Ancestor Virtue Quotes

Class never runs scared. It is sure-footed and confident. It can handle anything that comes along. Class has a sense of humor. It knows a good laugh is the best lubricant for oiling the machinery of human relations. Class never makes excuses. It takes its lumps and learns from past mistakes. Class knows that good manners are nothing more than a series of small, inconsequential sacrifices. Class bespeaks an aristocracy that has nothing to do with ancestors or money. Some wealthy “blue bloods” have no class, while individuals who are struggling to make ends meet are loaded with it. Class is real. It can’t be faked. Class never tried to build itself by tearing others down. Class is already up and need not strive to look better by making others look worse. Class can “walk with kings and keep it’s virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch.” Everyone is comfortable with the person who has class because that person is comfortable with himself. If you have class, you’ve got it made. If you don’t have class, no matter what else you have, it doesn’t make any difference.

Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.

We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.

You carry all of us in your heart. We shall live in every breath you take. Every incantation you speak.

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise; and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.

If virtue has a color, it’s the color of the life within us, dancing with every heartbeat. It’s the legacy of our ancestors, the gifts of our parents that we try to live up to

Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor’s accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.

Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the moral foundations of what they are and what they do, they will discover suppressed Nietzschean premises. And consequently it is possible to predict with confidence that in the apparently quite unlikely contexts of bureaucratically managed modern societies there will periodically emerge social movements informed by just that kind of prophetic irrationalism of which Nietzsche's thought is the ancestor. Indeed just because and insofar as contemporary Marxism is Weberian in substance we can expect prophetic irrationalisms of the left as well as of the Right.

Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor’s accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.

Not to grow up properly is to retain our 'caterpillar' quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child's brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science.

While contemporary Christians tend to equate morality with sexual ethics, our ancestors defined morality as welcoming the stranger. Unlike almost every other contested idea in early Christianity, including the nature of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity, the unanimous witness of the ancient fathers and mothers was that hospitality was the primary Christian virtue.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist – a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth’s force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth’s rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers … all these things support, transport and nourish us.

White supremacy is an ideology, a paradigm, an institutional system, and a worldview that you have been born into by virtue of your white privilege.

The good old home habits of our ancestors are breaking up—it will be well if our virtue and our freedom do not follow them!

Reflect, then,” he said, “that your ancestors set up those trophies, not that you may gaze at them in wonder, but that you may also imitate the virtues of the men who set them up.

He wanted, for example, to investigate why one should hold fast to a religion not because it was true but because it was the faith of one’s fathers. Was faith not faith but simple family habit? Maybe there was no true religion but only this eternal handing down. And error could be handed down as easily as virtue. Was faith no more than an error of our ancestors?

And every animal is better or worse from his own merit (virtue) or his own badness. Is there then no virtue in man only? and must we look to the hair, and our clothes and to our ancestors?

And as for the nation, it is obvious that every generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors.

Furthermore—” “There’s a ‘furthermore’?” His voice was utterly inflectionless. “—I’m not a child. I’m a lady born of one of England’s finest and oldest families, and I daresay even you know how to behave in the presence of a lady. Regardless of the inconvenience I’ve caused you, I’ll thank you to remember whatever manners you’ve managed to feign to date, because the ones you’re exhibiting do you no credit and merely reinforce the prevailing opinion, Captain Flint, that you are a savage.” She delighted in giving the S a serpent-like sibilance. “The measure of a gentleman is how he behaves when he hasn’t an audience to witness the beauty of his manners. And I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, my lord, but centuries of fine breeding have ensured that I need not, as you say, exert myself if I choose not to. Only the likes of you equate the actual need to work with virtue. It is in fact due to the work of my ancestors that I no longer need to, and my family considers this a mark of honor.

On the other path stood a sterner goddess in a pure white robe. She made a quieter call. She promised no rewards except those that came as a result of hard work. It would be a long journey, she said. There would be sacrifice. There would be scary moments. But it was a journey fit for a god. It would make him the person his ancestors meant him to be.

Fixed settlements were perhaps inevitable, but they were dangerous. Their ancestors' way of life had been the nobler one, the life of tent-dwellers, often on the move. Nobility and freedom were inseparable, and the nomad was free. In the desert a man was concious of being the lord of the space, and in virtue of that lordship he escaped in a sense from the domination of time. By striking camp he sloughed off his yesterdays; and tomorrow seemed less of a fatality if its where as well as its when had yet to come. But the townsman was a prisoner; and to be fixed in one place, - yesterday, today, tomorrow - was to be a target of time, the ruiner of all things. Towns were places of corruption. Sloth and slovenliness lurked in the shadow of their walls, ready to take an edge off a man's alertness and vigilance. Everything decayed there, even language, one of man's most precious possessions.   

The complexity and freedom that have been thrust upon us, and that our ancestors had fought so hard to achieve, are a challenge we must find ways to master. If we do, the lives of our descendants will be infinitely more enriched than anything previously experienced on this planet. If we do not, we run the risk of frittering away our energies on contradictory, meaningless goals. But in the meantime how do we know where to invest psychic energy? There is no one out there to tell us, “Here is a goal worth spending your life on.” Because there is no absolute certainty to which to turn, each person must discover ultimate purpose on his or her own. Through trial and error, through intense cultivation, we can straighten out the tangled skein of conflicting goals, and choose the one that will give purpose to action. Self-knowledge—an ancient remedy so old that its value is easily forgotten—is the process through which one may organize conflicting options. “Know thyself” was carved over the entrance to the Delphic oracle, and ever since untold pious epigrams have extolled its virtue. The reason the advice is so often repeated is that it works. We need, however, to rediscover afresh every generation what these words mean, what the advice actually implies for each individual. And to do that it is useful to express it in terms of current knowledge, and envision a contemporary method for its application.

