A Philosophy of Solitude

Description

(from the Preface) "...this book is intended to be a modern “Encheiridion,” or “Handbook of Contemplation under Difficulties,” and that for this reason the more primitive and concrete, and the less abstract and logical, my metaphysic is, the better for my purpose...What we need in America, where atrocities are so constantly being practised, even by the very officers of the law without exciting any particular surprise, is a philosophy of grim stoical endurance, of precisely that stoical endurance of which the taciturn and formidable race who inhabited this land before we appeared in it seem to have had a full share; and in which our African serfs, who indeed bitterly need it, are not wanting...Let us therefore—even in the midst of our vulgar civilization—sink into our own souls and be alone with that Solitude that can create and destroy without the help of any violence. The power of the individual mind to create its own happiness, from the barest, starkest, simplest surrounding, is something that the early Christian mystics possessed. They had God to fall back upon; but we, if lacking God, have at least the cosmic elements. These great presences have a singular value for that psychic-sensuous contemplation which is the secret of lasting human happiness. When you concentrate upon these things it is as if you were aware of another Dimension through thinner walls than exist anywhere else in the Cosmos, and thus were able to tap some reservoir of unfathomable power, from which a mysterious life-magnetism can pour through your whole being. PREFACE 1. THE SELF AND THE PAST 2. THE SELF ISOLATED 3. THE SELF REALIZED 4. THE SELF AT BAY 5. THE SELF AND “THE SOMETHING THAT INFECTS THE WORLD” 6. THE SELF AND ITS LOVES 7. THE SELF AND THE BITTERNESS OF LIFE