On Equilibrium

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

This probing study by John Ralston Saul celebrates balance, a quality as
important to individuals as to societies. In separate chapters, Saul
dissects the qualities on which our lives depend—common sense, ethics,
imagination, intuition, memory, reason—and their interaction. If any
one of these is developed in isolation, Saul argues, it could become a
weakness or become destructive. The key to their positive application,
for ourselves and for others, is balance.

In a final chapter, Saul argues that “normal” behavior involves
equilibrium, a quality as essential for humans as for atoms: “What is
true for an atom or a force field is true for all of us.” The terrible
events of September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Centre in New York are
woven into this final chapter as Saul draws together the threads of his
complex argument. Technology is no solution by itself but remains
dependent on what he calls “the leadership of complex humanism.”

The complexity of his thesis does not make for easy reading after a
hard day’s work. On Equilibrium should be tackled with a fresh mind
and the alertness of a fencer. Some individual sentences glow like
fireflies, like the following: “Poverty is the one form of suffering
over which societies can exercise a great deal of control.” This third
volume in Saul’s philosophical trilogy (the first two were
Voltaire’s Bastards, 1992, and The Doubter’s Companion, 1995) makes
important contributions to political thought.