Make no mistake, I think my father was Emperor Chickenshit. Finding virtue in him was harder than finding a needle in the Yangtze River. He never spoke a word of kindness or thanks to me, and he sold my chastity for two tea bowls. But, he was my father, and the souls of the ancestors are the responsibility of the descendants. Besides, I wanted a good night’s sleep without his self-pity whining its way into my dreams. Lastly, it would be discourteous of me to spend this life working on the Holy Mountain without once making the pilgrimage to the summit.

Englishmen and Germans are blood brothers, descended from the same stern Woden-worshiping ancestors, blessed with the same rugged virtues, and fired with the same noble ambitions. In a world of diverse and hostile races the joint mission of these virile men is one of union and cooperation with their fellow Teutons in defense of civilization against the onslaughts of all others. There is work to be done by the Teuton. As a unit he must in times to come crush successively the rising power of Slav and Mongolian, preserving for Europe and America the glorious culture that he has evolved.

In what way will a belief in the immortality vouched for by Psychical Research, and in an unknown God, restore to us the virtue and energy of our ancestors? It seems to me that both beliefs, unless reinforced by something else, will be to modern man very shadowy and inoperative. If indeed we knew that God were righteous, that He had purposes for us, that He was the leader in a cosmic battle and that some real issue hung on our conduct in the field, then it would be something to the purpose. Or if, again, the utterances which purport to come from the other world ever had the accent which really suggests another world, ever spoke (as even the inferior actual religions do) with that voice before which our mortal nature trembles with awe or joy,

We have to be born to every higher world; put it more clearly, we have to be bred to it. We have a right to philosophy (taking the word in its finest meaning) only because of our origins — here too, ancestors, 'bloodlines' are decisive. Many generations have to have prepared the ground for the philosopher's development; each of his virtues has to have been acquired, tended, bequeathed, incorporated one by one, and not only the bold, light, delicate step and run of his thoughts, but above all his readiness for great responsibilities, the grandeur of his sovereign gaze and gaze downwards, his feeling of separation from the masses and their duties and virtues, his affable protection and defence of what is misunderstood or maligned, be it God or the devil, his enjoyment and practice of great justice, his art of command, the expanse of his will, his lingering eye that rarely admires, rarely looks up, rarely loves . . .

One cannot erase from a human being’s soul those actions which his ancestors loved most and carried out most steadfastly: whether they were, for example, industrious savers attached to a writing table and money box, modest and bourgeois in their desires, as well as modest in their virtues, or whether they were accustomed to live giving orders from morning until night, fond of harsh entertainment and, along with that, perhaps of even harsher duties and responsibilities; or whether, finally, they had at some time or other once sacrificed the old privileges of their birth and possessions in order to live entirely for their faith — for their “god” — as men of an unrelenting and delicate conscience, which blushes when confronted with any compromise. It is in no way possible that a man does not possess in his body the characteristics and preferences of his parents and forefathers, no matter what appearance might say to the contrary. This is the problem of race.

Nietzsche is the moral philosopher of the present age. For I have already argued that the present age is in its presentation of itself dominantly Weberian, and I have also noticed that Nietzsche’s central thesis was presupposed by Weber’s central categories of thought. Hence Nietzsche’s prophetic irrationalism – irrationalism because Nietzsche’s problems remain unresolved and his solutions defy reason – remains immanent in the Weberian managerial forms of our culture. Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the moral foundations of what they are and what they do, they will discover suppressed Nietzschean premises. And consequently it is possible to predict with confidence that in the apparently quite unlikely contexts of bureaucratically managed modern societies there will periodically emerge social movements informed by just that kind of prophetic irrationalism of which Nietzsche’s thought is the ancestor. Indeed just because and insofar contemporary Marxism is Weberian in substance we can expect prophetic irrationalisms of the left as well as of the Right. So it was was with much student radicalism of the sixties.

There is surely no reason for Western civilization to have guilt trips laid on it by champions of cultures based on despotism, superstition, tribalism, and fanaticism. In this regard the Afrocentrists are especially absurd. The West needs no lectures on the superior virtue of those "sun people" who sustained slavery until Western imperialism abolished it (and sustain it to this day in Mauritania and the Sudan), who keep women in subjection, marry several at once, and mutilate their genitals, who carry out racial persecutions not only against Indians and other Asians but against fellow Africans from the wrong tribes, who show themselves either incapable of operating a democracy or ideologically hostile to the democratic idea, and who in their tyrannies and massacres, their Idi Amins and Boukassas, have stamped with utmost brutality on human rights. Keith B. Richburg, a black newspaperman who served for three years as the Washington Post's bureau chief in Africa, saw bloated bodies floating down a river in Tanzania from the insanity that was Rwanda and thought: "There but for the grace of God go I . . . Thank God my nameless ancestor, brought across the ocean in chains and leg irons, made it out alive . . . Thank God I am an American".

