EXTRACTS

(Series of dots … or …. show where passages have been left out.)

From Page 1

            … He burst awake from the tangled dream.  Bright sunlight hurt his eyes.  He raised himself on an elbow, squinting against the glare, and looked around dazedly….
            … The dream still swirled in his brain.  Was it dream or memory?  The fog.  The cliff.  The crumbling rock.  His despairing scream as he plunged into the white void.  Crashing into the scree.  Tumbling, flailing, trying to stop.  A flurry of sharp blows to knees, elbows, shoulders, back.  A dazzling bang to his head.  Blackness.  Silence.  Consciousness oozing back.  Pain.  So much pain.  Rocks cutting into his face.  Blood trickling into his mouth.  Total darkness.  Searing, stabbing, thudding pain, all over his body.  Unable to move.  Panic worse than pain.  Screaming in agony and terror, again and again, ‘Oh God!  God!  Help me!  Please help me!’ 
            Scrabbling above, dust and stone chips falling into his mouth and eyes, spitting, blinking, the sudden daylight, a strange, fierce face staring down at him, and the words spoken matter-of-factly yet with utter conviction ….

The Boy

            … “What do you want?” 
            It was the man’s voice, but speaking in accented English.  Jac span round.  The man was standing a few feet away, fishing rod in one hand, trout on a string in the other.  Jac stared at him.  Suddenly it was all too much:  the loneliness, the fears, and the desperate anxiety of his approaching climb.  His throat tightened and tears welled up.  He tried to hold them back but they spilled over and trickled down his cheeks.   He brushed them away, the action generating a violent and unexpected jolt of anger.  
            “You bastard,” he shouted; “you bastard!”
            The man stared at him without expression, golden eyes hard and cold.  Slowly, he examined Jac’s long blond hair, the tears in the bright blue eyes, the angry young face fringed with its first beard, and the tanned, lean, well-muscled body, now tense and crouched slightly forward like a welterweight about to lash out in the ring ….

The Mentor

… It was hard to guess how old the man was.  His hair – dark chestnut in colour, thick and curly – was heavily flecked with grey, but the lean cheeks had few age lines.  His strange golden eyes glowed with cold intensity.  They looked like agate pebbles freshly taken from a stream.  Jac half expected the pupils to close vertically, like those of a big cat.  The nose was long and straight, the lips thin and firm, with well-defined edges as though outlined in pencil.  Even when still and expressionless, Nikolai’s face seemed to pulse with controlled energy, like that of a great actor seen in close-up at the climax of some compellingly dramatic film …. 

The close of Chapter Two

            … At that moment the sun rose over the ridge behind them, shooting their shadows across the dark, breeze-ruffled, gold-flecked surface of the loch.  The stretched-out shapes looked momentarily like the twin towers of some fabled castle inlaid in a glittering, gold-and-amber mosaic.
            Nikolai turned to him:  “Will you give it a try?”
            Jac sighed.  “Alright, I’ll give it a try.”

The need for a new philosophy

            … “When you look around Britain or America today, around the whole world, and see the man-made disasters, the reckless drivers, drugged and drunken gangs of teenage thugs, rioting sports fans, the thefts and muggings and stabbings and shootings, the bitter divorces, the cruelty to or killing of small children, the rape and murder of young women, the lying and corruption of politicians, the bullying and stupidity of bureaucrats, the economic collapses, the worthless paper currencies, the suicide bombers, the incessant wars, the government-made famines – all the horrors and misery which the news media report so relentlessly, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  When you see all this, surely it takes no great effort of imagination to realise that what human beings urgently, desperately need is a new set of ideas about how to live, both for themselves individually and with one another in society.  In other words, they need a new philosophy….”

