The Rational Man According To St. Anthony the Great

By Dr. Constantine Cavarnos

Introductory Remarks

St Anthony (ca. 250-356 A.D.) is one of the great masters of the spiritual life of Eastern Christendom. He has been held in the highest esteem by Christians of the East from his own time down to the present. One of his eminent admirers was St Athanasius, who knew him personally and wrote a biography of him, which is one of the best sources of information we have about him. Two other outstanding admirers of this great saint are St Macarius, Metropolitan of Corinth (1731-1805) and St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (1748-1809). They have included at the beginning of the Philokalia, which was compiled and edited by them and published in 1782, a work containing many sayings and observations which have traditionally been attributed to St Anthony.

Holy Martyr Porphyrios the Mime of Ephesus

St. Porphyrios the Mime (Feast Day - November 4)

Verses

Porphyrios was adorned by the sword,
Brightly adorned with the purple of blood.

Saint Porphyrios lived during the reign of Emperor Aurelian (270-275), and was from the city of Ephesus. From a young age he was raised in the theater with the mimes, namely those who acted out every form and movement of people.

Once he followed the count of Alexandria to Caesarea, and there he acted out the Holy Baptism of the Christians, where he was baptized by another mime who falsely pretended to be a Bishop. In this way they mocked the mysteries of the Christians.

Dr. Jekyll and His Conscience

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By Robert Louis Stevenson

"In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are."

The Role of Conscience in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"

"Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony!"

Possibly the most obvious and most stated of all themes presented in this tale is one of guilt. The guilty conscience of the narrator is typically viewed as the central, overarching theme of the entire story. It presents a very unique set of questions about the duality of the narrator's character, and perhaps Poe's point is that fine line that exists between the good and evil in all of us. This being, if the narrator is the insane, horrible, psychopath that we think he is, does the sane part of his being show through in his guilt? Is this a redeeming quality, or is this just the act of a raving lunatic, thinking he can hear the heart of a dead man through the floorboards?

Dorian Gray and His Conscience

"It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it."

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 20