We are collections of potentials, known and unknown: spirits. We are spiritually composite, a society of spirits living on the land of a body.

One’s soul is a spiritual society.

One’s ethic is the soul’s government.

One’s style is the soul’s culture.

One’s inner life is the soul’s politics. Some of us are liberal democracies, e pluribus unum; some are dictatorships of self-discipline; some are theocratic police states; some are anarchies of decadence; and a great many of us are human civil wars.