And the formation of man is the most pressing problem facing humanity.

It's an old sailor's idea that every ship has a rope with one end made fast to her bows and the other held by the loved ones at home.

If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.

'I will go to France, to Yugoslavia, to China, and continue my profession.' 'As sanitary engineer?' 'No, Monsieur. As adventurer. I will see all the peoples and all the countries of the world.'

Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.

A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will.

When people start talking of man's inhumanity to man it means they haven't actually walked far enough.