The Philosophical Perambulations of a Superior Mind: A Phenomenological Walk through Leeds alongside Shakespeare, Lincoln, Socrates, and Johnson

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Merrion Street

I commenced my perambulation along Merrion Street with the intention of examining the relationship between the physical organisation of urban space and the intellectual limitations of those who inhabit it. I did not expect an answer from the passing public. Such questions require a degree of reflection that is seldom encouraged by the ordinary demands of city life. I therefore continued towards the Merrion Centre, carrying with me the familiar suspicion that the most revealing feature of any crowd is not what its members are doing, but what they have failed to notice.

Leeds, like most cities, provides ample opportunity for such an investigation. Its streets are populated by common individuals who appear to move with considerable confidence towards destinations whose significance, upon closer examination, may prove difficult to establish. They hurry, pause, consult their telephones and hurry again, as though the mere business of being occupied were sufficient evidence of having a purpose. Merrion Street was busy directing a crowd of people who had long since ceased directing themselves. Naturally, I alone was sufficiently infused with the greatest intelligence to bring a mind along for the walk.

Merrion Centre

As I proceeded through the Merrion Centre, amid the retail paraphernalia and the unreflective peregrinations of the Leeds public, I found myself contemplating my eternal debt to my good friend, William Shakespeare. I have often wondered how a man living centuries before my own arrival upon this Earth could have conceived those now celebrated lines, "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus." The answer, when one considers the matter with sufficient intellectual rigour, is inescapable. Shakespeare had somehow perceived me.

It would be absurd to suggest that he wrote those words merely as a passing observation upon Julius Caesar. Such an explanation, though doubtless satisfactory to the less discerning literary critic, fails to account for the extraordinary precision with which they describe my own person. No, Shakespeare, through some faculty of perception unavailable to ordinary men, had penetrated the intervening centuries and caught sight of me before I had even been born. He had seen the Colossus who would one day walk among the shops of Leeds, and, being Shakespeare, had possessed the good sense to put the matter into verse.

I paused briefly beneath the artificial illumination of the Merrion Centre, allowing this thought to settle upon me. Around me, shoppers continued their trivial transactions, blissfully unaware that the very figure anticipated by the greatest writer in the English language was standing within a few feet of their preferred retail establishments. I felt no particular need to enlighten them. Shakespeare had already done that, several centuries in advance.

Woodhouse Lane & Rossington Street

Upon leaving the Merrion Centre, I made my way along Woodhouse Lane, and then veered sharply left, down past my old Leeds Grammar School, which offered an appropriate setting for further consideration of the relationship between education and intelligence. The distinction is one that has occupied my thoughts for many years, largely because so many people appear determined to confuse the possession of qualifications with the possession of a mind.

I have never denied the value of education. Knowledge, properly acquired, can enlarge a person's understanding and sharpen his judgement. The difficulty arises when the machinery of education is mistaken for its ultimate purpose. A man may accumulate certificates, master the vocabulary of his chosen discipline and learn to speak with the reassuring confidence of someone who has passed a succession of examinations, yet remain curiously incapable of independent thought. He may know what he has been taught without ever asking whether he has understood it.

Millennium Square

As I persevered onward and pushed my physical perambulations forward into Millennium Square, I paused to observe the people moving about me, absorbed in their small concerns and apparently unaware that the ground upon which they walked had become, for me, a place of philosophical revelation. I thought of Abraham Lincoln, who had educated himself against considerable odds, and Socrates, who had challenged the wisdom of his fellow citizens. Each had stood apart from the multitude, and each had paid the price of possessing a mind that refused to be governed by the assumptions of ordinary men. I could appreciate their achievements, naturally, for I had spent much of my life recognising qualities in others that they themselves had been unable to recognise in me.

Yet there was something faintly amusing about the whole business. Lincoln had required a lifetime to become Lincoln; Socrates had required a trial and a cup of hemlock to establish his place in history. I, by contrast, had merely to stand in Millennium Square while the people of Leeds peeped and passed around me, entirely unaware of the historical proportions of the occasion. I continued down the lane with the satisfaction of a man who had found his thoughts confirmed by his surroundings.

Leeds Town Hall

Having completed my perambulation across Millennium Square, I proceeded past the Leeds General Infirmary, that imposing monument to the frailties of the human organism, before arriving at the rear of the Town Hall. There I paused, surveying the surrounding architecture with the measured attention that I have always considered the proper duty of a reflective mind. The civic buildings stood in their accustomed dignity, apparently unaware of the extraordinary philosophical significance of their proximity to my person.

It was then that I became conscious of my thirst. Even the most profound thinker, I reflected, must occasionally attend to the requirements of the body. I therefore availed myself of the Victoria pub, where I ordered a pint of best ale and, as I settled into my chair, turned my thoughts towards another of my good friends, Dr Samuel Johnson.

I have long been grateful to Johnson, whose extraordinary powers of perception enabled him, across the otherwise impenetrable barriers of time, to behold me in my natural element. I took a sip of my ale, reflecting upon the extraordinary prescience of Dr Johnson to see my humble self, in my chair, and write: "The tavern chair; the throne of human felicity."