One Of The Tests Of A Theory

I Went To Communism As One Goes To A Spring Of Fresh Water, And I Left Communism As One Clambers Out Of A Poisoned River Strewn With The Wreckage Of Flooded Cities And The Corpses Of The Drowned.

If One Looks With A Cold Eye At The Mess Man Has Made Of His History, It Is Difficult To Avoid The Conclusion That He Has Been Afflicted By Some Built-in Mental Disorder Which Drives Him Towards Self-destruction. Murder Within The Species On An Individual Or Collective Scale Is A Phenomenon Unknown In The Whole Animal Kingdom, Except For Man, And A Few Varieties Of Ants And Rats.

The Creativity And Pathology Of The Human Mind Are, After All, Two Sides Of The Same Medal Coined In The Evolutionary Mint. The First Is Responsible For The Splendour Of Our Cathedrals, The Second For The Gargoyles That Decorate Them To Remind Us That The World Is Full Of Monsters, Devils, And Succubi.

Snobbery Is Not Merely A Silly Human Weakness But Something Basic In The Mentality Of Modern Man-a Symptom Which Reflects The General Sickness, The Dislocation Of Social And Cultural Values In Contemporary Civilization.

When A Chess Player Looks At The Board, He Does Not See A Static Mosaic, A 'still Life', But A Magnetic Field Of Forces, Charged With Energy - As Faraday Saw The Stresses Surrounding Magnets And Currents As Curves In Space; Or As Van Gogh Saw Vortices In The Skies Of Provence.