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There are those of whom it could be said that he was less of a wolf in sheep's clothing than a hawk in the clothing of a dove.

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When a country turns away from religion, as from Roman Catholicism in the West, you end up with a situation, axially dominated by females, whereby women can do no wrong and men, by contrast, are adjudged to be the perpetrators of evil – the reverse, in actual fact, of a religious position characterized, as it will be, by male axial domination in church-hegemonic vein. Such, alas, has been the British situation for several centuries past – in fact, ever since the Reformation and the ensuing triumph of science over religion.

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I recall a neighbour, whom I had always regarded as a bit of an idiot, saying to me one day: “I don't believe women are any worse than men”. This neighbour was no Roman Catholic, nor even an Anglican or Nonconformist, but somebody who had been raised as a Jehovah Witness and, in secular repudiation of his upbringing, considered himself free of religious superstition.

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Writing only when you get a worthwhile thought … is the mark of a thinker, or philosopher. Writing for the sake of writing, on the other hand, is the mark of a ...writer who, as the literary equivalent of art-for-art's-sake, may well be a novelist or even essayist. Like speaking, writing is on the female side of life, in contrast to both reading and thinking, those subjective modes of intellectual activity.

The actor speaks, the poet reads, the novelist writes, and the philosopher thinks … at least in general terms, though this is not invariably the case. After all, the dramatist also writes, if principally for the speech of actors, while the poet necessarily has first to write what he subsequently reads aloud in public or even, if blessed with a good memory, recites to a captive audience. As a rule, speaking, writing, reading, and thinking are pretty interchangeable and interdependent, even if categorical generalizations are possible and – at least for the philosophical mind – logically inevitable!

Generally speaking, the dramatist writes to have his words spoken, the poet writes to have his words scanned or memorized, the novelist writes to have his words read, and the philosopher writes to have his ideas pondered, or thought about.

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