Poetry in Persian life is far more than a common ground on which -- in a society deeply fissured by antagonisms -- all may stand.

Before merging them into a common profile it is well to remember that their separate careers were extraordinary.

This almost trivial example is nevertheless suggestive, for there are some elements in common between the antique fear that the days would get shorter and shorter and our present fear of war.

Harold Clurman is right to say that `` Waiting For Godot '' is a reflection ( he calls it a distorted reflection ) `` of the impasse and disarray of Europe's present politics, ethic, and common way of life ''.

However, it is important to trace the philosophy of the French Revolution to its sources to understand the common democratic origin of individualism and socialism and the influence of the latter on the former.

But it is the need to undertake these testaments that I would submit here as symptom of the common man's malaise.

As symptomatic of the common man's malaise, he is most significant: a liberal and a Catholic, elected by the skin of his teeth.

What is the common man's complaint??

But what a super-Herculean task it is to winnow anything of value from the mud-beplastered arguments used so freely, particularly since such common use is made of cliches and stereotypes, in themselves declarations of intellectual bankruptcy.

The men who speculate on these institutions have, for the most part, come to at least one common conclusion: that many of the great enterprises and associations around which our democracy is formed are in themselves autocratic in nature, and possessed of power which can be used to frustrate the citizen who is trying to assert his individuality in the modern world ''.

They all have this in common: the earth is situated near the center of the deferent.

But that one should superimpose all these charts, run a pin through the common point, and then scale each planetary deferent larger and smaller ( to keep the epicycles from ' bumping ' ), this is contrary to any intention Ptolemy ever expresses.

Now this concern for the freedom of other peoples is the intellectual and spiritual cement which has allied us with more than forty other nations in a common defense effort.

A common meeting ground is desirable for those nations which are prepared to assist in the development effort.

Conventional images of Jews have this in common with all perceptions of a configuration in which one feature is held constant: images can be both true and false.

If art is to release us from these postulated things ( things we must think symbolically about ) and bring us back to the ineffable beauty and richness of the aesthetic component of reality in its immediacy, it must sever its connection with these common sense entities ''.

In the wide range of experiences common to our earth-bound race none is more difficult to manage, more troublesome, and more enduring in its effects than the control of love and hate.

`` History has this in common with every other science: that the historian is not allowed to claim any single piece of knowledge, except where he can justify his claim by exhibiting to himself in the first place, and secondly to any one else who is both able and willing to follow his demonstration, the grounds upon which it is based.

To obey the moral law is just ordinary common sense, applied to a neglected field.

British common sense is proverbial.

It became the sole `` subject '' of `` international law '' ( a term which, it is pertinent to remember, was coined by Bentham ), a body of legal principle which by and large was made up of what Western nations could do in the world arena.

National responsibility for individual welfare is a concept not limited to the United States or even to the Western nations.

Historically, however, the concept is one that has been of marked benefit to the people of the Western civilizational group.

While the pattern is uneven, some having gained more than others, nationalism has in fact served the Western peoples well.

While it is hazardous to project the trend of history, it seems clear that a genuine community is painfully emerging in the Western world, particularly among the countries of Western Europe.

That time is now past and the Atlantic nations, if they are to survive, must develop a full-fledged community, and they must also look beyond the frontiers of `` Western civilization '' toward a world-wide `` concert of free nations ''.

So far as the record is concerned, the Western powers have not acquiesced and should not do so.

The Inter-american Press Association, which blankets the Western Hemisphere from northern Canada to Cape Horn, is meeting in New York City this week for the first time in eleven years.

It is quite evident that the people of Western Europe are overwhelmingly opposed to participation in a nuclear war.

Or the city can be a graveyard monument to Western intransigence, if that is what the West wants.

No matter that it is his troops who rape Western women and eat Western men.

No matter that the Katanga operation is strategically insane in terms of Western interests in Africa.

The gulf between the `` rich '' and the `` poor '' has narrowed, in the industrialized Western world, to the point that the word `` poor '' is hardly applicable.

The most unusual of them is the Ithaca 49 ( about $20, $5 for a saddle scabbard ) -- a lever-action single-shot patterned after the famous Winchester lever-action and featuring the Western look.

Certainly, it is the traditional clarity of his music which has endeared him to the Western World -- not his experimentations.

Now, you probably share the widespread Western belief that the Lord Buddha is the most compassionate of the gods, much more so than Jehovah and Allah and the rest.

And is Western influence greater or less than it used to be??

Fearful of inviting a military showdown with the West which they could not win, the Communists seek to undermine Western power where the nuclear might of the West is irrelevant -- in backwoods guerrilla skirmishes, in mob uprisings in the streets, in parliaments, in clandestine meetings of undercover conspirators, at the United Nations, on the propaganda front, at diplomatic conferences -- preferably at the highest level.

After Cuba and Laos, it was argued, Mr. Khrushchev will interpret the President's consent to the meeting as further evidence of Western weakness -- perhaps even panic -- and is certain to try to exploit the advantage he now believes he holds.

This is an area nearly as large as Western Europe ; ;

If Mr. Kennan is sometimes a little somber in his appraisals, if his analysis of how Western diplomacy met the challenge of an era of great wars and social revolutions is often critical and pessimistic -- well, the record itself is not too encouraging.