The sociologist Simmel sees showing and hiding, secrecy and publicity, as two poles, like yin and yang, between which societies oscillate in their historical development. The whole story is illustrated in the difference between ideogram and alphabet. The power which makes all things new is magic. In Tibet the degree-granting institution is, or used to be, the College of Magic Ritual. Let me succumb for a moment to the fascination of the mysterious East and tell you of the examination procedure for the course in internal heat.
Candidates assemble naked, in midwinter, at night, on a frozen Himalayan lake.
Where the power is real, the test is real, and the grading system dumfoundingly objective. I say no more. Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry if it is destroyed.