CD--The Book of Wesley

Being an Inconcise Compendium

of Irrational Thought

in the Fields of Science, Language,

Philosophy, Music, and Theology

Which

Borders on Truth—

Most of the Time.

By J. Wesley Allen

MCMLXXXIV

Introduction to the Fourth Hundred

The full works which constitute The Book of Wesley have been dubbed “The M” or “The Thousand,” although it is not clear that he had a thousand coherent thoughts, much less that he wrote them down. Even though he considered the work “irrational,” a more appropriate term might be “non-rationalized.” He simply wrote his own observations and feelings and did not make an attempt to sort and categorize, but simply to express.

 

Each “C” or Book of One Hundred, explores at successively deeper levels the understanding that this one person came to have of life while living in a suspended state of consciousness. There has been no attempt by this editor to isolate and categorize the topics covered in anything more than the order in which he wrote them. Thus, cross-references are made only to preceding statements, and never anticipate or look ahead to future thoughts.

 

In the Fourth Hundred, Wesley continues to expound on topics about which he knows little; but even in those areas that he acknowledges mistakes, he presents them with commitment. In this penultimate hundred, Wesley touches on Platonic Ideals, Geometry, Magic, War and Peace, Socio-Economics, Sentience, and occasionally Love. This is the first hundred that contains no sections in colored ink or pencil and may have been written in a shorter period of time than the preceding hundreds.

 

Nathan Everett, editor

August 1, 1984

CCCX

1. Any strength in excess is a weakness.

2. Use greater strength against itself.

3. No principle, no matter how divine, is perfect once it has been stated.

4. The concept of the Ideal, as Plato would have it, is that once made material, no object is perfect. The Ideal of Table exists only in the mind.

5. It seems then, that these Ideals must be transmitted hereditarily or in some non-verbal, non-visual manner. For how could a person having seen only one table in his or her life develop the Platonic Ideal of Table?

6. Even after exposure to five, ten, or fifty tables, when does the mind make the link to Table as something that may be represented by numerous and various physical objects?

7. One would then have to consider this complexity: If it were possible to materialize a table directly from the workings of the mind, would it come out Ideal as in Table or would it come out as an image of a representation or composite of such, as merely a table?

8. The question of the Plantonic Ideal then might be reduced to this: Are generics Ideal? Is there actually an Ideal of Tree? Of Animal?

9. The likelihood is no. For if there were an Ideal of Animal, for example, we who are human could only comprise a flawed representation of the Ideal Animal, the Ideal Mammal, the Ideal Human, etc.

10. The generalization of our ideals is the flaw.

Editor's Note: As is often the case, it is unclear whether the last statement applies to the topic of Platonic Ideals, or to Wesley's own ideals. The word was not capitalized in the manuscript.