Ultimately there is a rank ordering of spiritual conditions, with which the rank ordering of problems is consistent, and the highest problems shove back without mercy anyone who dares approach them without having been predestined to solve them with the loftiness and power of his spirituality. What help is it if nimble heads of nondescript people or, as happens so often these days, clumsy honest mechanics and empiricists with their plebeian ambition press forward into the presence of such problems and, as it were, up to the “court of courts”! But on such carpets crude feet may never tread: there is still a primeval law of things to look after that: the doors remain closed to these people who push against them, even if they bang or crush their heads against them! One must be born for every lofty world: to put the matter more clearly, one must be cultivated for it: one has a right to philosophy — taking the word in its grand sense — only thanks to one’s descent, one’s ancestors; here, as well, “blood” decides. For a philosopher to arise, many generations must have done the preparatory work. Every single one of his virtues must have been acquired, cared for, passed on, assimilated, and not just the bold, light, delicate walking and running of his thoughts, but, above all, the willingness to take on great responsibilities, the loftiness of the look which dominates and gazes down, the feeling of standing apart from the crowd and its duties and virtues, the affable protecting and defending of what is misunderstood and slandered, whether god or devil, the desire for and practice of great justice, the art of commanding, the breadth of will, the slow eye that seldom admires, seldom looks upward, seldom loves.

Byron’s diabolism, if indeed it deserves the name, was of a mixed type. He shared, to some extent, Shelley’s Promethean attitude, and the Romantic passion for Liberty; and this passion, which inspired his more political outbursts, combined with the image of himself as a man of action to bring about the Greek adventure. And his Promethean attitude merges into a Satanic (Miltonic) attitude. The romantic conception of Milton’s Satan is semi-Promethean, and also contemplates Pride as a virtue. It would be difficult to say whether Byron was a proud man, or a man who liked to pose as a proud man – the possibility of the two attitudes being combined in the same person does not make them any less dissimilar in the abstract. Byron was certainly a vain man, in quite simple ways: I can’t complain, whose ancestors are there, Erneis, Radulphus – eight-and-forty manors (If that my memory doth not greatly err) Were their reward for following Billy’s banners. His sense of damnation was also mitigated by a touch of unreality: to a man so occupied with himself and with the figure he was cutting nothing outside could be altogether real. It is therefore impossible to make out of his diabolism anything coherent or rational. He was able to have it both ways, it seems; and to think of himself both as an individual isolated and superior to other men because of his own crimes, and as a naturally good and generous nature distorted by the crimes committed against it by others. It is this inconsistent creature that turns up as the Giaour, the Corsair, Lara, Manfred and Cain; only as Don Juan does he get nearer to the truth about himself. But in this strange composition of attitudes and beliefs the element that seems to me most real and deep is that of a perversion of the Calvinist faith of his mother’s ancestors.

It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether, finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith—for their "God,"—as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes at every compromise. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents, it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy self-vaunting—the three things which together have constituted the genuine plebeian type in all times—such must pass over to the child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture one will only succeed in DECEIVING with regard to such heredity.—And what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" MUST be essentially the art of deceiving—deceiving with regard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you are!"—even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what results? "Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET.

One cannot erase from a human being's soul those actions which his ancestors loved most and carried out most steadfastly: whether they were, for example, industrious savers attached to a writing table and money box, modest and bourgeois in their desires, as well as modest in their virtues, or whether they were accustomed to live giving orders from morning until night, fond of harsh entertainment and, along with that, perhaps of even harsher duties and responsibilities; or whether, finally, they had at some time or other once sacrificed the old privileges of their birth and possessions in order to live entirely for their faith ― their "God" ― as men of an unrelenting and delicate conscience, which blushes when confronted with any compromise. It is in no way possible that a man does not possess in his body the characteristics and preferences of his parents and forefathers, no matter what appearance might say to the contrary. This is the problem of race. If we know something about the parents, then we may draw a conclusion about the child: some unpleasant excess or other, some lurking envy, a crude habit of self-justification ―as these three together have at all times made up the essential type of the rabble― something like that must be passed onto the child as surely as corrupt blood, and with the help of the best education and culture people will succeed only in deceiving others about such heredity. And nowadays what else does education and culture want! In our age, one very much of the people - I mean to say our uncouth age ―"education" and "culture" must basically be the art of deception― to mislead about the origin of the inherited rabble in one's body and soul. Today an educator who preached truthfulness above everything else and constantly shouted at his students "Be true! Be natural! Act as you really are!" ― even such a virtuous and true-hearted jackass would after some time learn to take hold of that furca [pitchfork] of Horace, in order to naturam expellere [drive out nature]. With what success? "Rabble" usque recurret [always returns].

And by the end of March one of them had already begun his journey. Twenty-two years old, an A.B. and LL.B. of Harvard, Francis Parkman was back from a winter trip to scenes in Pennsylvania and Ohio that would figure in his book and now he started with his cousin, Quincy Adams Shaw, for St. Louis. He was prepared to find it quite as alien to Beacon Hill as the Dakota lands beyond it, whither he was going. He was already an author (a poet and romancer), had already designed the great edifice his books were to build, and already suffered from the mysterious, composite illness that was to make his life a long torture. He hoped, in fact, that a summer on the prairies might relieve or even cure the malady that had impaired his eyes and, he feared, his heart and brain as well. He had done his best to cure it by systematic exercise, hard living in the White Mountains, and a regimen self-imposed in the code of his Puritan ancestors which would excuse no weakness. But more specifically Parkman was going west to study the Indians. He intended to write the history of the conflict between imperial Britain and imperial France, which was in great part a story of Indians. The Conspiracy of Pontiac had already taken shape in his mind; beyond it stretched out the aisles and transepts of what remains the most considerable achievement by an American historian. So he needed to see some uncorrupted Indians in their native state. It was Parkman’s fortune to witness and take part in one of the greatest national experiences, at the moment and site of its occurrence. It is our misfortune that he did not understand the smallest part of it. No other historian, not even Xenophon, has ever had so magnificent an opportunity: Parkman did not even know that it was there, and if his trip to the prairies produced one of the exuberant masterpieces of American literature, it ought instead to have produced a key work of American history. But the other half of his inheritance forbade. It was the Puritan virtues that held him to the ideal of labor and achievement and kept him faithful to his goal in spite of suffering all but unparalleled in literary history. And likewise it was the narrowness, prejudice, and mere snobbery of the Brahmins that insulated him from the coarse, crude folk who were the movement he traveled with, turned him shuddering away from them to rejoice in the ineffabilities of Beacon Hill, and denied our culture a study of the American empire at the moment of its birth. Much may rightly be regretted, therefore. But set it down also that, though the Brahmin was indifferent to Manifest Destiny, the Puritan took with him a quiet valor which has not been outmatched among literary folk or in the history of the West.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders―and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands―parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion―shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development―the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself―is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that:―the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders - and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands - parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion - shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development - the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself - is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that: - the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

