Colin Wilson

The problem for the civilization is the adoption of a religious attitude that can be assimilated as objectively as last Sunday’s newspapers. But the problem for the individual will always be the opposite of this, the conscious striving not to limit the amount of experience seen and touched; the intolerable struggle to expose the sensitive areas of being to what may possibly hurt them; the attempt to see as a whole, although the instinct of self-preservation fights against the pain of the internal widening and all the impulses of spiritual laziness build into waves of sleep with every new effort. The individual begins that long effort as an Outsider.