And as they watch they too pass through the whole cycle of experience, and collect what they can from it, storing these treasures for some future reference or musing. The history of man no longer a dull thing, but a wise being that can walk you through the ages, for words too imprint such images. The beginning of Time can be found, with the advent of religion and the sciences, where the Wise will say many wise things – and be revered, raised up for saying them - but will not understand of what they speak.
Their audience, then as of now, will put on 'the foolish face of pride', and pretend to know them – their thoughts and the words in which they were inscribed - but they too won't understand as much as they say or think they do, and will find it difficult to condense or summarize the great thinkers they so admire. The curious will watch and listen as they blather on, and with their gaze might perhaps fix a forced smile upon them, which will say: 'I know you do not know, and you know I know it', but the speaker, who is generally of the incurious breed, will not see it. Their interest lies elsewhere: in the applause or awed faces.
There are also Laws they hold themselves to, which the curious spurn, and that is of consistency. Here, you see, opposites attract. The curious, the watchers, are inconsistent in what they hold to be true, whereas the incurious, the doers, will admit only of consistency, even if new material points that an earlier premise has no grounding. The incurious might contradict their stated position knowingly or unknowingly but they will find a reason for their contradiction; never will they declare their approach was inconsistent. The curious will, and openly. They are not ashamed that from examination or observation their views have changed, and perhaps led them to a different act or set of feelings. They speak in full knowledge of the fact, that what they say on a subject today may be phrased differently the next, or voice a softened or hardened opinion. They live with the awareness that a human being has these fluctuations, according to the mood of the mind, and, sometimes even, the fast times.
Emerson, when musing himself upon this issue, wrote: 'With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall... To be great is to be misunderstood.' The natural world abounds in inconstancies, as does the mind and body of the human being. To ask for, and expect, conformity, in all things, such as dress behaviour, thought etc., goes against nature. To conform makes a mob, and when mobs refuse to tolerate individualism or non-conformity, then historic events like those we look back on or read of may reoccur. No man should violate his own nature, or have it, by rule, violated.
Men have, however, sought this end, and will, despite the plea above to not, continue to do so, though perhaps not in quite the same way as emperors or kings of old. Comparisons will always be made to a past event or age, and even drawn from: the speeches made, the military action that ensued, the treaties or pacts that were agreed or failed. In all of us lives ancient history and the figures in speech or act that embody it. When similar arises their name will be mentioned, their words quoted. Their person a fiction, their words a fable. History has tales and these it tells without ceasing. It presents what was to what is.
Man, curious or incurious, should not seek himself outside himself.
Picture credit: The Watcher, Paul Henry (source: WikiArt).
Excerpt from journal loosely based on and taken from reading of Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Penguin Books, Great Ideas, 2008). Written January 2021.