Every ritual repetition of the cosmogony is preceded by a symbolic retrogression to Chaos. In order to be created anew, the old world must first be annihilated. The various rites performed in connection with the New Year can be put in two chief categories: (I) those that signify the return to Chaos (e.g., extinguishing fires, expelling 'evil' and sins, reversal of habitual behavior, orgies, return of the dead); (2) those that symbolize the cosmogony (e.g., lighting new fires, departure of the dead, repetition of the acts by which the Gods created the world, solemn prediction of the weather for the ensuing year). In the scenario of initiatory rites, 'death' corresponds to the temporary return to Chaos; hence it is the paradigmatic expression of the end of a mode of being the mode of ignorance and of the child's irresponsibility. Initiatory death provides the clean slate on which will be written the successive revelations whose end is the formation of a new man. We shall later describe the different modalities of birth to a new, spiritual life. But now we must note that this new life is conceived as the true human existence, for it is open to the values of spirit. What is understood by the generic term 'culture,' comprising all the values of spirit, is accessible only to those who have been initiated. Hence participation in spiritual life is made possible by virtue of the religious experiences released during initiation. All the rites of rebirth or resurrection, and the symbols that they imply, indicate that the novice has attained to another mode of existence, inaccessible to those who have not undergone the initiatory ordeals, who have not tasted death. We must note this characteristic of the archaic mentality: the belief that a state cannot be changed without first being annihilated-in the present instance, without the child's dying to childhood. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this obsession with beginnings, which, in sum, is the obsession with the absolute beginning, the cosmogony. For a thing to be well done, it must be done as it was done the first time. But the first time, the thing-this class of objects, this animal, this particular behavior-did not exist: when, in the beginning, this object, this animal, this institution, came into existence, it was as if, through the power of the Gods, being arose from nonbeing. Initiatory death is indispensable for the beginning of spiritual life. Its function must be understood in relation to what it prepares: birth to a higher mode of being. As we shall see farther on, initiatory death is often symbolized, for example, by darkness, by cosmic night, by the telluric womb, the hut, the belly of a monster. All these images express regression to a preformal state, to a latent mode of being (complementary to the precosmogonic Chaos), rather than total annihilation (in the sense in which, for example, a member of the modern societies conceives death). These images and symbols of ritual death are inextricably connected with germination, with embryology; they already indicate a new life in course of preparation. Obviously, as we shall show later, there are other valuations of initiatory death-for example, joining the company of the dead and the Ancestors. But here again we can discern the same symbolism of the beginning: the beginning of spiritual life, made possible in this case by a meeting with spirits. For archaic thought, then, man is made-he does not make himself all by himself. It is the old initiates, the spiritual masters, who make him. But these masters apply what was revealed to them at the beginning of Time by the Supernatural Beings. They are only the representatives of those Beings; indeed, in many cases they incarnate them. This is as much as to say that in order to become a man, it is necessary to resemble a mythical model.

We see three men standing around a vat of vinegar. Each has dipped his finger into the vinegar and has tasted it. The expression on each man's face shows his individual reaction. Since the painting is allegorical, we are to understand that these are no ordinary vinegar tasters, but are instead representatives of the "Three Teachings" of China, and that the vinegar they are sampling represents the Essence of Life. The three masters are K'ung Fu-tse (Confucius), Buddha, and Lao-tse, author of the oldest existing book of Taoism. The first has a sour look on his face, the second wears a bitter expression, but the third man is smiling. To Kung Fu-tse (kung FOOdsuh), life seemed rather sour. He believed that the present was out step with the past, and that the government of man on earth was out of harmony with the Way of Heaven, the government of, the universe. Therefore, he emphasized reverence for the Ancestors, as well as for the ancient rituals and ceremonies in which the emperor, as the Son of Heaven, acted as intermediary between limitless heaven and limited earth. Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time. A saying was recorded about K'ung Fu-tse: "If the mat was not straight, the Master would not sit." This ought to give an indication of the extent to which things were carried out under Confucianism. To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering. The world was seen as a setter of traps, a generator of illusions, a revolving wheel of pain for all creatures. In order to find peace, the Buddhist considered it necessary to transcend "the world of dust" and reach Nirvana, literally a state of "no wind." Although the essentially optimistic attitude of the Chinese altered Buddhism considerably after it was brought in from its native India, the devout Buddhist often saw the way to Nirvana interrupted all the same by the bitter wind of everyday existence. To Lao-tse (LAOdsuh), the harmony that naturally existed between heaven and earth from the very beginning could be found by anyone at any time, but not by following the rules of the Confucianists. As he stated in his Tao To Ching (DAO DEH JEENG), the "Tao Virtue Book," earth was in essence a reflection of heaven, run by the same laws - not by the laws of men. These laws affected not only the spinning of distant planets, but the activities of the birds in the forest and the fish in the sea. According to Lao-tse, the more man interfered with the natural balance produced and governed by the universal laws, the further away the harmony retreated into the distance. The more forcing, the more trouble. Whether heavy or fight, wet or dry, fast or slow, everything had its own nature already within it, which could not be violated without causing difficulties. When abstract and arbitrary rules were imposed from the outside, struggle was inevitable. Only then did life become sour. To Lao-tse, the world was not a setter of traps but a teacher of valuable lessons. Its lessons needed to be learned, just as its laws needed to be followed; then all would go well. Rather than turn away from "the world of dust," Lao-tse advised others to "join the dust of the world." What he saw operating behind everything in heaven and earth he called Tao (DAO), "the Way." A basic principle of Lao-tse's teaching was that this Way of the Universe could not be adequately described in words, and that it would be insulting both to its unlimited power and to the intelligent human mind to attempt to do so. Still, its nature could be understood, and those who cared the most about it, and the life from which it was inseparable, understood it best.

