
A leader is someone who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. If it is true that the policy of the arms race (controlled or not) will most likely result in thermonuclear war, and that, and if the “stable deterrent” could prevent such a war, the arms race will result in militarized, frightened, dictatorial societies, then the first condition for the possibility of peace and democracy supposedly is universal controlled disarmament. Even if the United States of American, India, Britain, France, Germany, China, and Japan were the only owners of nuclear weapons, this is believed by some to hold true. However, it is a lot like law enforcement making an agreement with known offenders that they both will disarm and so will everyone else. How likely is it that everyone involved will keep this agreement and what if someone who once had no use for arms or could not previously afford them decided to stock up? Well, someday Mexico and Africa, for instance, will have the capability and/or need to produce thermonuclear weapons and this will still further reduce the possibilities for peace. In discussing this danger of the “nth country” having nuclear weapons, small countries like Israel or Sweden could, of course, explode their thermonuclear bombs either by accident or because of the irrationality of their leaders, but they can hardly make their nuclear power part of their policy. The much greater danger lies in the extension of nuclear armament to other great powers, especially African and Mexico since those countries, like present members of the “atomic club,” would use their military power as an adjunct to their political ambitions. Thus the chance of nuclear war as a result of mutual threats in the context of such overall political strategy would be considerably enhanced. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

How then can these powers like Africa and Mexico be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons? It is possible that even though these countries have made agreements not to produce nuclear weapons, if they decided that they would like the capabilities to produce them or deem them necessary, the United States of America and Russia could prevent these countries by economic or even military pressure from acquiring nuclear arms. However, this would mean a Russo-American alliance, directed against China (and Germany), which is most unlikely. It seems that the only way to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to the other great countries is by global disarmament, in which all the great countries would participate. However, Western reaction to the disarmament proposal has been lukewarm. The West had not declined universal disarmament outright, but it has also never fully accepted it as a practical goal. The Russians, in their turn, are not willing to accept inspection by which they would lose one of their military advantages, namely the factor of secrecy, in exchanged for a limited “arms control” which would only be another form of prolonging the arms race. It is important under these circumstances to ask oneself why the West so far has not been willing to consider universal disarmament seriously. One stock answer which is usually given is that the Russian do not permit inspection. However, this answer is not tenable in view of the fact that they have repeatedly declared that they are willing to permit any kind of inspection provided the West accepts universal disarmament as the concrete and immediate goal; at least we must negotiate in order to find out if they are serious about inspection. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Furthermore, we must be aware of the fact that there is no foolproof system of inspection, but that the risks of an inspection system are smaller than those of the armament race. In considering the pros and cons of the inspection system, we must also give some weight to their contribution to an atmosphere of legality. In leading the Russians, Chinese, Germanys, Japanese and other members of the atomic club into the formal observance of agreed-upon rules—even if it is only a symbolic observance—we make it harder for either side to break the rules thereafter and flout the hopes for peace and legality that have been generated on all sides. Is it that we see less clearly than others the dangers of an atomically armed World, or is it that we are so caught in our picture of their “wish for World domination” that we can not believe that they mean what they say? Or is it that we are afraid that we could not cope with the economic consequences disarmament would have for our system? Or is it that the armed services, being opposed to disarmament, have already such power that they can prevent even a serious consideration of disarmament? Since this is a matter of life or death for the United States of America and the rest of the World, it would seem to be of the utmost importance to examine not only, as we usually do, the possible flaws in the other members of the atomic club’s posture, but also the possible reasons for our refusal to consider disarmament more seriously. However, keep in mind the Taiwan actually a secret nuclear program and after it was discovered, they abandoned it. Iran and Iraq also had secret nuclear programs at one time. Saudi Arabia has openly threatened to develop nuclear weapons if Iran successfully tests one and is rumoured to have a secret nuclear purchasing deal with Pakistan. Therefore, it is possible that one or more countries secretly have nuclear bombs already. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

