all that they can get. To be sure they have the ideal of retiring and being comfortable but this is essentially the same thing. That happens to be one of the things that they specially like. They are at present in a wretched conditions but even then there is only idea is to change the government, as though some kind of an ideal government, if it can only be put in office, will give all that is desired. There are no people in Europe who are occupied as most of the people that we know are occupied. It is a slight exaggeration to say none, since there have in recent years come to be a few, and in Russia there was an exception because there the government was so hopeless ly ignorant, incompetent, anduppuct that intelligent men could not depend upon it at all. But such interests as those of Charles, and Robert And Collier And Bird and all the people in settlements and educational and reform activities, are here left to journalists and politicians. It is this that makes England and America far more interesting to me than the countries of the continent, and grounds for thinking that I once wrote to Howard, that the Anglo-Saxon represents me a higher civilization than the latin, though at a lower stage of development. Latin civilization is based on the utter egotism of the family, in subordination to the state, whereas American civilization is based upon the egotism of the individual and its necessity and inevitable supplement of cooperation. This cooperation is as yet crude and inadequate but it is bound to grow. The destruction of the family, and by this I do not of course mean wife and children but families in the European sense in which wives and children are mere incidents, is an essential to the emergence of the European into a higher grade of social existence. England represents an intermediate condition, but I believe that America represents crudely therefore developed state.

If I really knew anything about these matters I should write something about it. It may have been done, probably has, but it certainly isn't current knowledge or opinion. Unfortunately I have nothing but impressions to go on, and though they are based upon a good deal of far-flung contact they none the less remain nothing except vague maunderings. This might interest Charles and if you write to him you might copy out this stuff for him.

I guess that is all for the present. It is beautifully warm and cool here in my shadowy room with its white walls. The pictures on the walls are somewhat nondescript, but pleasant even so. I did a lot of analysis during the night which has left a faint glow of hopeful content that will evaporate during the day but is nice as long as it lasts. There is an undercurrent of "if it had come sooner" but a clear recognition that it could have come sooner only if there had been fortunate accidents, such as getting in with Burrow instead of Brill and Jelliffe, for instance. But then on the other hand but for other accidents nothing at all would have happened. What on the whole becomes clearer and makes for reconciliation, provided of course that life is made tolerable, is the determinism of it all---the clearness with which one gets to see that without some difference in the circumstances somewhere, there could have been no difference in the result anywhere. In short, as I wrote to Howard in '94 when he was urging me to fruitful activities, "I can't pull myself up by my own bootstraps". Then I merely knew that it was so and was miserable, now I see it in its length and breadth and thickness, in its details and organization, and though I do not find that it makes me historical yet there is a measure of acceptant tranquillity that

is at lest akin to peace. Of course it will not remain summer always, and I shall not be always sitting with pleasant half-memories in this quiet room with the green light filtering through the shutters, but perhaps before winter has come I shall have found answers to my remaining questions and shall have found inconel of a sequence, the need of a more tonic world than that which satisfies the emotional demands of the still rebererant autoerotism. There is something sweetly Alexandrian in this borderland of sex, a world of dreamy intelligence, where nonetheless the intellect can dart about its keenest edge. But I am too old and worn to linger there. I shall have to find a new spring or lose myself beyond hope in the darkness and the cold of a Cimmerian winter.

Do you know Norman Douglas's books? I am reading his Old Calabria and find it charming, far beyond the wont of travel books. He wrote a satirical romance about Capri called "South Wind" which is amzingly keen and witty. I met him through Lawrence but did not begin to suspect the measure of his quality. He has written about Tunis and some other places too, but these books I have not yet seen, but I'm quite sure that they will prove worth while.

