Lipton’s Journal/February 14, 1955/617

Reason, the logic on One, was born in man by his understanding of society, not from his understanding of himself. The animal reasons at the crude level of his environment which—until the psychological tester came along—never ran him (the rat) through the same one maze twice.

Thus, man, the mystical entity learned reason from the irritation of the logical society—society’s innate tendency is to increase division of labor to the point where a man is run through the same One for every day of his life—that way, he like the rat will learn. But the learning is artificial. The rat’s knowledge of the specific maze develops an attribute in him which is almost totally useless outside of the maze because the rat has been put not gradually but instantly into an artificial (for the rat) environment.

So, society, the foreign body, the earth-shore teaches water-life the secret of its level by the contour society reveals, or in this case shore-line of the water’s assault. Thus, social forms reveal not the nature in the sense of the desire of man, but reveal in their quality the reverse quality of man. The fascist state reveals not a desire for fascism in its subjects but the desire for the reverse. (I am talking of course about the er of the subjects, not their S).

But, I have wandered from the original point. The irrational nature of society produced reason culminating in the French Revolution. And then the Russian Revolution. The rational nature of society has produced the mystical revolt, the return of the spiral to the “village” of modern man, the coterie.