There is no way of victory over falsehood but by truth. To have victory over the ultimate negative as a liar, and over his lies, the believer must be determined always to know the truth and speak the truth about everything—in oneself, in others, and all around one. The ultimate negative the liar, through his lying spirits, persistently pours lies on the believer all day long: lies into one’s thoughts about oneself, one’s feelings, one’s condition, one’s environment; lies misinterpreting everything in oneself, and around one—about others with whom one is in contact; lies about the past and the future; lies about the ultimate concern; and lies about the ultimate negative himself, magnifying one’s power and one’s authority. To have victory over this persistent stream of lies from the father of lies, the believer must stand one’s ground with the weapon of God’s truth in the written Word, and with truth about facts in oneself, others, and circumstances. As the believer increasingly triumphs over the ultimate negative as a liar, one grows better able to discern one’s lies, and is equipped to strip away the covering for others. The interpretation of history necessarily leads to Christology and, conversely, this Christology must yield the interpretation of history. The interpretation of history is a search for meaning, and in Jesus the Christ is found the victory over meaninglessness. That Jesus as the Christ is the source of the meaning of history is expressed by the metaphour “center.” The center of history is the place where the meaning-given principle of history is seen. Since, according to its subject-object structure, history is not a purely objective temporal process, the center of history is not a point between a temporal beginning and end. Nor is the center of history the culmination point of a progressivistic development. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

There is, however, a progressive element in the sense that the center of history is a moment in history for which everything before and after is both preparation and reception. The manifestation of the Kingdom of God is revelation, and this revelatory moment is prepared for by a movement from immaturity to maturity, for humankind had to mature to a point in which the center of history could appear and be received as the center. The Old Testament is the record of the maturing process which led to the final revelation in Jesus the Christ. The point to note, however, is that what happened once the process of original revelation happens again and again whenever the Christ is received as the center of history, regardless of time and place. The maturing or preparatory process toward the central manifestation of the Kingdom of God in history is, therefore not restricted to the pre-Christian epoch; it continues after the center’s appearance and is going on here and now. And just as there is an original history of preparation for the central revelation, so too there is an original history of reception which is the history of the church. The reception of revelation by the manifest church is clearly documented, but it must be borne in mind that the church is also latent, and the latent church receives revelation only by anticipation of the center. The historical dimension of Christology demonstrates that the appearance of Jesus as the Christ is the historical event in which history becomes aware of itself and its meaning. In determining the center of history, this allows history to be created. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Biophilic ethics have their own principle of good and evil. Good is all that serves life; evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life, all that enhances life, growth, unfolding. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it into pieces. Joy is virtuous and sadness is sinful. Thus it is from the standpoint of biophilic ethics that the Christian Bible mentions as the central sin of the Hebrews: “Because thou didst not serve thy Lord with joy and gladness of heart in the abundance of all things” (Deuteronomy 28.47). The conscience of the biophilous person is not one of forcing oneself to refrain from evil and to do good. It is not the superego described by Dr. Freud, which is a strict taskmaster, employing sadism against oneself for the sake of virtue. The biophilous conscience is motivated by its attraction to life and joy; the moral effort consists in strengthening the life-loving side in oneself. For this reason the biophile does not dwell in remorse and guilt which are, after all, only aspects of self-loathing and sadness. One turns quickly to life and attempts to do good. Mr. Spinoza’s Ethic is a striking example of biophilic morality. “Pleasure,” he says, “in itself is not bad but good; contrariwise, pain in itself is bad.” And in the same spirit: “A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.” Love of life underlies the various versions of humanistic philosophy. In various conceptual forms these philosophies are in the same vein as Mr. Spinoza’s; they express the principle that the sane man loves life, that sadness is sin and joy is virtue, that man’s aim in life is to be attracted by all that is alive and to separate himself from all that is dead and mechanical. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The pure forms of the necrophilic and the biophilic orientations are, of course, rare. The pure necrophile is insane; the pure biophile is saintly. Most people are a particular blend of the necrophilous and the biophilous orientations, and what matters is which two trends is dominant. Those in whom the necrophilous orientation gains dominance will slowly kill the biophilic ide in themselves; usually they are not aware of their death-loving orientation; they will harden their hearts; they will act in such a way that their love of death seems to be the logical and rational response to what they experience. On the other hand, those in whom love for life still dominates, will be shocked when they discover how close they are to the “valley of the shadow of death,” and this shock might awaken them to life. Hence it is very important to understand not only how strong the necrophilic tendency is in a person, but also how aware one is of it. If one believes that one dwells in the land of life when in reality one lives in the land of death, one is lost to life since one has no chance to return. Dr. Freud discovered that certain circumscribed disorders that have no discernible organic basis—such as hysterical convulsions, phobias, depression, drug addictions, functional stomach upsets—can be cured by uncovering the unconscious factors that underlie them. In the course of time disturbances of this kind were summarily called neurotic. