We are publishing, in this issue and the next, portions of a lecture Eli Siegel gave in 1974. He titled it What Are We Going After? And I am immensely grateful that what he described then can meet people now, at a time when there is so much turbulence and worry and even shock in America and elsewhere.

In that talk of nearly 51 years ago, Mr. Siegel discussed passages from an article in the April 1973 number of Psychology Today. He spoke on something absent from that article, something explained by Aesthetic Realism alone: What is the central purpose of a human being, whether that person is a child just born, or a man of 99 now looking out a window and thinking of his past?

In them and everyone, is there a deepest desire we have by being human and alive? Is it with us though we may not know what this fundamental purpose is, and though we may be untrue to it day after day? And does our betraying that purpose weaken our lives, make us ashamed and ill-natured, and give a certain emptiness to the hours?..more