In her book, Patriotic Sketches of Ireland, Sydney Owenson observes:
Political philosophy is an extension of the mind’s eye to the whole great scale of civil society, and demonstrating the close-linked dependencies of its remotest parts, affords to the benevolence of the human heart, and the comprehension of the human understanding, a social system, gratifying to the feelings of the one, and ennobling to the faculties of the other. (33)
The human heart and 'comprehension of understanding,' which I will identify as consciousness, are two distinct entities, for the heart, aside from its organic characteristics, contains the essence of human emotions. In contrast, comprehension of understanding involves the assimilation of intelligence and critical analysis as they interact with the psycho-physiological structure in a wondrous flow of human experience. I reflect on this concept in the following poem:
Flow I
Passion creates verve
whose song desires voice;
now boldly sing
radiate stillness
encircle fear: enflame!
This fervor flows
with molten resonance
angled benevolence
evolution through revolution,
illumined by
the intricacy of simplicity
adorned
transformed
with interlacing
flow.
© Jeanne I. Lakatos
