42
" I had allowed my body to take whatever path it wished. The fact that it was guiding me and not I it gave me great pleasure. I had confidence. The body is not blind unwrought material when bathed in Greek light; it is suffused with abundant soul which makes it phosphoresce, and it left free, it is able to arrive at its own decision and find the correct road without the mind's intervention. Conversely, the soul is not an invisible airy phantom; it has taken on some body's sureness and warmth in its own right, and it savors the world with what you might call carnal pleasure, as though it had a mouth and nostrils and hands with which to caress this world. Man often lacks the persistence to maintain all of his humanity. He mutilates himself. Sometimes he wishes to be released from his soul sometimes from his body. To enjoy both together seems a heavy sentence. But here is Greece these two graceful, deathless elements are able to commingle like hot water with cold, the soul to take something from the body, the body from the soul. They become friends, and thus man, here on Greece's divine threshing floor, is able to live and journey unmutilated, intact. (Report to Greco) "
43
" I had allowed my body to take whatever path it wished. The fact that it was guiding me and not I it gave me great pleasure. I had confidence. The body is not blind unwrought material when bathed in Greek light; it is suffused with abundant soul which makes it phosphoresce, and it left free, it is able to arrive at its own decision and find the correct road without the mind's intervention. Conversely, the soul is not an invisible airy phantom; it has taken on some body's sureness and warmth in its own right, and it savors the world with what you might call carnal pleasure, as though it had a mouth and nostrils and hands with which to caress this world. Man often lacks the persistence to maintain all of his humanity. He mutilates himself. Sometimes he wishes to be released from his soul sometimes from his body. To enjoy both together seems a heavy sentence. But here in Greece these two graceful, deathless elements are able to commingle like hot water with cold, the soul to take something from the body, the body from the soul. They become friends, and thus man, here on Greece's divine threshing floor, is able to live and journey unmutilated, intact. (Report to Greco) "
― N. Kazantzakis
44
" I had allowed my body to take whatever path it wished. The fact that it was guiding me and not I it gave me great pleasure. I had confidence. The body is not blind unwrought material when bathed in Greek light; it is suffused with abundant soul which makes it phosphoresce, and is left free, it is able to arrive at its own decision and find the correct road without the mind's intervention. Conversely, the soul is not an invisible airy phantom; it has taken on some body's sureness and warmth in its own right, and it savors the world with what you might call carnal pleasure, as though it had a mouth and nostrils and hands with which to caress this world. Man often lacks the persistence to maintain all of his humanity. He mutilates himself. Sometimes he wishes to be released from his soul sometimes from his body. To enjoy both together seems a heavy sentence. But here in Greece these two graceful, deathless elements are able to commingle like hot water with cold, the soul to take something from the body, the body from the soul. They become friends, and thus man, here on Greece's divine threshing floor, is able to live and journey unmutilated, intact. (Report to Greco) "
― N. Kazantzakis
49
" If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self sufficiency, yet in supreme Trial or Sacrifice' it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength which, if Heaven gave it may be called his own': for then, in the absence of all merely natural motives and supports he acts in that strength, and that alone, which God confers upon him through his subjected will. Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it. In all other acts our will is fed through nature, that is, through created things other than the self - through the desires which our physical organism and our heredity supply to us. When we act from ourselves alone, that is, from God in ourselves - we are collaborators in, or live instruments of creation: and that is why such an act undoes with 'backward mutters of deserving power' the uncreative spell which Adam laid upon his species. "
― C.S. Lewis , The Problem of Pain
53
" So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews (if I may so put it) are cut, and he has become what Homer calls " a feeble fighter" . "
58
" It is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child's talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts aside his wooden sword, slingshot, bow-and-arrow and other childish games, when he begins to forge ahead, when the seriousness of the work begins to transform the rough-neck into a delicate, serious and an almost ascetic creature, when his face takes on an intelligent, deeper and more purposeful expression - then a teacher's heart laughs with happiness and pride. It is his duty and responsibility to control the raw energies and desires of his charges and replace them with calmer, more moderate ideals. What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools? In young beings there is something wild, ungovernable, uncultured which first has to be tamed. It is like a dangerous flame that has to be controlled or it will destroy. Natural man is unpredictable, opaque, dangerous, like a torrent cascading out of uncharted mountains. At the start, his soul is a jungle without paths or order. And, like a jungle, it must first be cleared and its growth thwarted. Thus it is the school's task to subdue and control man with force and make him a useful member of society, to kindle those qualities in him whose development will bring him to triumphant completion. "
― Hermann Hesse , Beneath the Wheel