Viewing page 116 of 168

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

248

Monday. Jan. 31  
[[strikethrough]] September 4 [[/strikethrough]]

Quiet day - Finishing up Lucy's portrait - worked a short while on the children. After lunch art shop, to get canvas for U Nu's portrait.

Stayed in bed a few hours till dinner - Read afterwards - retired early.

Tuesday, Feb. 1.
Whitehead's Adventures in Ideas
'In Art the finite consciousness of mankind is appropriating as its own the infinite fecundity of nature.

'Art has a curative function in human experience when it reveals as in a flash intimate, absolute truth regarding the nature of things.

Consciousness, spontaneity & art are closely interconnected. But that Art which arises within clear consciousness is only a specialization of the more widely distributed art within dim consciousness or within the unconscious activities of experience.


249

Whitehead - Adventure in Ideas.  
Jan. 31
[[strikethrough]] September 5 [[/strikethrough]]

"I put forward as a general definitive of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace. 

By the last quality of Peace, I mean a quality of mind steady in its reliance that fine action is treasured in the nature of things.

'The foundation of all understanding of sociological theory, that is to say of all understanding of human life - is that no static maintenance of perfection is possible. This axiom is rooted in the nature of things. Advance or decandence are the only choices offered to mankind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the Universe

-Adventure rarely reaches its predestined end.

'Sometimes adventure is acting within limits.' It can then calculate its end and reach it.

"Given the vigour of adventure, sooner or later the leap of imagination