QUOTATION MARKS - Clarity by Iain McGilchrist

The illusion that, if we can see something clearly, 

we see it as it really is, is hugely seductive.

Ruskin, in Modern Painters, 

makes the point that clarity 

is bought at the price of limitation.

' We never see anything clearly.....
What we call seeing a thing clearly, 

is only seeing enough of it to make out what it is; 

this point of intelligibility varying in distance 

for different  magnitudes and kinds of things...' 

He gives the example of an open book 

and an embroidered handkerchief on a lawn.
Viewed from a distance of a quarter of a mile, 

they are indistinguishable; from closer, 

we can see which is which, 

but not read the book 

or trace the embroidery on the handkerchief; 

as we go nearer, 

we "can now read the text 

and trace the embroidery, 

but cannot see the fibres of the paper, 

nor the threads'....and so on ad infinitum.

At which point do we see it clearly?...

Clarity, it seems, describes 

not a degree of perception, 

but a type of knowledge. 

To know something clearly 

is to know it partially only, 

and to know it, 

rather than to experience it, 

in a certain way.'

Taken from The Master & His Emissary
by Iain McGilchrist, 

Published by Yale University Press 2020