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Psychiatrist realized that neurotic people not only suffer from these manifest symptoms but also are considerably disturbed in all their dealings with life. And they also recognized the fact that many people have personality disorders without showing any of the definite symptoms that had previously been regarded as characteristic of neuroses. In other words, it gradually became more apparent that in neuroses symptoms may or may not be present but personality difficulties are never lacking. The conclusion was thus inevitable that these less specific difficulties constitute the essential core of neuroses. The recognition of this fact was exceedingly constructive in the development of psychoanalytical science, not only increasing its efficacy but also enlarging its scope. Manifest character disorders, such as a compulsive indecision, a repeated wrong choice of friends or lovers, gross inhibitions toward work, became as much an object of analysis as the gross clinical symptoms. If factors within an individual bar one from expression, the composer is flatly unable to work; one is unproductive. Similarly, a patient, despite one’s best intensions to be cooperative, becomes unproductive as soon as one’s efforts meet some “resistance.” However, the more frequent the period in which one is able to express oneself freely, the more one can tackle one’s own problems and the more significant is the common work of the patient and analyst. I have often told my patients that it would be ideal if the analyst merely played the part of a guide on a difficult mountain tour, indicating which way would be profitable to take or avoid. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

To be accurate one should add that the analyst is a guide who is not too certain of the way oneself, because though experienced in mountain climbing he has not yet climbed this particular mountain. And this fact makes the patient’s mental activity and productivity all the more desirable. It is scarcely an overstatement that, apart from the analyst’s competence, it is the patient’s constructive activity that determines the length and outcome of analysis. The significance of the patient’s mental activity in analytical therapy is often revealed when an analysis has to be interrupted or terminated for some reason or other while the patient is still in a bad condition. Both patient and analyst are dissatisfied with the progress attained, but after some time has elapsed without further analysis, they may find themselves pleasantly surprised by the patient’s considerable and lasting improvement. If careful examination does not show any change in one’s circumstances that might account for the improvement, one may be justified in regarding it as a belated effect of analysis. Such an aftereffect, however, is not easy to account for. Various factors may contribute to it. The previous work may have enabled the patient to make such accurate self-observation that is convinced more deeply than before of the existence of certain disturbing trends, or is even able to discover new factors within oneself. Or it may be that one had regarded any suggestion made by the analyst as a foreign intrusion and that one can take hold of insights more easily when they re-emerge as one’s own findings. Or, if one’s trouble was a rigid need to be superior to others and to defeat them, one may have been incapable of giving the analyst the satisfaction of doing successful work, and thus be able to recover only when the analyst is out of the picture. Finally, it must be remembered that delayed reactions occur also in many other situations: only much later may we grasp the real meaning of a joke or a remark made in a conversation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Different as these explanations are they all point in one direction: they suggest that some mental activity must have gone on in the patient without one being aware of it, or at least without consciously determined effort. That such mental activities, and even meaningful directed activities, do occur without awareness we know from the existence of meaningful dreams and from such experiences as being balked by a task in the evening and knowing the solution after awakening from sleep. Not only is there the famous mathematical problem, of which the solution presents itself in the morning, but a decision befogged in the evening may be clarified after having “slept” over it. A resentment not even perceived in daytime may have worked itself though to awareness so keenly that we awake suddenly at five o’clock in the morning, clearly recognizing provocation and reaction. As a matter of fact, every analyst relies on the operation of these underground mental activities. Such reliance is implicit in the doctrine that an analysis will proceed satisfactorily if the “resistances” are removed. I should like to stress also the positive aspect: the stronger and the less hampered a patient’s incentive toward liberation, the more productive activity will one display. However, whether one emphasize the negative aspect (resistance) or the positive one (incentive), the underlying principle is the same: by removing obstacles or by eliciting sufficient incentive the patient’s mental energy will be set to work and one will produce the material that will eventually lead to some further insight. If the analyst relies on the patient’s unconscious mental activity, if the patient has the faculty to work alone toward the solution of some problem, could this faculty be utilized in a more deliberate fashion? Could the patient scrutinize one’s self-observations or one’s associations with one’s own critical intelligence? #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Usually there is a division of labour between patient and analyst. By and large, the patient lets one’s thoughts, feelings, and impulses emerge, and the analyst uses one’s critical intelligence to recognize what the patient is driving