what is base and what is superficial are on the same level. 'his love is | violent but base': a possible sentence. 'His love is deep but base': an | impossible one. |  | when in this state, I have several times succumbed to the temptation at least | to say words which cause pain. Obedience to the force of gravity. The greatest | sin. Thus we corrupt the function of language, which is to express the | relationship between things. |  | to harm a person is to receive something from him ... to be able to hurt others | with impunity--for instance to pass our anger on to an inferior who is obliged | to be silent--is to spare ourselves from an expenditure of energy, an | expenditure which the other person will have to make. It is the same in the | case of the unlawful satisfaction of any desire. The energy we economize in | this way is immediately debased. |  | The search for equilibrium is bad because it is imaginary. Revenge. Even if in | fact we kill or torture our enemy it is, in a sense, imaginary. |  | tragedy of those who, having been guided by the love of the Good into a road | where suffering has to be endured, after a certain time reach their limit and | become debased. |  | To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is | to imitate the renunciation of God. I also am other than what I imagine myself | to be. To know this is forgiveness. |  | Literature and morality. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied, real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring, real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating. Therefore 'imaginative literature' is either boring or immoral (or a mixture of both). It only secapes from this alternative if in some way it passes over to the side of reality through the power of art--and only genius can do that. |  | What is real in perception and distinguishes it from dreams is not the sensations, but the necessity enshrined in these sensations. |   Why these things and not others? |   Because that is how it is. | In the spiritual life illusion and truth are distinguished in the same way. |   What is real in perception and distinguishes it from dreams is not sensations but necessity. |   There is a distinction between those who remain inside the cave, shutting their eyes and imagining the journey, and those who really take it. In the spiritual realm also we have real and imaginary, and there also it is necessity which makes the difference--not simply suffering, because there are imaginary sufferings. As for inner feelings, nothing is more deceptive. |