Leo

TO: Mabel Weeks

Settignano

April 23, 1935

Dear Mabel:

I decided at six O'clock this morning that I was completely cured of my neurosis and it was just in time, for at breakfast I got a letter from Richard Guggenheimer enclosing a clipping from _The New Yorker_. I suppose you've seen the thing. I suppose everyone has. If I hadn't been cured I should have been considerably upset at the idea of all my friends, acquaintances and un-friends reading that dastardly stuff. What happened was this: A very good friend of mine asked me to dinner one evening and there was another man, Montale, an Italian poet who is director of the Vieussieux library. In the course of the evening Forman, my friend, spoke of Gertrude's autobiography, and I talked about it freely as I commonly do. The more I heard Montale the less I liked him, and when we left the restaurant to return to the Caffe, where we had first met, I went home. Afterwards Forman told me that Montale had a friend who wrote for the N. Y.'er, a woman, and that he occasionally sent items of Florentine news. He added, "You'll probably appear there." I supposed it would be some little squib and didn't mind. I was flabbergasted when I saw this outrageous thing. Of course there's not a word of truth in it. I've never had a trace of the feeling of hatred for Gertrude. In fact, I've never hated anything except cruelty, and the last possible emotion that Gertrude's silliness could arouse in me is that of hatred. The whole scene with the crusty old deaf man asking a leading question in order to make a nasty remark is conventional literature of the crudest kind.

TO: Mabel Weeks, Settignano, April 23, 1935

-2-

I wrote a short denial of the thing to *The New Yorker*, but I know nothing of the editor, whether he's a cad or something decent, so I don't know what will follow.

I received your letter with its anticipated indignations. I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that reading as it is ordinarily done is a redial fault. I don't know whether I've told you what I call my own system -- it's continuous conversion. This means infinite, as nearly as possible, plasticity, and to arrive at this stage one must not be cluttered up with useless baggage. To read a book through except for mere amusement or as a specialist who picks out the few new bits of information for him, is the merest beginning. The real question is what changes will be made in you as a result of really reading a book. A man, for instance, who "knows" Kant, or Milton, or Swift, i.e. who reads and rereads and meditates, will be contemptuous of the opinions of others who have just read his author, but he is full of cocksure opinions on authors that he has merely read. But continuous conversion does not mean having opinions, but in having modified behavior, a revised rythm, an enriched faculty, etc., etc. Now Mabel's book is a book that I find can be read, really because it is a deeply and richly revolved experience. Frieda's book I cannot. When I read it a second time I noticed some things that I hadn't noticed before, but most of the book is just barren and slight. Mabel's is concentrated and rich. My comparison with Boswell, though admittedly far-fetched in some respects, had in view this quality, a certain pondered wealth of stuff reported. The episodes are vital and crammed. During quite a long period I used to dip into it, reading here

and there and found it juicy.

When I read it at the very first, though I thought it
remarkable, I was too prejudiced against Lawrence to assimilate much. Lawrence, apart from his art, is nothing but a
preacher. In order to get any further he would have to
overcome himself and all his numerous complexes. This he
doesn't do but just fulminates against others.

what I was trying to do and was disgusted
by Lawrence's pretensions assumption of authority. He hadn't
by living it formed any of it and couldn't as long as he
remained what he was. Now that I am free I no longer find the
dark gods and blood and willfulness, etc. etc. irritating. I
merely find it funny, like a cock crowing to make the sun rise.
I find Lawrence at his best not in his fiction but in *Sea and Sardinia*, the biographical introduction to M. M.'s memoirs,
in some of his nature poems and other descriptive things. I
don't give a whoop for his ideas or ideals. Of all his novels
I find *Lady Chatterly*, which is most "victorian" except for its
theme, to be most readable. But these apart, I find Mabel's
book about Lawrence to be more satisfactory than Lawrence on
himself. Another analogy to Boswell. Lawrence when it included
the things that Lawrence doesn't tell and couldn't, is
essentially more interesting to me than what Lawrence himself
said either implicitly or explicitly of himself. Therefore, so
far as Lawrence is concerned, I prefer Mabel to Lawrence.

You asked in your letter what I was thinking. Well, I'm
thinking along the lines here indicated. I take very little
stock in scholarship which accumulates and leaves the scholar
just where he was. Continuous conversion is a slow process.

-4-

You can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in three successive
half hours from 7:30 to nine o'clock so as to have the rest
of the day free. And if you don't digest your food it won't
renew your body. Most people of much reading are like
persons who accumulate vast masses of fat on their bodies
and never stop eating, which might give them a chance to
live on this fat for a while. The humpy camel is wiser.