at. One questions the validity of statements, one put together seemingly disconnected material, one makes suggestions as to possible meanings. I said “by and large” because the analyst uses also one’s intuition and the patient, too, may tie things together. However, on the whole such a division of labour exists, and it has definite advantages for the analytical session. It enables the patient to relax and merely express or register whatever emerges. However, what about the day or the days between the analytical sessions? What about longer interruptions that occur for various reasons? Why leave it to accident that some problem will inadvertently clarify itself? Would it not be possible to encourage the patient not only to make deliberate and accurate self-observations but also to arrive at some insight by using one’s power of reasoning? Granted it would be a hard job fraught with hazards and limitations—which will be discussed later—these difficulties should not prevent us from raising the question: is it impossible to analyze oneself? We know, particularly since Dr. Freud’s basic findings, that the task is infinitely more intricate and difficult than the ancients ever imagined—so difficult, indeed, that it is like an adventure into the unknown merely to raise the question seriously. All suggestions that say it is an easy matter to recognize oneself are an illusion. These suggestions are beliefs built on wishing thinking, and a positively harmful illusion at that. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

People who embark on that promised easy road will either acquire a false smugness, believing they know all about themselves, or will become discouraged when they are blocked by the first serious obstacle and will tend to relinquish the search for truth as a bad job. Neither result will happen so easily if one is aware that self-analysis is a strenuous, slow process, bound to be painful and upsetting at times and requiring all available constructive energies. One can free oneself from one’s difficulties only when re-experiencing one’s infantile desires, fears, and attachments in relation to the analyst; left to one’s own devices the patient could at best reach ineffective, “merely intellectual” insights. If arguments such as this were scrutinized in detail, they would ultimately boil down to a disbelief that the patient’s incentive is strong enough to enable one to overcome by oneself the obstacles littering the road to self-recognition. The patient’s incentive to arrive at some goal is an important factor in every analysis. One may safely say that an analyst cannot bring the patient any further than the patient oneself wants to go. In an analysis, however, the patient has the advantage of the analyst’s help, one’s encouragement, one’s guidance. If the patient is left to one’s own resources the matter of incentive becomes crucial—so crucial, indeed, that the feasibility of self-analysis hinges on its strength. Dr. Freud, of course, recognized that manifest gross suffering under neurotic problems may provide such an incentive. However, apparently he felt at a loss to account for an incentive if gross suffering has never existed or has disappeared during treatment. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Dr. Freud suggested that the patient’s “love” for the analyst might provide an additional incentive, provided this “love” does not aim at a concrete sexual satisfaction but is contented with receiving and utilizing the analyst’s help. This sounds plausible. We must not forget, however, that in every neurosis the ability to love is greatly impaired, and that what appears as such is mostly the result of the patient’s excessive need for affection and approval. It is true that there are patients—and I supposed Dr. Freud has them in mind—who go to considerable lengths to please the analyst, including a willingness to accept interpretations more or less uncritically and including also an attempt to show improvement. Effort of this type, however, are not prompted by “love” for the analyst, but represent the patient’s means of allaying one’s lurking fear of people and in a broader sense of one’s way of coping with life, for one feels helpless to do it in a more self-reliant manner. In consequence, this motivation to do good work depend entirely on the relation with the analyst. A soon as the patient feels rejected or criticized—as this type does easily—one will lose sight of one’s own interest, and psychoanalytical work then then becomes the battlefield for the patient’s spite and vengeance. Almost more important than the unreliability of this incentive: the analyst has to discourage it. The tendency to do things merely because someone else expects it, regardless of one’s wishes, is a considerable source of trouble to the patient; therefore it has to be analyzed, not utilized. Thus the only effective incentive that Dr. Freud rightly asserted, does not carry far because it is bound to diminish in exact proportion with a decrease of symptoms. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Still, this incentive might suffice if a removal of symptoms were the only goal of analysis. However, is it? Dr. Freud never expressed unambiguously his view of these goals. To say that a patient should become capable of work and enjoyment is not meaningful without a qualification of both capacities. Capable of routine work or of creative work? Capable of enjoying pleasures of the flesh or life in general? To say that analysis should constitute a re-education is likewise vague without an answer to the question, education for what? Probably Dr. Freud did not give this question much thought because from his earliest to his latest writings he was primarily interested in the removal of neurotic symptoms; he cared about change of personality only in so far as it would guarantee a permanent cure of symptoms. Dr. Freud’s goal is this essentially to be defined in a negative manner: gaining “freedom from.” Other authors, however, including myself, would formulate the goal of analysis in a positive way: by rendering a person free from inner bondages make one free for the development of one’s best potentialities. This may sound like a mere difference in emphasis, but, even if it were nothing but that, the different emphasis suffices to alter the matter of incentive entirely. To set the goal in the positive fashion has a realistic value if there is in the patient an incentive, sufficiently powerful to be reckoned with, to develop whatever faculties one has, to realize given potentialities, to come to grips with oneself despite all the ordeals one may have to go through at times; to put it in the simplest way possible, if there is an incentive to grow. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