For Adams, the American Revolution was about independence from Great Britain and what he called the “Purification” of America—the eradication of “Vices” left over from British rule and “an Augmentation of our Virtues.” The foremost vice, which had provoked resentment in Adams throughout his adult life, and especially once he became a successful Boston lawyer, was that a handful of old, wealthy families monopolized important offices. Sometimes, one individual held numerous high offices. Adams thought that merit, not old money or ties to the powerful in London, should be the basis of holding office. Furthermore, it was bad enough to see his ambitions blocked by the scions of those “opulent, monopolizing” clans, but he was enraged by the “Scorn and Contempt and turning up of the Nose” that these people exhibited toward an accomplished and educated man like himself who descended from the “common People.” More than a decade before the Declaration of Independence, Adams said that those who rode the coattails of their “Ancestors’ Merit” had no right “to inherit the earth… . All men are created equal.

Maybe Ruth, steeped in a disgusting culture, looked upon the way of life of her mother in law as something worth giving up everything for.  Or maybe she saw that she wasn’t giving up anything worth having in the first place!  In any event, she left the life of her youth and became a part of a foreign culture.  Her virtue attracted the attention of a wealthy man who redeemed her, and she became an ancestor of both King David and the promised Messiah.[52]

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.

In Confucian thought, filial piety-a love and respect for one's parents and ancestors-is a virtue to be cultivated. More broadly, "filial piety means to take care of one parents; not be rebellious; show love, respect and support; display courtesy; ensure male heirs; uphold fraternity among brothers; wisely advise one parents; conceal their mistakes; display sorrow for their sickness and death; and carry out sacrifices after their death. Confucius believed that if people could learn to fulfill their filial roles properly they would be better able to perform their roles in society and government.

Identity politics thus engenders its own dynamic, by which societies divide themselves into smaller and smaller groups by virtue of their particular “lived experience” of victimization. Confusion over identity arises as a condition of living in the modern world. Modernization means constant change and disruption, and the opening up of choices that did not exist before. It is mobile, fluid, and complex. This fluidity is by and large a good thing: over generations, millions of people have been fleeing villages and traditional societies that do not offer them choices, in favor of ones that do. But the freedom and degree of choice that exist in a modern liberal society can also leave people unhappy and disconnected from their fellow human beings. They find themselves nostalgic for the community and structured life they think they have lost, or that their ancestors supposedly once possessed. The authentic identities they are seeking

Treating one culture as the embodiment of virtue and giving it government sponsorship ends up rigidifying cultural practices and places emphasis on the wrong thing—on the culture rather than the virtues it supposedly embodies. It turns into a kind of ancestor worship in which we revere and try to emulate or “get back to” the practices of previous generations under the assumption that because their ways et down the template we inherited, they must be closer to true, unspoiled virtue. Worst of all, this approach treats other cultural embodiments as inherently less valuable and intrinsically less capable of virtue, which treats the people of other cultures as second-class citizens while simultaneously cutting us off from new cultural resources from which we might grow and learn.

A few centuries ago, the government of this country became interested in enforcing certain desirable behaviors in its citizens. There had been studies that indicated that violent tendencies could be partially traced to a person’s genes—a gene called ‘the murder gene’ was the first of these, but there were quite a few more, genetic predispositions toward cowardice, dishonesty, low intelligence—all the qualities, in other words, that ultimately contribute to a broken society.” We were taught that the factions were formed to solve a problem, the problem of our flawed natures. Apparently the people David is describing, whoever they were, believed in that problem too. I know so little about genetics—just what I can see passed down from parent to child, in my face and in friends’ faces. I can’t imagine isolating a gene for murder, or cowardice, or dishonesty. Those things seem too nebulous to have a concrete location in a person’s body. But I’m not a scientist. “Obviously there are quite a few factors that determine personality, including a person’s upbringing and experiences,” David continues, “but despite the peace and prosperity that had reigned in this country for nearly a century, it seemed advantageous to our ancestors to reduce the risk of these undesirable qualities showing up in our population by correcting them. In other words, by editing humanity. “That’s how the genetic manipulation experiment was born. It takes several generations for any kind of genetic manipulation to manifest, but people were selected from the general population in large numbers, according to their backgrounds or behavior, and they were given the option to give a gift to our future generations, a genetic alteration that would make their descendants just a little bit better.” I look around at the others. Peter’s mouth is puckered with disdain. Caleb is scowling. Cara’s mouth has fallen open, like she is hungry for answers and intends to eat them from the air. Christina just looks skeptical, one eyebrow raised, and Tobias is staring at his shoes. I feel like I am not hearing anything new—just the same philosophy that spawned the factions, driving people to manipulate their genes instead of separating into virtue-based groups. I understand it. On some level I even agree with it. But I don’t know how it relates to us, here, now.