Of course the first condition of continuous conversion
is that one must cease being infantile. Believing in a
father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name, is infantile.
Believing in a fantasy world is infantile like all religious
people, politicians, business men, artists, and all others
almost, except for the limited field of material practicality
and real sciences. For the rest they live on convention,
tradition, precedent and so on. In England now they are
furnishing furbishing up a hairy gold crown to put on the sacred
top of Ole King George. Imagine Neville Chamberlain and Sir
John Simon as really grown up instead of playing all these old
constitutional games. Of course they couldn't even if they
were free as long as the rest are not, but that isn't the point.
They don't want to be free. Like what's her name's conservative:
"I don't want to be a butterfly, I want to be a worm."

The practical field of operation for grown up persons would
be cooperation, and their intelligence points more or less that
way, but most of the effective intelligence is put to service
with the infantile hold-overs. My latest development in
technique works along these lines: To take fantasy for instance
from the days when fairy tales and identification in adventure
stories though not quite true were trueish and see how much of

TO: Mabel Weeks, Steeignano, April 23, 1935

-5-

that trueishness persists in spite of "disbelief." I'm a simon
pure behaviorist. Whatever affects conduct is a part of one's
belief no matter how much you disbelieve in it. Therefore
find out what you believe by noting what affects your conduct
is
even if it/only in the production of anxiety and inhibition/
of action, or in the production of impulsive and uncontrolled
reveries, or as-if states, etc. etc. Then connect these up
with infantile states when their trueishness was greater.

The same of course applies to sex and its perversions. Things
that up to the last I could not quite "realize" fully as real
when attacking them frontally have come to be taken in with
this flank attack from childhood, since the recognition of the
childhood stage offered less resistance than to take oneself
like that here and now.

There are analogies in this with Gurjeff-ism and other
things, but those are all choked up with infantile vestiges,
dogmas, etc. Mine has no dogma at all, no metaphysic.

Behavior is an actual act like heat and cold, food and fasting.

One can, of course, ask "but is all this practical" and of
course in a sense it isn't. The practical thing is to believe
in Fascism and the pope in Italy, in communism and Stalin in
Russia, to be for or against the N.R.A. in U.S.A. and so on, and
with the present world-wide reaction, infantilism is triumphant
all along the line. The whole damn thing is so dull, stupid,
so everlastingly the same thing with new and more efficient
machines, that it is really of no serious interest. My own
interest is primarily in the fact that I am experimenter and
guinea pig at the same time, and even so I often wonder whether

-6-

apart from my responsibility to Nina I'd care to go on much
further. It really will depend on my painting. I haven't any
hope of finding any other subjects to work on with my method
-- if I were twenty or thirty years younger I might be interested
to try -- there is no interest in writing it out for there is
no place for it now in the world -- so that in order to be
interested in writing it out I'd have to get up sufficient
interest in form and write prose in the spirit of Flaubert.
On the whole it is more practicable to say it in paint. As
in poetry or fiction you can invent episodes to suit the
necessities of the form, and in painting you can invent them
still easier, as they are often simply blotches of color
which are sufficiently validated by being blotches of the
right color and shape, but have no secondary life of meaning.

Well, I reckon that's enough for one minute or even one
and a half.

Affectionate greetings,

Leo

Settignano June 25

Dear Mabel:

Its a long time without communication. Why you didn't write I don't know, but I didn't because I was entirely uninformed about you. I didn't know whether you were retired or not, whether you lived in N.Y. or elsewhere and I can't write to a vague person unless it were for the purpose of writing a vague letter. I asked Miriam for information but for once she failed to give it. This was long ago. Not so long ago I asked her again and this time she was informative.

I suppose that you know we have sold the villino and are now living in a rented house. It is quite pleasant and if it should prove heatable in winter it will do very well.

Boh Nina and I are as well as circumstances permit. Unfortunately I got a chill winter before last when it was exceptionally cold here and my old stomach trouble or which I had been rid of a coupie or years came back and is still there. So I lost that nice embonpoint which I had acquired, in fact about fifteen pounds disappeared from sight and feeling and with them went some of that fine careless rapture that I warbled while I was in America. However I am about these matters like an Englishwoman with whom I was dancing when Ned Bruce gave a party in London and the musicians began playing something that went so fast that everybody gave up and withdrew. I said to Mrs. Professor Have you had enough? She answered grimly I never give up. Alright says I: I'm not that kind of a hero myself, but I'll see this thing through. Senator Pittman who was there bet Ned would stop before the music did but we didn't, and finished amid loud applause. I am interested really only in my psychological treatment of my troubles but in that my interest never wanes and progress is constant.

