Elinor Mosher wrote:
>
> Don't feel badly folks. Desmond Morris says we are not fallen angels, but risen
>apes.I say that every morning: "Oh, I'm so glad I'm not a fallen angel, but only a
>future one." (Just throwing in a little levity to counteract the law of gravity that
>permeates this list.)
>
> >Jay:
> >This really is my last post to the planet of the apes.
> >
Not only is "man" a measure of all things -- "he" is also
a mixture of them....
Standing erect upon earth, "man" mediates the merely existent,
"below", and the ideally good
"above" (Hermann Broch beautifully describes this,
in the poetic interludes in _The Death of Virgil_).
"Man" can bring the ideal down from heaven to inform
the real, and, conversely, raise up the real to give substance
to the ideal. It is a lovely symbol of this
two-fold possibility of reconciliation which humanity
at its best brings into Being, that Joseph Needham both
authored the massive scholarly work _Science and Civilization
in China_, and he also contributed a
Foreword and a Postscript to a friend's (Jolan Chang's)
translation of a Chinese sexology text (_The
Tao of Love and Sex_, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1977).
Needham's Foreword ends:
"Though [Chang] deals mainly with technical matters, these must
always be seen against that background of wider sapientia,
startling though it may be for Westerners, the Chinese
conviction that there can be no line of distinction between
sacred and profane love. This is something needed,
surely, by all people everywhere.
The Postscript is rather longer; but it is "magesterial".
It is the text of an address on this same subject, given
in the Chapel of Caius College, Cambridge, Whit Sunday, 1976.
I would contrast this with the "lessons" which my own
so-called education by (obviously) lesser teachers conveyed
to me. These lessons were rarely clearly spoken, but more
often "conveyed" by intimidating innuendo and silence.
But an M.D. on the staff of the Pennsylvania
State University Student Health Service (1969) once said stated
a part of it to me entirely clearly. The man's surname was Franco,
but he said he was not related to the Spanish Generalissimo.
Alas, I do not have a verbatim transcript, but the following
is close:
Perhaps your place in life is to contribute something
to the world, rather than to find personal satisfaction
in sexual relations.
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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