ISBN: 2940157817091

It has been the boast of some travel books to contain nothing that can either instruct or improve their readers. The boast is one I should like to make; for a book that entertains by its … More...

It has been the boast of some travel books to contain nothing that can either instruct or improve their readers. The boast is one I should like to make; for a book that entertains by its art alone will always be more welcome than one that forces attention upon its learning or righteousness. Of these qualities, it is true, the following pages are innocent enough. But the motives that prompted the journeys they describe were not so innocent. I have travelled, I must confess, in search of both instruction and improvement. As member of a community, and heir to a culture, whose joint worth is now in dispute, I would discover what ideas, if those of the West be inadequate, can with greater advantage be found to guide the world. And to this end I would also know, in the language of my own senses, in whom and what the world consists. These vast considerations, let me hasten to add, find small place in the present volume. But they are responsible for its general attitude, since it is only from the sum of isolated journeys that even the shadow of an answer to them can ever be expected.A conception of the whole world in terms of personal knowledge is held by contemporary opinion to be not only impossible as an attainment, but contemptible as a goal. Real knowledge, according to this view, is the prerogative of the specialist, and is contained, as it were, in cells to which he alone has access. A specialist has been defined as 'one who grows to know more and more about less and less'; as the cells multiply, the scope of each diminishes and the truth contained in it shrinks correspondingly. To suggest that real knowledge must come from a study not of this or that particular cell, but of the relationship between them all, is to invite ridicule and hostility. For the bureaucracy of the mind, like that of the State, is jealous of those who would scrutinize the harmony of its departments. Yet for some persons there exists an organic harmony between all matter and all activity, whose discovery is the purpose of their lives and whose evidence, being inexhaustible, can only be selected by the good judgement and perpetual curiosity of the individual. From this process derives that most invaluable of human resources, an absolute standard of worth capable of unlimited extension. Digital Content>E-books>Fiction>Fiction>Fiction, WDS Publishing Digital >16<

ISBN: 2940157817091

First Russia, Then Tibet First-Russia-Then-Tibet~~Robert-Byron Fiction>Fiction>Fiction NOOK Book (eBook), WDS Publishing