I have also reached a formulation of my practical attitude which satisfies me completely. Perhaps you know that sentence of Wm. James's which seems to me one of the most valuable ever uttered--"We see no further into a generalization than our knowledge of particulars extends." Well my practical formulation is: "we(authentically) believe in general truths no further than our belief in particulars extends."* All assumptions of belief that extend beyond this are mere mendacity but, of course, that is what is the fact in regard to nearly if not quite all beliefs of our so-called civilized peoples. This formulation which it has taken me so long to reach is comprehensive and final in the sphere of conduct as that of James was in the sphere of the intellect. As long as the bringing up of children and the education of grown ups doesn't aim at this and it nowhere does thoroughly - the farthest reaching in this direction that I know of is the work of Korzibsky - it is not really valid and contains primitive and barbarous elements. Or course mostly of him.

Another thing that I have made much more effective though I had already stated it in my book is that belief should concern itself primarily with the things that we know to be true, that is belief such as we have that stone walls are impermeable or that water is wet. So course most people and in regard to most things disbelieve a lot of things that they know to be true and believe no end of things that they know are not true. With that civilization is obviously impossible.

* Any further belief is a belief merely in the formula.

For a while last winter and spring I did a great deal of reading, especially dramatic stuff english french german italian spanish. I also read with a great deal of satisfaction that extraordinarily clarifying book by Einstein and Infeld and for the first time succeeded in really assimilating relativity. Lately I have been reading Lamb's letters many of which are like charming little Elias. I am more and more convinced that Lamb is the greatest prose writer since Jeremy Taylor and Sr Thomas Browne. I think that I would place Emerson next. Lamb has in prose the quality of which I wrote you long ago when I talked of the two kinds of poetry, the quality that Shak speare has and Marlowe and Spenser have not. I know think of it as a distinction between two and three dimensional form. When I think of two-dimensional form I do not mean flatness on the surface but that which builds up on a flat ground while the three dimensional is that which does not rest on the ground at all but constitutes a plenum. I do not, in fact, think of them as two and three dimensional - that is just a simplification for the profane; really I think of them as three and four dimensional since time is also involved.

As for my painting, I am at last arriving at something definitive. In landscape I have cut loose from Europe altogether. Seriously speaking there is no european landscape worth bothering about though Poussin and Ruysdael did pretty well considering. Some Sung chinese is the only wear. It is working out more or less

I see that you are being largely dosed with Picasso these days and in the days that are to be. I suppose that Gertrude book has had considerable success. It is really wonderful how she can get away with it. Gertrude as a critic is completely incompetent because she has no ideas. To have ideas one must analyze and then synthetize. Gertrude is totally incapable of analysis and what pass for ideas in her writings are impressions stated as generalizations. And the impressions when they are of a complex whole are generally childishly inadequate. I suppose what constitutes much of her success is that she has succeeded in putting across childlessness as splendid maturity. I doubt whether there is an essential statement in that Picasso book that is not radically stupid but all is done with the manner of profound insight and I don't suppose there are many readers who are not taken in. Ah well. Some must take that role and why not she. Amen, Picasso is to some extent a similar case. His talent is enormously greater but to suppose that he has any intellect worth bothering about argues deficiency in the supposer. On the idea side, and this has greatly influenced his art, he is as childish as Gertrude. They are fortunate to fall into an age of jazz and infantilism. Once this becomes clear and it has all been becoming clearer and clearer to me, Non ragionam di lor ma guarda e passa.

Dear Mabel:

I was glad to hear from you for it was a bit discon-
certing to be left so long unresponded to. Lest I forget it later
I shall say that I am interested in what you say of Emily's painting.
The couple of sketches that I saw made me think that she could
in all probability become a good ordinary painter and I have an
envious feeling in regard to that faculty of easy assurance. But
if she is gaining in subtlety and significance it may come to
something more for of that there was in those things no trace.
They were prompt, assured, though of course undeveloped, commonplace,
which might go far without becoming anything else. The rest
would depend on the artist's insight, and perhaps from his music
you know something of that in Emily's case.

