Excerpt from We Moderns: Enigmas and GuessesNietzsche and even worse heretics, to the spacious, innocent, somewhat gaudy days Of the Greek illumination for such a fellow, so bred and circumscribed, to come out Of his tower with a concept Of life as a grand and glittering adven ture, a tremendous spectacle, an overpowering ecstasy, almost an orgy - such a phenomenon was, and is, quite sufficient to lift the judicious eyebrow. Yet here is this Mr. Edwin Muir Of Caledonia bearing just that outlandish contra band, Oifering just that strange flouting Of all things traditionally Scotch. What he preaches in the ensuing aphorisms is the emancipation of the modern spirit from its rotting heritage of ingenuous fears and exploded certainties. What he denounces most bitterly is the abandonment Of a world that is beautifully surprising and charming to the rule of sordid, timid and nu i'maginative men - the regimentation Of ideas in a system that is half a denial of the Obvious and half a conglomeration of outworn metaphors, all taken too literally. And what he pleads for most eloquently, with his cold, reserved northern eloquence, is the whole-hearted acceptance Of life as a sacrament, life as joy triumph ing over fate, life made innocent.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.