Your
perfection
is inside of
you.
you.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
Nor will it admit any laws but its
own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love
those who sought to intensity it, and speak often of them. And of these
Christ was one.
'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over
the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written. And the
message of Christ to man was simply 'Be thyself. ' That is the secret of
Christ.
When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as
when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not
developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed
the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel
that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for
a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome
clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage
for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a
view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be
still more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the
material necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our
society is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of
luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus
meant, was this. He said to man, 'You have a wonderful personality.
Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in
accumulating or possessing external things.
Your perfection is inside of
you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich.
Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the
treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that
may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that
external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal
property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual
wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step. It is to
be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily
good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true.
Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more
moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in
the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is
the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of
being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not
through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through
what he is.
own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love
those who sought to intensity it, and speak often of them. And of these
Christ was one.
'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over
the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written. And the
message of Christ to man was simply 'Be thyself. ' That is the secret of
Christ.
When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as
when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not
developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed
the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel
that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for
a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome
clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage
for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a
view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be
still more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the
material necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our
society is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of
luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus
meant, was this. He said to man, 'You have a wonderful personality.
Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in
accumulating or possessing external things.
Your perfection is inside of
you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich.
Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the
treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that
may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that
external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal
property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual
wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step. It is to
be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily
good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true.
Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more
moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in
the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is
the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of
being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not
through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through
what he is.