I have seen Hutch's auto at Berenson's. I read the part about
his youth which I thought graceful and distinctly worth while.
The rest I rather ran over as I could not borrow the book which
Berenson had not yet finished and which he was sending away to
some one afterwards. That early portion and the Chicago episode
deeemed to me the best. I was struck by its great inferiority
to Mabel in power of characterization. I. n. after reading it
thought he would want to read Mabel's Movers and Shakers. Before
taking it to him I read it here and there and was more re-
convinced in my belief that Mabel would have been a great writer
if she only had a real style. Her writing seems to me creative
in its substance even if not in its form and I remember a remarkably
large amount of what I have read of hers even when it dealt with
things and people of whom I know nothing at all was not otherwise
interested. I think that Mabel was one of the essentially in-
teresting persons of her time, with a rare kind of honesty quite
compatible with much that wasnt and I believe that her lack of
"style" was a real misfortune. She was capable of picturing a
certain not too small corner of the world in a way that would have
been memorable, and even as it is, I regard her doors as the best
dealing with those people and those times that I have read. If
you dont want your copy of Hutch's book any more I should like
to have it and Nina would also like to read it. What Hutch
says of Nina is typical for me of much of the book. The episode
of Nina and Charles might be all right in a setting of Nina's
amplitude even if that had been done in only a few words, but
Hutch has a minimal gift of the significant word and is worth
reading only on what he does profusely. In many case he hardly
gets beyond the obvious. In my own case he can say truly only
what everybody says and what it might astonish them to know I e
entirely agree with, but beyond that everything is either
false or stupid." He ought to have left me out except where I
was necessary to the narrative and continued elaboration to the
people with whom he is more in sympathy.

This reminds me that I have at last come to the grand
synthesis, not as an idea of course, that I had long ago, but
in realized comprehension - to be able to think of myself in
terms of existence. I had in a very severe form the non-existence
compex, a more fundamental conception of the castigation complex,
and I can only realize that what makes my case extreme and
peculiar was a radical unwillingness to make an substitute existence
by indetification. Most people manage to give themselves an
existence or engance an inadequate one by indetification with
religions, philosophies, social groups, institutions, or what not
and in so far become incapable of honesty of a thorough going
kind of objectivity, of conceit and self-mandredness, in short, like
me and Billy James, as I used to say. James's conditions were
more-famt

Settingn'ano Jube 8

Dear Mabel:

I have just received your letter. The people I know seem to be bunched in Provincetown and Nantucket and since for the most part this letter is like to be impersonal it can in so far forth serve as a community letter.

I was pleased to find your letter sounding naturally as in the good old time - so far as I am concerned more old than good for I am so infinitely farther on the road to somewhere than I used to be that the only thing that precludes me from compete personal contentment is fatigue. Whether it is a matter of hormones or diet I dont know but I am much of the time very tired. My mind to me a kingdom is and that keeps dancing a rigadoon anyway, but it is pleasant to support one's whole length of body on a body than hold it up with the more limited base of one's behind end. However if one can only become wise at the expense of time one must take old age as an element in the costs. To be sure except for the tiered needs I feel about as aged as the cockerels that are trying to sing in the barnyard adjoining and whole voices are not yet attuned to the eternities, but however the mind may be inclined the body is sure to go down hill which is a hell of nuisance.

I find myself too tired to paint so I am writing as the physical effort is so much less. I am to write two books, one about art and the other about normality, ideal normality. All the people who talk about the education that is to make people what they ought to be and about the need of faith and so on talk utopian apparently without knowing it. I read a very interesting and sensible article by Harry Gideonse in the S.R.L. with quotations much less sensible from Walter Lippmann and Mortimer Adler and Hutchins which kind of put me wise on what's going on in these matters. I may find some books of interest in this regard in a new library that has just been sprung on us in Florence. It was gathered for the A& M. G. which has now evaded a jumped exceeded, and so it has been opened for the use of the general public. One cant borrow books and Florence is pedagogically speaking quite a long way off with no immediate prospect of transport amelioration. So I dont get to Florence very often. I dont get specially tired walking down and back but I feel tired the next day. (I'm trying to develop speed on this machine to write my books and in writing letters I write quick and careless).