[M]orality is not ‘‘something altogether new on the face of the Earth.’’ It is not an invention de novo. Homo sapiens, presumably like their extinct social ancestors, as well as certain closely related species, such as chimps and bonobos, possess instincts and emotions that are ‘‘protomoral,’’ by which I simply mean that we possess the germs, at least, of the virtues of sympathy, compassion, fidelity, and courage. There is no ‘‘skyhook" being imputed here. We didn’t create the relevant instincts and emotions. Natural selection did. We are endowed with these instincts and feelings thanks to a craning operation that began with unicellular organisms.

The Lord justified and sanctified the line of His forefathers. Likewise, every one of us, if we follow Christ, can justify ourselves in our individual being, having restored the Divine image in us through total repentance, and by so doing can help to justify our own forefathers. We bear in ourselves the legacy of the sins of our ancestors; and, by virtue of the ontological unity of the human race, healing for us means healing for them, too. We are so interjoined that man does not save himself alone.

There had been Seligmans in Baiersdorf for over a century. Theirs had been a family name long before Napoleon had decreed that Germany’s Jews no longer needed to be known as “sons” of their fathers’ names—Moses ben Israel, and so on. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century tombstones in Baiersdorf’s Jewish cemetery recorded the upright virtues of many of David’s ancestors, all named Seligman (“Blessed man” in German).

We need patriotism, yes we do, but not the one practiced by our ancestors. We need a civilized patriotism, one that is devoid of all sectarianism and cultural supremacy. We gotta be patriotic towards humanity, not nationality - we gotta be patriotic for justice and equality, not supremacy - we gotta be patriotic for inclusion, not the exclusive sustenance of our own dignity at the expense of the dignity of others. We need a patriotism where there is no us and them - we need a patriotism where there is no lord and laymen - we need a patriotism where there is no savior and subject - we need a patriotism where our savior is our sense of virtue - we need a patriotism where our queen is our accountability - we need a patriotism where our constitution and gospel are our own conscience. I am loyal to no state, no palace, no vatican - my loyalty is to the elevation of the fallen, my loyalty is to invigoration of the discriminated - thus speaks the civilized patriot - thus speaks the real life human being.

Why would he dream about his poor, driven, sad mother now? That was easy. His mother was the only one he loved in his family. And he loved her because she was tormented by her psychological disabilities but was not undone by them. She made him think of a moth inside a windstorm. There was a deep-seated fear that never left her eyes, and a suppressed tension wrapped so tight inside her that she constantly knotted her hands and squeezed her fingernails into the heels. People who claimed to be her friends openly admitted they could not be around her for more than two hours. She in turn told Francis he was the only friend she had in the whole world, and that he should not trust others and that he should model himself on the virtues of his gunfighter ancestors. But she never defined those virtues

Heart surgery, space travel, and comic opera all depend on advances that would have amazed our distant ancestors. More important from an evolutionary point of view, however, they also depend on capacities for a quite exceptional ability to work together, including tolerance, trust, and understanding. Those are some of the qualities that cause our species to be thought of as exceptionally “good.” In short, a great oddity about humanity is our moral range, from unspeakable viciousness to heartbreaking generosity. From a biological perspective, such diversity presents an unsolved problem. If we evolved to be good, why are we also so vile? Or if we evolved to be wicked, how come we can also be so benign?

Nietzsche is the moral philosopher of the present age. For I have already argued that the present age is in its presentation of itself dominantly Weberian; and I have also noticed that Nietzsche’s central thesis was presupposed by Weber’s central categories of thought. Hence Nietzsche’s prophetic irrationalism —irrationalism because Nietzsche’s problems remain unresolved and his solutions defy reason—remains immanent in the Weberian managerial forms of our culture. Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the moral foundations of what they are and what they do, they will discover suppressed Nietzschean premises. And consequently, it is possible to predict with confidence that in the apparently quite unlikely contexts of bureaucratically managed modern societies there will periodically emerge social movements informed by just that kind of prophetic irrationalism of which Nietzsche’s thought is the ancestor. Indeed just because and insofar as contemporary Marxism is Weberian in substance we can expect prophetic irrationalisms of the Left as well as of the Right. So it was with much student radicalism of the sixties.

Of the seven Archons that had combined to form the Milky Way mind, Orion had been the Archon whose verve and remorseless drive inspired and frightened and tempted the others into cooperation. Of the twenty-five Authorities forming the long-lost Orion Arm, the Benedictine was the most significant and influential of the ancient forefathers. The Benedictines were combination of three Dominions, issuing from the Collective at the Praesepe Cluster, the Abstraction at Orion Nebula, and the Empyrean at the Hyades Cluster. The Empyreans issued from a world called Eden, allegedly outside Hyades itself, and had displaced the original inhabitants of Hyades, a rude confederation of Virtues, Hosts, and races who names even devout paleohistorians could not with certainty invoke. Occupying the debris of the oldest archival strata were traces of the legendary founder of this Domination, an Empyrean called the Judge of Ages. He was the direct lineal ancestor of the memory chains of the last-known warlord of the Milky Way. Variations of him existed everywhere, of course; he was the base template for nearly every emissary form known in the Milky Way, and the founder of the Count-to-Infinity cliometric which had replaced the Cold Equations of the Interregnum. But such emissaries had been sent to Andromeda and rejected, even destroyed. No recent version of the countless copies would do, nor was there time to send to the core of the Milky Way, where the vast warlord Archon was last known to have been active. Once of the necromancers—call her Alcina—sought his ghost where others had overlooked, in one of the oldest archives, well preserved, amid the Austerity of the Cygnus Arm. Alcina reconstructed him, mind and body, comparing this core to many other records, carefully parsing away amendments and mythical excrescences of later editors. And Menelaus Montrose came to life once more, swearing.