Political correctness

            … “Excuse me, what exactly is ‘political correctness’?”
            “A modern form of mental laziness and, or, intellectual cowardice.  It means basing judgements of political issues or contemporary controversies on ideas which are fashionable rather than true.  A typical such issue today is man-made global warming.  This is now very much in vogue despite the facts that, a) the thesis ignores a mass of evidence which directly contradicts it; and, b) tens of thousands of scientists have publicly rejected it.  Why is it nonetheless all the rage?  Because it suits sensation-seeking journalists, anti-freedom intellectuals, money-hungry ‘environmentalists’ and, especially, power-lusting, tax-hungry politicians….”

Where should we begin a philosophy?

            … “A classic illustration of the primacy of consciousness approach was the work of the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes, who founded his philosophy on the famous assertion cogito ergo sum, or je pense donc je suis, or in English, ‘I think therefore I am.’
            “Rand would assert, in contrast, that Descartes got it back to front.  We can’t begin with consciousness, she would say, because consciousness presupposes, firstly, an existing physical being which is conscious; and, secondly, some external entity of which that being is conscious.  She would point out that consciousness without some thingto be conscious of is self-contradictory and meaningless.  No existing things, no consciousness.  The very nature of consciousness is to be aware of entities outside itself.
“So, when we seek the correct starting point for a system of philosophy, we must begin with existence as the primary fact.  Consciousness developed later, it is secondary.  It is the means by which those organisms which possess it are aware of reality.  Therefore reality, existence, has primacy….”

The reception given to Atlas Shrugged

            … “Rand had no illusions about what she was up against, but after the monumental effort of learning to write superbly well in a totally different language, and taking fourteen years to write Atlas Shrugged, she was still at heart a young woman hoping that her effort would be applauded by an audience of receptive peers.  It wasn’t.
            “The famous military strategist Basil Liddell-Hart wrote that frontal assaults against well-fortified positions seldom succeed; and if they do succeed, do so at immense cost.  Rand paid a terrible price.  Few critics understood her, and fewer came out in her favour.  Most were caustic or cruel.  The worst was a former communist spy called Whittaker Chambers who reviewed Atlas for a lightweight US rag called National Review.  You can imagine how Rand felt – a passionate freedom-lover of Jewish descent who had escaped from a totalitarian dictatorship – when Chambers said her book’s most striking feature was its dictatorial tone:  ‘From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged,’ he wrote, ‘a voice can be heard … commanding:  To a gas chamber – go!’”
            “He wrote that about Atlas Shrugged!?” Jac burst out in disbelief.  “He can’t have read it!”
            “That’s possible.  But his remark demonstrates just how low Rand’s opponents were prepared to go.  It was malice, pure and simple.  In this instance, malice from a creepy little turncoat who was trying to curry favour with his new masters….”

Altruism versus benevolence

            … “Another Objectivist virtue Rand didn’t go into, except by implication in her novels, is benevolence.  It is very important to include it because many people have accused Objectivism of being a cold, unfeeling, heartless philosophy…”
            “How on earth could they say that?” Jac burst out, genuinely shocked.  “Atlas is full of examples of warmth and kindness between people, and Anthem too, though on a smaller scale.”
            “You’re right.  It’s a false accusation, libellous in fact, put about by critics like Whittaker Chambers who sought to blacken Ayn Rand’s name.  The cause of the smear, and of others like it, was Rand’s rejection of altruism, which creed many people equate, quite wrongly, with benevolence; and her advocacy of rational selfishness, which many people equate, quite wrongly, with a callous disregard for other people. 
            “But if you think about the matter, it is actually altruism which is cold, unfeeling and heartless.  People used to say ‘as cold as charity,’ but is anything as cold as duty?  Think of the difference.  You see someone down on their luck and are moved to help.  That’s benevolence.  Altruism takes the decision out of your hands and out of your heart.  It says you must help the less fortunate, it’s your duty.  Altruism thus eliminates the human element, the exercise of choice, and in so doing destroys the human emotions of sympathy and kindness.  Altruism is the inhuman, unfeeling, Ice Queen of philosophy ….”

