“We know how to say: ‘Cicero says thus; such are the morals of Plato; these are the very words of Aristotle.’ But what do we say ourselves? What do we judge? What do we do? A parrot could well say as much. This habit makes me think of that rich Roman who went to much trouble and very great expense to procure men learned in every field of knowledge, whom he kept continually around him, so that when there should befall among his friends some occasion to speak of one thing or another, they should fill his place and all be ready to furnish him, one with an argument, one with a verse of Homer, each one according to his quarry; and he thought that his knowledge was his own because it was in the heads of his men, as those also do whose ability dwells in their sumptuous libraries. We take the opinions and the knowledge of others into our keeping, and that is all. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, should go and fetch some at his neighbors house, and, having found a fine big fire there, should stop there and warm himself, forgetting to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not make us bigger and stronger?” (I:25, 120, Frame)
Month: April 2020
Who is Better Learned
“Exclaim to our people about a passer-by: ‘Oh, what a learned man!’ and about another ‘Oh, what a good man!’ They will not fail to turn their eyes and their respect toward the first. There should be a third exclamation: ‘Oh, what blockheads!’ We are eager to inquire: ‘Does he know Greek or Latin? Does he write in verse or in prose?’ But whether he has become better or wiser, which would be the main thing, that is left out. We should have asked who is better learned, not who is more learned.” (I:25, 121, Frame)
William James, The Social Value of the College-Bred:
“Of what use is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the question raised — we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to know a good man when you see him. This is as true of women’s as of men’s colleges; but that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I shall now endeavor to show.”
What Do We Do?
“We know how to say: ‘Cicero says thus; such are the morals of Plato; these are the very words of Aristotle.’ But what do we say ourselves? How do we judge? What do we do? A parrot could well say as much.” (I:25, 121, Frame)
An Accursed Vice
“In truth lying is an accursed vice. We are men, and hold together, only by our word. If we recognized the horror and the gravity of lying, we would persecute it with fire more justly that other crimes. I find that people ordinarily fool around chastising harmless faults in children very inappropriately, and torment them for thoughtless actions that leave neither imprint nor consequences. Only lying, and a little below it obstinacy, seem to me to be the actions whose birth and progress one should combat insistently. They grow with the child. And once the tongue has been put on this wrong track, it cannot be called back without amazing difficulty…. If falsehood, like truth, had only one face, we would be in better shape. For we would take as certain the opposite of what the liar said. But the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and a limitless field. The Pythagoreans make out the good to be certain and finite, evil infinite and uncertain. A thousand paths miss the target, one goes to it.” (I:9, 23, Frame)
IWP BOOKS 