The other good bit, that I really liked actually, was where he talks about dot becoming circle becoming line. How it (it being religion, group ritual, but could be more broadly historical thinking, or even thinking in general, I think he's saying) starts as a speck, enlarges into a circle, which then unfurls into a line. And the line is wavy at first, but becomes straight, rises vertical but then collapses straight, becomes horizontal and chops around on that horizontal. Like that is what written history does, makes us think we are on a line, or at the end of a line but we are still sort of just a dot. We are seeing so many graphs these days, lines coloured differently to mark progress. "Flatten the curve".
But also when drawing, you touch the pen to paper to make a dot and generally you then make a line. You would not really make another dot. But that precision and detail is what a lot of the propers do. And painting especially is more like that, you make a mark, spread it around from what it is, the shape and form comes out of the dot, you do less of the making of lines, or at least I do.
I do like that as a way of thinking actually, dot circle line. I think that's quite useful.