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Abstract

Solitude is not isolation. The latter is savage; the former a mode of access to mystery, enhancing life with subtlety of feeling, compassion and understanding. A person deprived of solitude becomes a cog in a machine, unaware of his own inner life or the inner lives of others. Yet solitude sought merely as a refuge from the general human condition courts misanthropy: a person is neither wholly unique nor wholly typical, but within the twin anonymities of particular and general discovers a human identity.1

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Bibliographical Guide To Texts Without Comment

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© 1983 Patrick Grant

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Grant, P. (1983). Mysticism, Faith and Culture. In: Literature of Mysticism in Western Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17151-4_1

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