The library was a benediction, high and clear and plain, like everything else,

but with something in all its arched amplitude,

unconfused and brave and gay.

He should never forget, he knew,

the throb of immediate perception with which he first stood there,

a single glance round, suffice so to show him

that it would give him what for years he had desired.

That was a passage from a short story called The Great Good Place.

It's by Henry James, one of the great prose stylists of the English language,

and a crucial author in the history of English literature.

I brought him up because I think he is expressing in this story a feeling,

a kind of almost just intuition or something we see right out the side of our eyes,

and the periphery of our vision.

Anybody who listens to this show and loves this show

and has a sense that the West is something real has felt.

What I think Henry James is talking about and alluding to in The Great Good Place.

And right now, as you know, that idea of the West

and of the great communion of man across time and space,

that idea is under threat and not just because it's like evil and racist studies,

certain authors according to our woke taste makers.

The notion that there is something essential in every man

that can make a connection across time and space and place

...