Meeting

            … Nikolai had gone for a shower before supper.  Jac went into the kitchen to get a glass of water before doing the same.  A cooking pot was simmering on the hob, the delicious aroma of venison casserole wafting from it.  Catriona was sitting at the table in her trademark outfit of white blouse and blue jeans, reading a magazine. 
            “Hi Catriona, did you have a good trip?” Jac said over his shoulder as he reached for a glass in the cupboard.
            She did not reply.  That wasn’t like her.  He turned round, and froze.  It wasn’t Catriona.  It was a much younger girl who looked like Catriona.  She had the same glowing white skin and jet black hair, though hers was cut short and curved forward in twin points below her cheeks. 
            Her eyes were quite different however.  Instead of calm and wise and sapphire blue, these were lustrous brown, piercingly direct and slightly mischievous.  The girl’s cheeks were much rosier too, and her lips a shade fuller than Catriona’s, though with the same lovely, make-up-free redness.
            The girl grinned, with a hint of mockery. 
            “Doctor Bazile, I presume?”
            Jac blushed.
            “I’m sorry.  Are you, er, Ellie …?
            “Yalasacht, Ealasaid.  But usually I’m just called Eila, pronounced eye-la, but spelt e, i, l, a.  It’s wha’ I called mahsel’ when I was little.  Were ye no expectin’ me?”
            “No.  They don’t tell me much.  Things just happen.  Catriona never even told me she was going away.  Nikolai does that all the time, too.”
            She smiled.
            “Aye, that sounds like them, right enough.  A law unto themselves.  I thought ye were supposed tae be writing a book.  You look as though you’ve been plastering the ceilin’.”
            Jac laughed.  He liked her voice.  It was soft and lilting, like Catriona’s, with the same gentle Hebridean intonation….

            … “Wasn’t it your turn tae make the supper?”
            “No, it’s Catriona’s.  I don’t know how to make stew.”
            “I was joking, I’m helping her.  I’m chief pot stirrer, which reminds me ….”
            Eila stood and crossed to the hob.  She had the same graceful figure as Catriona but was a couple of inches taller and perhaps one dress size bigger.  She lifted the lid and stirred the stew.  The delicious aroma filled the room.
            “‘And greasy Joan doth keel the pot …’” Jac quoted.
            “Greasy!?” exclaimed Eila with pretended outrage.
            “That’s Shakespeare!” answered Jac, grinning.  “Look, I’m just going to have a quick shower then I’ll come back and teach you some more English.”
            “Sassenach!” said Eila mock crossly and burst into a stream of Gaelic.  She raised the gravy-dripping spoon as if to hurl it.
            Jac laughed and ran from the room.  He felt elated.  He had a strong feeling he was going to get along with Ealasaid, Eila.  She was also very pretty ….

Inside the USSR

            … “I didn’t need to be told the truth about communism.  I saw through the propaganda myself before I was eight or nine.  We’d be shown newsreels boasting how communism was housing millions of people properly for the first time.  But I knew the reality of our tower block.  The cheaply-built walls, crumbling from the first year.  The rotting window frames.  Twelve flights of stairs with no elevator.  The stink of damp concrete.  The vomit and urine of the drunks.  The incessant breakdowns of water, electricity and plumbing.  The erratic heating in winter.  The tiny, badly designed apartments.  The all-pervasive fear in the drab streets outside.  The endless queuing for necessities.  The disappearances of decent, innocent people.  Before I was twelve I had begun to make plans for escaping to the West ….”

Danger

… Suddenly, his fingers skidded off some ice in a crevice.  His frightened lunge for a different hold dislodged one of his feet.  As he groped blindly to get it back into the crack, his other foot slipped off too.  In a matter of seconds, Jac went from confident progress to screaming panic.  The whole weight of his body was hanging by the four fingers of one hand – two hundred feet above the roar of Charybdis.  Terror cut into his belly like a red hot knife.  His boots scrabbled for a toehold….

------------------

That’s less than 2500 words out of over 232,000: there’s masses more to interest you, intrigue you, inspire you and please you in Old Nick’s Guide to Happiness. 

You get an awful lot of book for your money!