To neither lose one’s receptivity nor to lose oneself in it: uncompromising enforcement of the law of reason on all, most of all oneself.

*

“Reason? Why?”

Because it is reasonable.

“But that’s circular.”

It is the greatest circle. It is certainly more expansive than the tiny, skull’s-breadth circuit you’ll spin within if you try to move in your own straight line on your own flat terrain.

*

Reason is essentially experimental, not logically deductive. To know a thing means interactive fluency. To understand it means to take part, to participate — to become part of an exceeding whole.

*

Reason is 90 parts ethics, 4 parts ontology, 3 parts rhetoric, 2 parts epistemology, 1 part logic.