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FIRED_HOLY

                                    September 11, 2006


     "Dyck was also diastrously committed to the
     preservation of _objets d'art_ and other specimens
     of culture.  _Noblesse oblige_, he was the champion
     of all the other relics against vandalism.  Against
     the whims and ways of ordinary individuals -- to
     whom no doubt the Holy Spirit was an infrequent
     visitor -- it was necessary to protect the little
     objects in which the Holy Spirit was cogealed
     forever.  This was the theory.

     "In practice it was often hard to distinguish which
     was the spirit and which was the vandal.  Thus, no
     doubt it was vandalism for the young excavator,
     eager for his Ph.D.  at the University of
     Pennsylvania, to disturb the sempiternal rest of the
     desert.  Once the pot was uncovered, however, it was
     vandalism in the dirty Arab, eager to get home for
     supper, to break it with a careless pickax.  But
     once it was irrecoverably chipped, surely it was
     vandalism to attempt to "restore" it by a dubious
     guess, in order to have something to show in the
     museum.  It was preservationist enough to keep the
     relic in the cellar of the museum if there was no
     room to put it on display, but what vandalism if it
     should perhaps be mislaid!"

            -- p. 61, Section 7
            Chapter 5 "An Aesthetic Romance",
            Book I  "The Grand Piano"

            Paul Goodman
            EMPIRE_CITY


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