#giucomix reading

Third: in a Christian society, the pastor is someone who can ask for absolute obedience from others, which is a very important and new phenomenon. Gallo-Roman societies, of course, had known laws and magistrates, and an imperial power that was an entirely autocratic one. But never would one have had, in Greek and Roman Antiquity, the idea of asking of someone for total, absolute, and unconditional obedience to someone else. Yet this is precisely what happened with the emergence of the pastor and the pastorate in Christian society. The pastor can impose his will on others, and according to his own decision, without there even being general rules or laws, because, and that is what is important in Christianity: people don’t obey in order to arrive at a certain result, they don’t obey, for instance, simply to acquire a habit, an aptitude or even a merit. In Christianity, the utmost merit is precisely to be obedient. Obedience must lead to a state of obedience. Remaining obedient is the requisite condition for all other virtues. Obedient with respect to whom? Obedient to the pastor. It is a system of generalized obedience, and the famous Christianity humility is nothing other than a sort of interiorized form of this obedience. I am humble, which means that I will accept orders from whoever gives them to me, and I am able to recognize in this will of the other—mine being last—the very will of God.

At the Chinese court, distrust of foreigners was mixed with a fascination for the exotic. In particular, a love of all things Turkish permeated the Tang era, resulting in strange sights in Chang'an, such as Chinese women riding through the streets dressed as Turkish horsemen. Taizong's son, the crown prince, succumbed to Turkomania to such a degree that he went to live in a camp of Turkish tents in the palace grounds, insisted on speaking in Turkish and eating boiled mutton sliced with his own sword in the Turkish manner.

That then was the 'reality' on which her eyes were fixed; students must be taught to earn their livings. And since that reality meant that she must rebuild her college on the same lines as the others, it followed that the college for the daughters of educated men must also make Research produce practical results which will induce bequests and donations from rich men; it must encourage competition; it must accept degrees and coloured hoods; it must accumulate great wealth; it must exclude other people from a share of its wealth; and, therefore, in 500 years or so, that college, too, must ask the same question that you, Sir, are asking now: 'How in your opinion are we to prevent war?' An undesirable result that seemed; why then subscribe a guinea to procure it? That question at any rate was answered. No guinea of earned money should go to rebuilding the college on the old plan; just as certainly none could be spent upon building a college upon a new plan; therefore the guinea should be earmarked 'Rags. Petrol. Matches'. And this note should be attached to it. 'Take this guinea and with it burn the college to the ground. Set fire to the old hypocrisies. Let the light of the burning building scare the nightingales and incarnadine the willows. And let the daughters of educated men dance round the fire and heap armful upon armful of dead leaves upon the flames. And let their mothers lean from the upper windows and cry "Let it blaze! Let it blaze! For we have done with this 'education'!"'