Self and Soul A Defense of Ideals

When does a human being attain the highest state? At what point is
Soul most potently manifest? To these questions, the warrior tradi-
tion off ers an unequivocal answer. The hero is the ultimate man.
He lives for the intensity of being that comes from risking his life
honorably in a high cause. He is whole and complete in himself then,
for he merges perfectly with an ideal. The observing faculty that
makes a human being not one but two dissolves, and the spirit burns
with the light of the stars. (The warrior also becomes thoughtless,
for the ideal takes the place of signifi cant intellection. He does not
ask himself why he acts as he does: the code directs him entirely.)
The wholehearted warrior is rounded in his being, one with Nature,
and at home in the world—or at least so Homer and the heroic tra-
dition tell us.
The saint at her moments of supreme selfl essness also achieves a
perfection of being, which is in a sense a non- being. When she an-
nuls Self to become one with the life that is the world’s life, the saint
arrives at a form of completion. She does not simply understand that
there is “one life within us and abroad.” Understanding is no longer
relevant. She merges with that life and ministers to the being of
others as if it were her own. The nun who goes to live among lepers,

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The Thinker