At least,' I said, 'she has the virtue of sincerity.' 'Some virtue! They've all got it. They show off quite shamelessly for everybody—except themselves, of course—to see. In our trade, we say a succulent abscess or a magnificent case of eczema; similarly, they proudly exhibit their sick organs under all manner of garbs. A man who makes a plate or a shirt or a loaf of bread or anything our great great ancestors called a work of art, has no need to try to be sincere; all he can do is practice his craft to the best of his ability. But once he starts making useless things, how can he not be sincere? I'm using the word in the somewhat weird sense that you yourself seem to understand it.)

In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived, many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain-lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

It is significant that in most languages there is a single word for the essential virtue regarding both of these two relationships, which are the only two relationships where we cannot pay all that is owed. The word is “piety” (pietas). It means honor to both ancestors and God, the authors of our life.

In this latter sense the Buddha has defined trivial talk. He said: If the mind of a monk inclines to talking, he should think thus: “I shall not engage in the low kind of talk that is vulgar, worldly and unprofitable; that does not lead to detachment, dispassionateness, cessation, tranquility, direct knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana; namely talk about kings, thieves, ministers, armies, famine and war; about eating, drinking, clothing and lodgings; about garlands, perfumes, relatives, vehicles, villages, towns, cities and countries; about women and wine, the gossip of the street and the well, talk about ancestors, about various trifles, tales about the origins of the world and the sea, talk about things being so or otherwise, and similar matters.” Thus he has clear comprehension. “But talk that is helpful for leading the austere life, useful for mental clarity, that leads to complete detachment, dispassionateness, cessation, tranquility, direct knowledge, enlightenment and Nibbana; that is talk on frugality, contentedness, solitude, seclusion, application of energy, virtue, concentration, wisdom, deliverance and on the knowledge and vision bestowed by deliverance—in such talk shall I engage.” Thus he has clear comprehension.

Despite Gentile’s disagreement with Marx about historical inevitability, he has at this point clearly broken with modern conservatism and classical liberalism and revealed himself to be a man of the Left. Gentile was, in fact, a lifelong socialist. Like Marx, he viewed socialism as the sine qua non of social justice, the ultimate formula for everyone paying their “fair share.” For Gentile, fascism is nothing more than a modified form of socialism, a socialism arising not merely from material deprivation but also from an aroused national consciousness, a socialism that unites rather than divides communities. Gentile also perceived fascism emerging out of revolutionary struggle, what the media today terms “protest” or “activism.” Unlike Marx, he conceived the struggle not between the working class and the capitalists, but between the selfish individual trying to live for himself and the fully actualized individual who willingly puts himself at the behest of society and the state. Gentile seems to be the unacknowledged ancestor of the street activism of Antifa and other leftist groups. “One of the major virtues of fascism,” he writes, “is that it obliged those who watched from their windows to come down into the street.

Knowing this huge flaw of cognizance’s stirring from the ground, transforming into the mental consciousness, and thus serving as the support of karma and latent tendencies through associating with the great demons of apprehender and apprehended—I, Samantabhadra, did not commit even the minutest particle of contaminated virtue but was awakened as the ancestor of all buddhas.

Since these questions are not to be considered, it means that that white laborer is to be charged with collective racial guilt, the guilt consisting merely of the color of his skin. But that is the principle of the worst Southern racist who charges all Negroes with collective racial guilt for any crime committed by an individual Negro, and who treats them all as inferiors on the ground that their ancestors were savages.

Achilles is no ancestor, nine hundred years gone. He strides here, this instant, in my heart.

In this, the first of his many political speeches, he speaks to them of the practices they have inherited from their ancestors and of their own situation. According to Cyrus, they are now in a position to avoid their ancestors’ mistake of failing to put those worthy practices to any use: 'I have observed that our forefathers were no worse than we are: they too persevered in practicing what are held to be deeds of virtue. But what good thing they acquired through being men of this sort, either for the Persian commonwealth or themselves, this I am no longer able to see.' Cyrus tacitly treats the preservation of the Persian regime and the Persian way of life as worthless. The good things he has in mind are precisely those which Persia does not provide: 'much wealth, much happiness, and great honors' for oneself and one’s country. […] Xenophon has no need to indicate here the reaction of the peers who heard this speech: the whole rest of the book is the indication. The peers, with perhaps an occasional exception, acquiesced not only in Cyrus’ rearming of the commoners but in his many other steps, and they did so despite the grave political consequences of each step by itself and all of them taken together. The reason is not that they were so foolish as to have no awareness of those consequences. It is to be found in the effect on them of Cyrus’ speech. Their hearts, and therefore also their minds, were no longer set on a return home, to their ancestral way of life, but on partaking of the great prospects Cyrus’ words had opened their eyes to.

