Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation homepage > Notebooks of Paul Brunton

---

When men who have spent their whole lives harbouring destructive ideas are given a constructive teaching, they are naturally impermeable and unreceptive to it. There are materialists who are impatient at hearing philosophic truths and even irritated by them. Such persons may even become quite violently abusive. This happens because they have completely lost their capacity to practise calm unprejudiced abstract thinking, and because they have crushed the feeling of veneration before something higher or nobler than themselves--whether it be a beautiful landscape or God.

-- Notebooks Category 11: The Negatives > Chapter 5 : Their Visible and Invisible Harm > # 45 -- Perspectives > Chapter 11: The Negatives > # 49