When the issue is stated thus plainly it is clear that there is more involved here than a difference in emphasis, because Dr. Freud emphatically denied that such a wish exists. He even scoffed at it, as if the positing of such a wish were a sort of hollow idealism. He pointed out that urges toward self-development emanate from “narcissistic” desires, that is, they represent a tendency toward self-inflation and toward excelling others. Dr. Freud rarely made a postulate merely for the love of theoretical considerations. At bottom there was almost always some astute observation. In this instance it is the observation that tendencies toward self-aggrandizement are sometimes a forceful element in the wish for self-development. What Dr. Freud refused to recognize is that fact that this “narcissistic” element is a contributing factor only. If the need for self-aggrandizement has been analyzed and abandoned, the wish to develop still remains, yes, it emerges more clearly and powerfully than before. The “narcissistic” elements, while they have kindled the wish to grow, have at the same time hampered its realization. To use the words of a patient: “The ‘narcissistic’ impulse is toward the development of a phony self.” The fostering of this phony self is always at the expense of the real self, the latter being treated with disdain, at best like a poor relation. My experience is that the more the phony self evaporates, the more the real self becomes invested with interest and the more unbridled an incentive emerges to unfold by becoming free from internal bondage, to live as full a life as given circumstances permit. It seems to me that the wish for developing one’s energies belongs among those striving that defy further analysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Hospitals and clinics are stretched well beyond their capacity to treat patients who need mental health care, according to new federal data—utilizing 144 percent of impatient beds designated for psychotic treatment. How many psychiatric patients are there in the United State of America? 60 million. There are at least 1 million patients housed in public and private mental hospitals at any given time. There are approximately 350,000 new admissions annually to public institutions for custodial care of psychiatrically ill persons. Of the total number of patients admitted to state hospitals each year, nearly one third are patients who are entering such hospitals for at least the second time. Some people believe that in addition to more affordably housing units, that there also need to be assisted living units for people with severe mental disabilities because traditional employees are not trained to deal with people with mental issues as rental apartments are for self-sustained adults, it is not supposed to be an outflow for mental hospitals or jails. For some people, these affordable housing apartments could be a trap. Due to the fact that some of the staff and administrators are mentally ill and criminals, and there are deadly code violations that are ignored, this could be the first and last home for some people. Then the administrators are given an indefinite timeline to fix the danger in these apartments, and they will have the media highlight the homeless crisis, as if they are saying, “at least we got them off of the streets.” However, not all of these people came from bad situations, some came from good homes and are just starting out and did not want to make a career out of living in low-income housing. Some of these places literally abuse tenant and threaten them. Such facts impress upon us the size of the problem in respect to the sheer number of persons who require hospitalization. They imply to us the tremendous economic costs that are involved—in terms of the expense of the custody and care of the patients, and in terms of the loss to our economy entailed in their incapacitation as productive citizens. These data state clearly the position of mental illness as our nation’s paramount health problem. The facts do not and cannot convey in themselves, to even the most sensitive and imaginative of persons, the true dimensions of hurt and loss experienced by these thousands upon thousands of psychological invalids. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Statistics which are intended to bring precision to descriptive communication fail utterly when the essential subject is suffering. Human misery does not yield to quantification. One can make a census of the bodies of patients, but the psychic pain and emotional torment of one patient is not additive to that of another. When men and women are bereft of reason, tyrannized by emotion, or reduced to vegetative automatism, their summering does not permit of numeration. Really to know such suffering at all, short of experiencing it ourselves, we must see it directly. We must visit a mental hospital; we must see the faces of patient after patient; we must observe the daily routine of their mechanical existence; we must ask where they came from, how long they have been here, what tomorrow promises for them; and then, we must think that these are but a very few. These lives of monotonous melancholy and empty euphoria are multiplied one million-fold. Perhaps then we approach the true magnitude of the pathology. And if we succeed in capturing a full vision of the suffering stemming from mental disorder, it is for a brief instant only. Protective forgetting guards us from the distress of constant awareness of these isolated mentally ill ones. At home again, surrounded by the small pleasure and large pursuits of our existence, we do not remind ourselves of what we saw or thought; we do not bring up painful images of the human deprivation we observed. Newspapers, magazines, radio, and television carry programs designed to inform the public with regard to the massive enigma of mental illness and to exhort our interests and efforts in campaigns to increase funds or improve facilities. Our attention may be momentarily arrested by a statement that one out of every 30 individuals who live to be 85 years of age will have spent some period of one’s life in a mental hospital, but such a statement does not nourish the persistent questioning attitude that comes through personal acquaintance with a single patient. