Polytropy

When I learn things that might be worth remembering, and when I have thoughts that might be worth pursuing, it may be useful or convenient to type them up as here. I begin with the opening paragraph of the third of the 77 short chapters of W. Somerset Maugham’s book called The Summing Up (published in 1938 when Maugham was about 64):

In this book I am going to try to sort out my thoughts on the subjects that have chiefly interested me during the course of my life.  But such conclusions as I have come to have drifted about my mind like the wreckage of a foundered ship on a restless sea.  It has seemed to me that if I set them down in some sort of order I should see for myself more distinctly what they really were and so might get some kind of coherence into them. I have long thought I should like to make such an attempt and more than once, when starting on a journey that was to last for several months, have determined to set about it.  The opportunity seemed ideal.  But I have always found that I was assailed by so many impressions, I saw so many strange things and met so many people who excited my fancy, that I had no time to reflect.  The experience of the moment was so vivid that I could not attune my mind to introspection.

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