“We have seldom an opportunity of observing, either in active or speculative life, what effect may be produced, or what obstacles may be surmounted, by the force of a single mind, when it is inflexibly applied to the pursuit of a single object.”
Neat, really neat sentence from Chapter 21 of The History
of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (page 316 in my Great Books of the
Western World volume). I have thought this thought many times throughout my
life, even wrote about it here in these electronic pages: What could I do with a hundred such men under my command? (Click on the link for the
answer.)
And as applied to myself? Good Lord, I wanted to do
too much that the force of this single mind became too diluted – write a
paradigm-changing novel, discover the basic building block of the basic
building blocks of matter (I still think it has something to do with the
photon), re-write or re-discover history, compose something that will last long
past I’ve lived, and on, and on, and on.
Still, though, the thought itself and the ideas behind
it resonate very strongly and clearly with me on an almost daily basis. Nice
and neat to see it in Gibbon’s 1781 work.
N.B. The mind in question regarding Gibbon’s quoted
remark is Athanasius of Alexandria, a fourth century Christian theologian and
Church Father noted for his tireless efforts to defeat Arianism. Perhaps later
this week I’ll post a “workman’s guide to Christian heresies” regarding
Arianism and Donatism, as I am somewhat hazy on the terms …
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