Many years ago when I first taught college English. I made a discovery in the first or second week of teaching, namely, that the main obstacle to instruction, to one’s ability to teach someone something they don’t already know, is the mood and spirit of relativity. Here is what happened: I was teaching a short story by Henry James called “The Lesson of the Master” whose main character is a well-known English novelist, ripe in age and reputation, a figure of awe to the young aspiring novelists of his later years. As the story moves along, however, James begins to send out to the reader many hints which would suggest that this man is in fact rather more subtle than wise, excessively vain, and that his reputation has really more to do with considerations other than the literary merits of his books — he is really, it turns out, a best-seller who has cleverly grown old and thus accrued the patina of venerability.

“You can learn more from watching the animals than you can from a guru . . .or from reading my book. But first you must divest yourself of the idea that your creaturehood is suspect. Your humanness did not emerge by refusing your animal heritage, but upon an extension of what it is.”