But to return to normality. My fundamental thesis is that since selfconsciousness is the characteristic of man his perfecting lies in increased self consciousness which if completed would cease to be selfconsciousness in the way we commonly mean it. The perfectly grown up man would be so free not only from the womb from which he sprang but from all the other inticacies of the ways and byways through which he has passed, that all things to come would be accessible to him. There would be no strings on him. The wise men of old thought this was to be attained by asceticism, but asceticism is truncation. There's a better 'ole. That is what I'm coming to and if time would only go back and start over again a great deal would get itself done. But since time is not in the least obliging I'll have to be satisfied with rsgah sights. But this is what is to come out of the Freudian Era when it comes to maturity. Of course nothing of importance can be done for fifty years, perhaps for a hundred. But what of it. There'll be a lot of gadgets invented in the meantime and so the time will not have been entirely wasted.

You see, the so-called normal man is a man with a false bottom that doesn't leak. The neurotic is one whose false bottom

is permeable. The really normal man is one who has no false bottom. I started with plenty of leaks but now I've worn the false bottom to a frazzle. You remember how the "Majestic river floated on, then sands began to hem his march and split his currents but at last he issued forth and found his outlet in the Aral sea. That is the way I felt lately when the last of discoverable massive inhibitions gave way. Since then I have the feeling that if I only had the time and energy I could do most anything. But time, it's present perspective brings the vanishing point a yard or two ahead of me. My times best jewel of fear, will remain hidden in time's chest - its nice to have the poets help one out.

Nina is not well. She has suffered very little from her old rheumatic pains but she is depressed and full of anxieties. During the war she went through hell with unessential fears, mostly on my account. Perhaps something was added from the backward and abysm of time by my once betting myself all but asphyxiated and then getting myself knocked out by the tram, which were for me just little episodes of no importance but for Nina terrible shocks. Then her fears that the Gobelinks would catch me were excessively exaggerated, she was worried terribly about her brother who is now totally invalid. The Traverses were like a maniac, speculating, the end was to be back far worse and brighter. Then like many she thought the end of the war would mean bright skies. Literally our skies are bright and the vegetation is burnt to a cender. People say to me, we shall have to get something to eat from America and I tell them the prospects are not bright. The drought threatens to be one of the most severe on record, at least none in our memories started so early. The monotony of food is awful and neither of us has any longer any appetite. Fortunately I got some honey recently. It is dear but it is sweet and our greatest alimentary pleasure is to do like the queen in her parlor. For a while we got packages sent to Rome, through an institution which has gone out of existence. The Berenson's told me that they heard from Rome that if parcels are not called for within a limited time they are sent to the Red Cross. It is as practical for us to call for parcels in Rome as for parcels in Kamchatka. Another thing that troubled Nina is a sense of responsibility for my being here instead of America. I can't make up my mind whether I'd rather be here or there or nowhere. Nowhere seems the simplest solution but there is something almost terrifying in the way the whoreson live body refuses to turn itself into a whoreson dead one. If I am sure that my energy would revive America would be the best place for me. Anyway One can't go yet even if one would so there is time for developments.

Have you seen a book by young Viereck on 19th century Germany? I only read one chapter which was published in a french review B.B. has promised to lend me a copy. I met Viereck at Berenson's yesterday, a lively, almost hectic young fellow who a few days ago married an exquisite little russian girl who has lived in east Russia and for a couple of years in Florence. B.B. flitted with her outrageously despite his 80 years. He had seen Santayana lately in Rome and said he was in good health but never goes further out than the garden of the Blue Nunnery.

Gertrude writes a lot of stuff, Sometimes she gives herself a puff. She's not afraid the puff will smother For soon she gives herself another.

I don't know how many she has given herself in the new book. I haven't seen and though every one seems to think that the village stuff is well done many seem to be intensely irritated by the rest.

Sterne told me about the immortalization of Van Gogh in a best seller novel and of Gauguin in a movie, which produced the following

To genius we all are enclined,
It was ever so, time out of mind,
Tis pleasant to think
When we go out in a wink,
The
"We'll come back in a 'Gone with, 'Wind'".