We need patriotism, yes we do, but not the one practiced by our ancestors. We need a civilized patriotism, one that is devoid of all sectarianism and cultural supremacy. We gotta be patriotic towards humanity, not nationality - we gotta be patriotic for justice and equality, not supremacy - we gotta be patriotic for inclusion, not the exclusive sustenance of our own dignity at the expense of the dignity of others. We need a patriotism where there is no us and them - we need a patriotism where there is no lord and laymen - we need a patriotism where there is no savior and subject - we need a patriotism where our savior is our sense of virtue - we need a patriotism where our queen is our accountability - we need a patriotism where our constitution and gospel are our own conscience.

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

Haidt and his colleagues call this idea “moral foundations theory.” [4] Drawing on evolutionary biology, cultural psychology, and several other fields, they show that beliefs about morality stand on five pillars: Care/harm: Children are more vulnerable than the offspring of other animals, so humans devote considerable time and effort to protecting them. As a result, evolution has instilled in us the ethic of care. Those who nurture and defend the vulnerable are kind; those who hurt them are cruel. Fairness/cheating: Our success as a species has always hinged on cooperation, including exchanges that evolutionary scientists call “reciprocal altruism.” That means we value those whom we can trust and disdain those who breach our trust. Loyalty/disloyalty: Our survival depends not only on our individual actions, but also on the cohesiveness of our group. That’s why being true to your team, sect, or nation is respected—and forsaking your tribe is usually reviled. Authority/subversion: Among primates, hierarchies nourish members and protect them from aggressors. Those who undermine the hierarchy can place everyone in the group at risk. When this evolutionary impulse extends to human morality, traits like deference and obedience toward those at the top become virtues.[5] Purity/desecration: Our ancestors had to contend with all manner of pathogens—from Mycobacterium tuberculosis to Mycobacterium leprae—so their descendants developed the capacity to avoid them along with what’s known as a “behavioral immune system” to guard against a broader set of impurities such as violations of chastity. In the moral realm, write one set of scholars, “purity concerns uniquely predict (beyond other foundations and demographics such as political ideology) culture-war attitudes about gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion, and pornography.” [6] Moral foundations theory doesn’t say that care is more important than purity or that authority is more important than fairness or that you should follow one set of foundations instead of another. It simply catalogs how humans assess the morality of behavior. The theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. But its descriptive power is considerable. Not only did it reshape my understanding of both human reasoning and modern politics; it also offered an elegant way to interpret our moral regrets.

immortal words of Lincoln nurtured and guarded by a grateful people, this spot for all time to come cannot be other than the nation’s shrine of American virtue, valor and freedom. Here will posterity receive the same inspiration that prompted their ancestors to dare, to do and to die, for the perpetuity of the inestimable blessings that shall have come down to them.

Is one's homeland the place where a person evolves into life, or is that a choice made in adulthood, as one chooses a fateful name? Perhaps it is also your memory, Father Raven,that plays tricks on me, and the land that was given to my mind's eye is not all the homeland where our ancestors lived. Am I entitled to call my island "home," even though I do not live in it permanently? Even though from sun cycle to sun cycle it becomes more of a dream? I am flooded with another person's nostalgia, captive to the visions that insist on visiting me. A fictitious homeland. A longed-for land that never was. If land is not property, then anywhere may be considered a homeland, and the Jewish tribe may therefore adopt the island even without a deed of ownership. The Jew is free to settle in whichever land he desires. Why, then does he insist on drawing borders for himself, when he has already managed to obtain a measure of power that I will never achieve? Perhaps that is the Jewish tribe's virtue: they have turned their foreignness into a javelin.

What have our ancestors been striving for, under the name of civil liberty, for the last five hundred years? They have been striving to bring it about that each man and woman might live out his or her life according to his or her own notions of happiness and up to the measure of his or her own virtue and wisdom. How

Confucius believed that through self-cultivation, one can mold one's character because it is plastic and malleable. Virtue does not come from one's natural ability or innate capacity, but from one's single-minded effort and disciplined practice. Work is therefore not an expression of an individual's own passions and values, but of one's persistent dedication to loving one's family and community.

From our ancestors come our names, but from our virtues come our honours.

In the United States, minimal virtues plus basic health are all you need to avoid poverty. You live in one of the freest and most prosperous countries on the planet. You’re not likely to die from thirst, starvation, or the countless water-and airborne diseases that tormented our ancestors. Given this blessing, if you’re thankful, courteous, thrifty, punctual, honest, and hardworking; graduate from college or trade school; seek employment where it may be found; wait until you’re married to have kids; stay married; don’t commit felonies; and don’t abuse drugs or alcohol, you’re sure to end up far better off than most people in history and easily in the top 10 or 15 percent of the global population.

The fact that someone would get a panic attack in the grocery store while our ancestors stormed the beaches of Normandy? That’s heroism. Whatever virtue-signaling people do on the internet nowadays isn’t heroism. It’s a narcissistic quest for collective validation, he convinced me.

Babur was more than ordinarily ruthless. He pursued to the limit the concept of Jihad- a total war for the annihilation of his adversaries as prescribed by Islam of which he was a practitioner. He was a product of his age and environment, and that is exactly how we must see him. Whitewashing his blood-soaked record to turn him into a figure of chivalry and prince charming is an exercise in juvenile fantasy. Babur saw ruthlessness as a virtue, and terror as a useful tactical tool. In this he was a true descendant of Timur and Chengiz Khan- both of whom were his ancestors. Guru Nanak's eyewitness account gives a better picture of Babur and his methods than almost any modern history book. The same holds true for the Baburnama: it is a primary source of great importance that goes to demolish romantic tales about him.- NS Rajaram quoted in Rushdie's book.