-11-15 09:54:45 EST, [log in to unmask] writes:

> We
>  should not strive to achieve a perception.  The joint should not appear
>  to be raked properly, it should be raked properly.  The craftsman should
>  not appear to know a great deal about his craft, he should know.  We
>  should not appear to be preserving buildings, we should do it.

I'm not sure what I was looking for, but this is pretty close to the mark for
me. I get the impression I said something to provoke this... I'll try and do
it again. In response, the following had an interest for me prior to my
taking on the trade of a stonemason, prior to my growing long hair and a
beard, and prior to learning to hitch hike. Appearances are not realities.

"There must be no seeming, for if he seem
to be just he will be honored and rewarded, and then we shall
not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the
sake of honor and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in jus-
tice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined
in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best
of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have
been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be
affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let
him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming
to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme,
the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be
given which of them is the happier of the two."

"Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are
brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you
have the power of command, and in the composition of these
he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest
honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others
again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has com-
posed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be pre-
served in the children. But as all are of the same original
stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a
silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims as a first prin-
ciple to the rulers, and above all else, that there is nothing which
they should so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be such
good guardians, as of the purity of the race. They should ob-
serve what elements mingle in their offspring; for if the son
of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron,
then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the
ruler must not be pitiful toward the child because he has to
descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just
as there may be sons of artisans who having an admixture of
gold or silver in them are raised to honor, and become guardians
or auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass
or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale;
is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?"

][<en Follett