The other day I assisted Herrick to address the I.G. s.
One can observe them at it anywhere in Italy -

Gather ye girlies while ye may,
The time is now for kissing,
And this same girl that smiles today
Tomorrow may be missing.

That man is best who is the first,
Who's youth and blood are warmer,
And who comes last he gets the worst,
He's not a good performer.

Then be not comy, but use your chance
And while you may be merry,
For if you miss the joyous dance
You will be peeved, Oh, very!

I don't know whether any of the G.I.s need this encouragement or not but a young english soldier who came often to see Nina when a tank section was stationed here said sadly that he was no good at that sort of thing.

From a book called "Near Home or Europe Described", 1850.

QU. What is the religion of the Italians?

Aans. They are Roman Catholics,

Qu. What do Roman Catholics worship?

Ans. Idols and a piece of bread.

Qu. Would not God be very angry if he knew that
the Italians worshipped idols and a piece of bread?

Ans. God is very angry.

If one would transcend experiences one must experience them fully.

I'm not interested in what Dante has to say but Dante is, and what
Dante has been is so impressive that what interests him becomes dra-
matically important.

There are still people who believe in Dante's Hell, but they are
not people who read Dante.

From first to last in my ascensions there was a fear of letting
go what I had, lest I fall into an abyss.

If one could live in a world where no truth about oneself would
cause one to be less supported by one's environment there would
be no demand for a neurosis, one would not want to be sick. But
one would be such a fun person.

It is the lesson of history that people are always as nearly alike
as conditions permit them to be.

TO: Mabel Weeks

No address

Sept. 5 (no year)

Dear Mabel:

I think there will be time for you to receive an answer
to your letter, but I'm afraid I'll have to give you some of
the "same as usual." When you speak of one man's tradition
being as good as another's and say that "Catholicism cannot be
dismissed as just stupid," you are using almost meaningless
abstractions. One should never be abstract except when one
is being conventional or when one is being ultra critical --
when one is either not trying to say anything particular, or
when one actually says it.

The word _good_ is for the pragmatist -- meaningless except
when it means _good for_. Therefore the best of one or another
tradition is not a relation to the absolute except inasmuch
as what one or another person finds acceptable is absolute.
Nor is the tradition of an individual more or less chancy
than that of the group, except that the group in the long run
almost always effects compromises which make viable the individ-
ual tradition that they accept. Without Jesus and his individ-
ual tradition there would have been no Catholic Church. Of
the rules of the church hadn't made innumerable compromises,
the teaching of Jesus would not have spread. All the men that
Carlyle calls Heroes, develop an individual tradition and none
of them do it _by chance_, except as everything is chance whether
it is decreed by Paul or by an ecumenical council. Every man
grows up in a society. Let the following diagram represent a
section of the social stream. A is a member near its center

TO: Mabel Weeks, Sept. 5 (no year)

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and entirely conformist. B is nearer the edge but more liable to *perturbations*. C diverges but at a small angle.

D diverges at a sharp angle. The crucial question that I raise is whether C and D will in their divergence use as much as possible all knowledge that is available, or will they not.

Eliot's thesis is in effect that one should diverge as little as possible in regard to a lot of matters concerning which intelligence should be employed only under constraining conditions -- e.i., that there are fundamentals in respect of which one does in diverging commit heresy. I hold that neither Eliot nor the Pope or anyone else knows anything about fundamental truths. The dogmas of the church are fundamental truths and many of them -- the immaculate conception, prayers for those in purgatory, to take just a couple of instances, are just as stupid and silly as was in medicine the treatments that were common until scientific medicine began. That the ancient churches manage admirable compromises between what they assume to believe and what the practically believe is familiar knowledge. No doubt this helps to preserve human society. But that it should prescribe the course of human society for the future is another matter.

As you know I hold that since Freud a new mass of important facts has been brot into the field of possible observation, and that familiarity with these facts and the practical inclusion

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of this knowledge, entirely changes the field of possible
modifications in conduct. That is the gist of the matter,
that is why Eliot's kind of stuff is as much and as little
interesting to me as theological controversy -- i.e., it
isn't interesting at all.

Well, you can meditate on this as you sail the bright
blue sea and use some of your boatly leizure in telling me
whether you get it.

Best wishes for a pleasant crossing to you and your
fellow travelers,

Yours,

Leo