I must start by thanking the John Clifford Sealy Foundation for the honour of inviting me to deliver this lecture and for the opportunity to ruminate on the subject of my own choosing. I never had the fortune of knowing cliff Sealy personally, although the fame of the Clifford Sealy Book-Shop on Martli Street and then Frederick Street spread throughout the West Indies. After reading the powerful tribute to Sealy by Winston Riley, I feel as if I know him. He was clearly a remarkable man - a man whose sustaining sense of his own self-worth and enduring quest for self-knowledge plunged him into the world of law, politics, art, literature, theology and philosophy; a popular educator; social a political activist in the cause of the working class, national independence, and West Indies Federation; novelist, playwright; a man of letters and of books; above all, a human person that gained the respect and affection of those who knew him.

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