self. This Psychological Urge To Belong, To Participate, To Commune Is As Primary And Real As Its Opposite. The All-important Question Is The Nature Of That Higher Entity Of Which The Individual Feels Himself A Part.