the nobility of truth

 

Nobility

                Ultimately, the greatness of a man lies exclusively on his courage, and courage is the attitude the man has towards his truth. Insofar as a man puts truth and honesty above all virtues, including love, he is a noble man, a great man, and he alone is worthy of immortality and achieves it. Truth stands for his unique and direct experience of the world, and courage his willingness to live by this view despite the imposition of other views upon him. Courage also is his willingness to sacrifice anything and everything that interferes with his ultimate goal: the greatest man will sacrifice wife, child, society, God, even his own mortal life for the sake of his truth. For his truth is not something he loves or hates, but stands for his I, his eyes, the very basis of his being, the one highest need above all else, his personal experience of the world and the all.

            In Genesis, Abraham tests himself by killing his son, so as to be true to his religious vision. So every man catches glimpses, if not the actual utter proof, for himself, “What is my greatest Truth against which everything else is mere secondary, distraction, and cast-away?” Tragedy, emergency, crisis, and terror will teach you this lesson, insofar as you will not admit it to yourself. This is the narrowing of the soul. The widening of the soul is the same movement, to put great distances between ideas in your heart, to make certain wrong thoughts impossible to think. Also, to see all things in the vertical axis, what is of more power to us, what is less, what is true, what is merely agreeable? Pleasure is our enemy insofar as it asks the smallest damper on truth.

            A woman lives and dies for love, her body is made for love, her breasts and hips made for love. A man lives and dies for truth, gives his truth as a child to the woman, who above all and always is a fighter for truth, primarily, and secondarily, for the application of truth to men, and this is called culture, and higher culture. Love is never sufficient for a man. It is part, but love is not all. It is neither center nor ultimate necessity. Love for the sake of truth. But not truth for the sake of love.