Autor: Sertillanges A. D. (Gilbert)

Buch: The Intellectual Life

Titel: The Intellectual Life

Stichwort: Vorbereitung: intellektuelle Arbeit; Licht d. Verstandes; Bücherwissen - Wissen aus/um Sein;

Kurzinhalt: Indeed, in the last analysis, God is our only Master ... It is not what a writer says that is of first importance to us; the important thing is what is.

Textausschnitt: 37/7 St. Thomas, going more deeply into the question, observes that the spoken and written word do not even reach the mind directly; their whole function is by means of sounds and signs to supply the soul with matter. The sound rings out; the light vibrates; our senses perceive and pass on the signal; and, by an inverse movement this signal, springing from the idea, has the mission of awakening a similar idea. But in all that process, minds do not touch one another; the signals of one mind make only indirect contact with the other; and what produces knowledge is not the system of signs put before us, it is the work of our own reason on those signs. (168; Fs) (notabene)

At bottom, the intellectual propositions that are put to us remain as much outside our intelligence as the things themselves that we want to know; they have only this advantage, that they correspond, as signs, to ideas already worked out and set in order. That facilitates our thought but does not take its place. All that teaching does is to provide us with means of mental activity, as medicine offers our bodies means of getting well; but just as no medicine can act on an inert organism, no teaching can succeed with a negligent mind. (168f; Fs)

38/7 In reality nature herself operates the cure; and the mind is enlightened only by its own light, unless we say: by the light of God infused into it according to the words of the Psalm: "The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us." (Ps. 4:7.) Indeed, in the last analysis, God is our only Master, »He who speaks within us, and from Him within us all instruction comes; strictly speaking, thought is incommunicable from man to man.1 (169; Fs) (notabene)

This penetrating analysis has practical consequences. If the idea does not reach us from without, if it is necessarily within us that it must come to birth, let us make it our endeavor that the intellectual matter provided by the book — those signals from a silent interlocutor — may really raise us to the thought expressed and even beyond it, for an idea evoked in an active mind should always rouse some further idea. (169; Fs)

39/7 We enter into the intimacy of genius only by sharing the same inspiration; to listen from outside is to condemn oneself not to hear. It is not with the eyes, nor with the ears, that one hears a great saying, it is with a soul on the level of what is revealed to it, with an intelligence illuminated by one and the same light. (169; Fs) (notabene)

The source of knowledge is not in books, it is in reality, and in our thought. Books are signposts; the road is older, and no one can make the journey to truth for us. (169f; Fs)

40/7 It is not what a writer says that is of first importance to us; the important thing is what is. Our mind has the task not of repeating but of comprehending—that is, we must "take with" us, cum-prehendere, we must vitally assimilate, what we read, and we must finally think for ourselves. When we have heard the words, we must, after the author and perhaps thanks to him but in the last resort independently of him, compel our own soul to re-express them. We must recreate for our own use the sum total of knowledge. (170; Fs)

In any case the principal profit from reading, at least from reading great works, is not the acquisition of scattered truths, it is the increase of our wisdom. Amiel, comparing the French with the German mind, said: "The Germans bring the bundles of wood to the woodpile; the French provide the sparks." That judgment is perhaps too absolute; but certainly it is the sparks that start the flame.

To develop wisdom was the first object of our education; it is still that of the education that we essay to provide for ourselves. Without wisdom, what we take in would be worthless, it would be as useless as was the first when it was on the library shelf. In ourselves also there are volumes and texts of great value that we do not read. (170; Fs)

41/7 What an abuse it is to associate with great minds and to get from them nothing but formulas! And how clearly it will appear when, in writing ourselves, we want to utilize them! Such parroting is speedily seen for what it is, and it is soon evident that the writer is a nobody. (170f; Fs)

42/7 To make real use of another is invention. Even when one quotes literally, if the passage is introduced in a setting in which it has its exact place, and if the setting is on the same level, is of a piece and makes a living unity with what it borrows, one is showing an originality equal in a sense to the master's. The glory given to another redounds to oneself. The quotation is in this case like the word one finds in the dictionary, but which one still creates as the soul creates the body.

That is how St. Thomas, Bossuet, Pascal, quote. And we who aspire to quite humble tasks must apply to them the same laws of the mind. Truth is all men's ancestor; wisdom addresses her invitation to all; we must not leave to the greatest the monopoly of making a superior use of what is offered us. Compared with men of genius we are only children, but we are children with an inheritance. What they give us is ours because it belongs to eternity; from eternity they themselves received it. We must contemplate, while they speak to us, what was before them and is above them, what God makes ready for us all. (171; Fs)

It is on these conditions that we may attain originality; and we may count fully, if some day our wisdom grows, on doing original work in the true sense of the term. If we are to produce something truly ours, reading can only serve to stimulate us—to enrich our personality, not our pages. That is in another sense what I said, about finding in books what is not in them, finding a way of entry through them into new domains. (171f; Fs)