The world cannot be mastered, but it can be known in part. History cannot be known, but it can in part be mastered.

The world is everything that is the case.
History is everything that happens.
God is doing all He can.

________
Note: Pith has taken precedence over precision. Things are to the world as people are to history, and being is to things as becoming is to people, so history isn't everything that happens so much as it becomes everyone who happens or, better, everyone who happens becomes history. Or, we might say, history happens to everyone. Also, seeing is to doing as the world is to history. The last line could read, "All-seeing God is doing all He can."

The lyric is to the aphorism as the lyre is to the lamp.

An image is what a thought feels like, who the feeling thinks of.

The Question

Is it nobler to suffer in the mind or to trouble the arms?

PS: The mind's eye. The heart's hand.

The image is a concept backed like an emotion.

The Human Factor

The facts don't make themselves known,
nor do our acts master themselves.

Between the rational,
and the hysterical,
our reasons and passions
find their composure.

Poets do not tell you what they feel. They show you how they feel. Philosophers don't tell you what they think, but show you how they do it.

No one can tell you what to think or feel. But some can help you do it better. Our poets make us feel better. Philsophers make us think better.

It's not that they give us better thoughts or better feelings. They hone our concepts and emotions, to make our minds and hearts precise.

"Haven't you tried long enough to understand? Isn't it time, perhaps, to obey?"

The poet arranges strophes to present an emotion. The philosopher arranges remarks to present a concept.

The philosopher makes you think, not so that you'll believe anything in particular, but in order to clarify the concept. The poet makes you feel, not so that you'll desire anyone in particular, but in order to intensify the emotion.

Both articulate our experience. They join us more precisely to it.

Poetry is to politics as philosophy is to science. It is not political philosophy that we need, but a poetics of policy.

We cannot understand the ontology of social science, but we must obey the ethnopathy of social policy.

Money is the fact of value. A price is the value of a fact.

Because ideologues don't really understand the things they believe, they expect others to do the same.

If everyone were decent, tyranny would be impossible. If everyone were honest, genius would be unnecessary.