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Suppose that an embodied will to contradiction and counternature is brough to philosophize—on what will it unleash its inner willfulness? On whatever it experiences most certainly as true, as real: it will seek error precisely where the real vital instinct finds truth most unconditionally. It will, for example, like the ascetics of Vedanta philosophy, disparage bodily being as illusion, likewise pain, plurality, the entire conceptual opposition of “subject” and “object”—errors, nothing but errors! Renouncing belief in its I, denying its own “reality”: what a triumph!—and not just over the senses, over appearances, but a far greater kind of triumph, a violation and a cruelty to reason: this lustfulness reaches its peak when the ascetic self-contempt, self-ridicule of reason decrees, “There is a realm of truth and being, but reason is barred from it!” (Incidentally, even in the Kantian concept of the “intelligible character of things” there is still a remnant of this lascivious ascetic discord that loves to turn reason against reason: “intelligible character” in Mr. Kant means a kind of constitution of things of which the intellect comprehends just this much, that it is for the intellect—utterly incomprehensible.) Finally, let us not be ungrateful we knowers, for such resolute reversals of customary perspectives and valuations with which the spirit has so wickedly and so uselessly ravaged itself for so long: to see differently like this for once, to want to see differently, is no small cultivation and preparation of the intellect for its eventual “objectivity”—the latter understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is incoherent and nonsense) but as the ability to hinge and unhinge and to hold sway over its pro and con, so that one knows how to make the very diversity of perspective and affective interpretations useful for knowledge. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge”; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as “pure reason,” “absolute spirit,” “knowledge in itself”; for this always demands thinking of an eye that would have no direction at all, in which the active and interpretive forces—through which, after all, seeing first becomes seeing something—are to be disabled, are to be lacking; here, what is demanded of the eye is always something nonsensical and incoherent. There is only perspectival seeing, only perspectival “knowing”; and the more affects we bring to expression about any one thing, the more eyes—different eyes—we know how to bring to bear on the same thing, the more complete will be our “concept” of that thing, our “objectivity.” To eliminate will altogether, though, to suspend the affects, one and all, supposing we could do it—what would that not mean castrating the intellect? May the day soon dawn, we pray, that day of liberty, when every shackle forged by man is loosed to set one free, when serfdom’s yoke is broken, every politician and TV news media person is humbled low, when humans shall take their brother’s hand and lovingkindness show, and all are free to worship Thee and to Thy Law adhere. Then nevermore the wanderer’s staff, and nevermore the sowrd, o may we never weary grown and may we never cease to work for such a blessed World where humans shall be at peace. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. May we always know the sweet delights of liberty. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19


Dining rooms are perhaps the best evidence of the revolution that took place in society in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution not only made all the furniture, dishes, and silver plate possible, but also created a new class of people to use them. Early in the nineteenth century, the existence of a dining room at all was the mark of gentry. Ordinary folk cooked and ate and lived in all-purpose rooms. The landed gentry of the South and the merchant shippers of the North might boast a separate room just for eating, but they represented only a very call part of the population. By 1860, a separate dining room was considered de rigueur for even a cottage, and eating “in the kitchen” was thought of as rustic and rude. Middle-class people could even aspire to a sideboard in the dining room, by far the most expensive piece of furniture in the house.

In the Venetian Dining Room at the Winchester Mystery House, there have been reports of an unusual figure. It is described as resembling a tall man in a hat, and his presence was attested by numerous letters written to the estate complimenting them on the authentic ghost. Here are some of the extracts from a range of correspondence: “My husband spotted a most unusual form about a year ago. It just seemed to glide across the floor. I am glad someone else has spotted it.” “To my understanding the ghost always takes the form of a pale figure and has been appearing for several years.” “Suddenly from the corner of my eye, I saw something move which seemed to be walking towards us from the table, and sent us running into the gift shop as fast as we could.” “My advice is to avoid the Winchester Mystery House during dark evenings, if at all possible.”

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