[344F-LER: p. 330]
“ … to love a man is to recognize his individuality. (…) But what is the principle or source of these infinite varieties and individualities that the senses disclose to us? It is nature, whose very essence is diversity and individuality, because it is not, like God, a spiritual, that is, abstract, metaphysical being.” [344F-LER: p. 330]
[345F-LER: p. 334]
“From the standpoint of abstract thinking, already replete with universal propositions, the derivation of the universal from the particular seems irrational and absurd; for in thought the universal appears to be essential and necessary, while the particular appears to be contingent, exceptional , and indifferent.” [345F-LER: p. 334]
[346F-LER: p. 335]
“The brain is the parliament of the universe, in which the generic concept represents the infinitely many individuals for whom the brain has not room enough. But precisely because the generic concept is the representative of individuals, and because when we hear the word ‘individuals,’ we think only of specific individuals, it strikes us as perfectly natural and reasonable - especially if our minds are full of generic concepts and we have become estranged from the perception of reality – to derive the particular from the universal, that is, the real from the abstract, existing things from thought, and nature from God.” [346F-LER: p. 335]
[347F-LER: p. 341]
“ ‘Is there any thing too hard for the Lord?’ – that is, is anything impossible for the imaginative power of the human heart, of human desire?” [347F-LER: p. 341]
[348F-LER: p. 348]
[Footnote:] The phrase, ‘to overcome oneself,’ ‘to transcend oneself,’ finds its explanation in other idioms, such as ‘to outdo oneself.’ Can an individual really outdo himself? Isn’t that which enables me to outdo myself simply my own individual energy and predisposition, which has been released and developed on this particular occasion? But most people mistake phrases for reality.” [348F-LER: p. 348]
[349F-LER: p. 351]
“A Jesuit, we read in the Rule of the Society of Jesus, resists the natural inclination, innate in all men, to have and follow their own judgment … ; he must with blind obedience renounce all opinion and conviction of his own … . To suppress the ‘individual will,’ and hence also voluntary movement, is to suppress life. Like the Jesuit, like the monarchist, the speculative philosopher is the mortal enemy of life, for what he loves above all else is ‘peace and order,’ lest he be disturbed in his ideas; but life is essentially restless, disorderly, anarchic; it can no more be understood by the
