FEATURE
The Human Spirit by Life Member, Mr Louis A Coutts
The Creation of Adam, detail of the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco by Michelangelo, 1508–1512. The painting – one of the most famous of the Renaissance – has become a symbol of humanity: the hand of God and Adam on the verge of touching. Credit: Scala/Art Resource, New York.
The human spirit - invisible, indescribable, elusive and so frequently neglected or ignored - is the energy of the human enterprise. It is the fulcrum of human endeavour. When left free to fly like a butterfly, it endows humanity with moments of sublime poetic beauty. The music of Bach, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky immortally touches generation after generation of receptive souls with exquisite delicacy and tenderly arouses our romantic emotions. The archives of art, poetry, philosophy, literature, history and human endeavour bestowed upon us by our ancestors from Aristotle and Plato, to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Picasso, together with millions of their eternal fraternity, are forever at the disposal of civilisation, and continually enrich society.
nourishing, otherwise the inspiration that is so necessary to sustain the hope of society is frustrated. The process of nourishment is at once simple and complex, but it involves people following their heart while availing themselves of the richness of thought and human achievement that is our heritage. This heritage is the product of people, who, over the centuries, have been inspired by their ancestors. They want to write, to compose music, to study and advance the study of history, to play musical instruments, to be philosophers, to study and advance the works of the geniuses of the past, to create and to pursue their own dreams. People need to make mistakes in their own journey of discovery. People need to be different because of the richness in diversity.
When the human spirit is denied, so is humanity and when humanity is denied, society is impoverished. The human spirit needs constant
The source of nourishing the human spirit is inquiry and learning. This process was institutionalised by the early mediaeval
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