Autor: Sertillanges A. D. (Gilbert)

Buch: The Intellectual Life

Titel: The Intellectual Life

Stichwort: Feinde des Wissens u. d. Erkenntnis; Trägheit, Sinnlichkeit; Reinheit des Denkens - Reinheit d. Seele

Kurzinhalt: ... what enemies do you fear? What about sloth, the grave of the best gifts? What of sensuality, which makes the body weak and lethargic ... dulls the intelligence, scatters the memory? ... Purity of thought requires purity of soul ...

Textausschnitt: 11/2 All contemporary psychologists are in agreement here; the fact is plain to see, admitting of no doubt. The "psychology of the feelings" governs practice, but also, to a large extent, thought. Knowledge depends on the direction given to our passions and on our moral habits. To calm our passions is to awaken in ourselves the sense of the universal; to correct ourselves is to bring out the sense of the true. (21; Fs) (notabene)

12/2 Carry your analysis further. What are the enemies of knowledge? Plainly, lack of intelligence; there fore in discussing vices and virtues and their role in the pursuit of knowledge we presuppose persons who are equal in other respects. But, stupidity apart, what enemies do you fear? What about sloth, the grave of the best gifts? What of sensuality, which makes the body weak and lethargic, befogs the imagination, dulls the intelligence, scatters the memory? Of pride, which sometimes dazzles and sometimes darkens, which so drives us in the direction of our own opinion that the universal sense may escape us? Of envy, which obstinately refuses to acknowledge some light other than our own? Of irritation which repels criticism and comes to grief on the rock of error? (21f; Fs) (notabene)

Without these obstacles, a man of study will rise to heights greater or less according to his resources and his environment; but he will reach the level of his own gifts, of his own destiny.

13/2 We must notice that all the faults just mentioned bring one another more or less in their train; they intersect, they ramify, they are with regard to love of the good or contempt for the good what intersecting streamlets are to the spring. Purity of thought requires purity of soul; that is a general and undeniable truth. The neophyte of knowledge should let it sink deeply into his mind. (22; Fs)

14/2 Let us rise higher, and speaking of springs, let us not forget the Supreme Spring. The surest metaphysic tells us that at the summit of things, the true and the good are not only connected, but are identical. (22; Fs)

We must state for exactness' sake, that the good thus spoken of is not properly speaking moral good; desirable good is what is directly referred to; but a little circuit brings us back from the latter to the former. (22f; Fs)

15/2 Moral good is nothing else than desirable good measured by reason and set before the will as an end. Ends are related. They all depend on one ultimate end. It is this ultimate end which links up with the true and is one with it. Connect these propositions, and you will find that moral good, if not identical in every way with the true, still depends on it through the ends aimed at by the will. There is, therefore, between the two, a bond more or less loose or close, but unbreakable. (23; Fs)

It is not by the individuality in us that we approach truth; it is in virtue of a participation in the universal. This universal, which is at one and the same time the true and the good, cannot be honored as the true-we cannot enter into intimate union with it, discover its traces, and yield ourselves to its mighty sway-unless we recognize and serve it equally as the good. (23; Fs)

16/2 Climb up the Great Pyramid by those giant steps that so exactly represent the ascent of the true: if you go up by the northern edge, can you reach the summit without getting nearer and nearer to the southern edge? To keep away from it would be to stay on the low levels; to turn away from it would be to go sideways and downwards. Similarly the genius of the true tends of itself to join the good; if it diverges it is at the expense of its upward impulse towards the summits. (23; Fs)

17/2 Blessed are the pure of heart, said the Lord, they shall see God. "Preserve purity of conscience," says St. Thomas to his student; "do not fail to imitate the conduct of the saints and of good men." Responsiveness of the soul to the ineffable spring, its filial and loving dispositions, lay it open to receive light after light, and ever-increasing fervor and rectitude. Truth, when loved and realized as a life, shows itself to be a first principle; one's vision is according to what one is; one participates in truth by participating in the Spirit through whom it exists. Great personal intuitions, piercing lights, are in men of equal powers the consequence of moral progress, of detachment from self and from the usual commonplace things, of humility, simplicity, discipline of the senses and the imagination, of an eager impulse towards the great ends. (24; Fs) (notabene)

18/2 There is no question now of proving one's skill, of showing off the brilliance of one's powers, as of a jewel; one desires to get into communion with the radiant center of light and life; one approaches this center in its unity, as it is; one adores it, and renounces what is opposed to it in order to be flooded with its glory. Is not all that something like the meaning of the famous words: "Great thoughts come from the heart"?1 (24; Fs)