R. W. K. Paterson - Patrician Quotes

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Let us now shrink from parodying Hegel, and state that for our patrician 'the romantic is the real, the real the romantic'.

R. W. K. Paterson
Although he [the plebeian] cannot deny that selfless courage and unswerving rectitude—indeed all the qualities of the patrician—exist as dreams in men's minds, his mission is to destroy any belief that they have ever influenced, or ever could influence, the motive, character, and conduct of actual men and women. Whenever such ideals are put before us, he wants us to react to them as simply unbelievable.

R. W. K. Paterson
It is rare to find the ideal of the patrician standing alone, not joining hands, albeit unavoidably and sometimes most reluctantly, with the ideals of very different human types. Even Plato's Guardians, who have had the vision of The Good, are presented first of all as ideals rulers of earthly men, although Plato will soon openly declare that the commonwealth of which they are master is 'set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, to found one in himself, and whether it exists or ever will exist is no matter, for this is the only commonwealth in who politics he can ever take part'.

R. W. K. Paterson
It is nether fortune, status, nor power, nor even intellect, which marks out the Patrician, but intensity of consciousness and the resolve to pursue only what is truly worth pursuing.

R. W. K. Paterson
The history of the plebeians' 'struggles' … is largely a record of mankind's struggle to obtain plebeian things. Better food and housing, better physical health, greater economic security— … none of this forms any part of real human living, but at most merely the means to real living, the inglorious subsoil, not meant to be seen, which we tolerate and accept as an unexciting necessity if worthwhile activities and modes of expression are to grow and blossom. … The patrician mind does not deny such necessities. What distinguishes the plebeian mentality is that it treats necessary things as if they were sufficient and treats means as if they were ends.

R. W. K. Paterson
The patrician … can absolutely distinguish between ends, which are always and everywhere the same, and means, which we adopt only later to adapt, which we unhesitatingly alter and finally reject altogether when a more efficacious means presents itself, and which are thus of their nature expendable.

R. W. K. Paterson
The patrician is recognizable by his passionate idealism. … The material content of our experiences and achievements has value for him only to the extent that it enshrines symbols of beauty and grandeur. He judges events and actions less by their material and social efficacy than by the qualities of mind and character to which they bear witness, because this is where he holds that their truth is to be found, in the romantic kingdom of irrevocable moral fidelities rather than in the calculating republic of material probabilities.

R. W. K. Paterson
The patrician … has the courage to listen to and retain whatever may be glorious in the ambiguous revelations that are being offered to him; he is resolved to miss nothing, to plumb every depth and scale every height, in the pilgrimage of his consciousness.

R. W. K. Paterson
The direction in which to look for the patrician is always upwards. This is because his nature is to aspire, to rise always higher—not necessarily to rise above others but to rise above where he himself has been and above things as he finds them.

R. W. K. Paterson
The true patrician distinguishes always between what he has to concern himself with, from stark necessity or the dictates of duty, and what he (and everyone else) ought ideally to be concerning himself with, in the proper realm to which he rightly belongs.

R. W. K. Paterson
Political power, social prowess, monetary reward, mere physical well-being: towards these things he [the patrician] is indifferent, and perhaps contemptuous, for they have no part to play in a life well lived but can too readily become the food of souls starved of real meaning and achievement. No reasonable creature would waste a single hour of his life pursuing such things for their own sakes. When they figure in our attempts to see what shape our lives may take, they merely obstruct the view.

R. W. K. Paterson
Here, then, we are being given a glimpse of one version of reality. According to this version heroism is an illusion. … The qualities of the patrician are fool's gold, and a reasonable human being, a clear-sighted realist, will seek what is attainable—what other realistic people have already attained and are enjoying—physical security and comfort, social esteem, a changing variety of dependable pleasures, and the money or status which will ensure that all of these remain with reach.

R. W. K. Paterson
Endurance means that failures have to be both accepted and refused: accepted as a sign that fresh efforts now need to be made, and refused as a signal that we may now desist from effort altogether. … Courage means that the external risks and adversities we face (as distinct from or own moral and spiritual failures) are to be assessed at their true importance: that is, for the patrician, as being in themselves of no importance, as objects not of fear but of disdain.

R. W. K. Paterson
The consciousness of the patrician remains open to the symbolisms which surround him. He believes that they may be rungs on a ladder of being which he can ascend. … He has the courage to dwell in their midst and thus to form his life by reference to dimensions of significance which transcend his narrow mundane interests as a physical organism.

R. W. K. Paterson