The subtle tones of human contentment – happiness, tranquillity, equanimity – aren't helpful to Latham's binary enterprise and are the enemy of the public persona he has constructed for himself.
If, as Wordsworth said, poetry is human emotion recollected in tranquillity, what happens when verses are scrawled in sand on the floor of a shopping centre?
In this respect, true tranquillity for human beings coincides with their being "assimilated" to God, so that, when this condition of serenity is reached, nothing is any longer felt as lacking in meaning and substance.
It is a fact of city life that with millions of us living cheek by jowl, one boorish creature -- canine or human -- can disturb the tranquillity of many, and so we must all act considerately.
In the early seventies, he showed that a "relaxation response" occurs in human beings during periods of intentional tranquillity: the heart rate, respiratory rate, and glucose metabolism all slow down.
In this sense, the relationship between tranquillity and awareness is biunique: human beings can be peaceful only when they know what the highest good is and know that they have attained it (Theonoston, OO, II, 303b).
"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity," Charlotte Brontë once wrote.
It was a vision of collective Edenic tranquillity, as if the first humans had already managed to reproduce and multiply before they were expelled from the Garden.
This does not mean indulging ourselves gluttonously, but cultivating tranquillity while avoiding the two greatest human delusions: fear of what we cannot avoid, and desire for what we cannot have.
Practically every church contained frescoes or sculptures depicting the horrors of hell – devils gouging out the eyes of screaming sinners, living humans skinned and eternally roasted – contrasted with the peace, tranquillity, and safety of heaven for the saved.
