“Thus the wise man, at all times and on every road, carries a mind ripe for acquisitions that ordinary folk neglect. The humblest occupation is for him a continuation of the loftiest; his formal calls are fortunate chances of investigation; his walks are voyages of discovery, what he hears and his silent answers are a dialogue that truth carries on with herself within him. Wherever he is, his inner universe is comparing itself with the other, his life with Life, his work with the incessant work of all beings; and as he comes forth from the narrow space in which his concentrated study is done, one gets the impression, not that he is leaving the true behind, but that he is throwing his door wide open so that the world may bring to him all the truth given out in its mighty activities.”
sertillanges
The star of evening set against the darkening sky is lonely /
Keep your soul free. What matters most in life is not knowledge, but character; and character would be endangered if a man were under his work, so to speak, struggling with Sisyphus’s stone. There is a knowledge other than that which is of the domain of memory: the knowledge of how to live. Study must be an act of life, must serve life, must feel itself impregnated with life. Of the two kinds of men, those who endeavor to know something, and those who try to be someone, the palm is to the second. What we know is like a beginning, a rough sketch only; the man is the finished work.
It is certainly true that intellectuality contributes to the sovereignty of man; but it is not enough. Besides morality, which includes the life of religion, various broad aspects of the human condition must be considered. We have spoken of life in society, of practical activities: let us add communion with nature, care of one's home, the arts, friendly and formal gatherings, a little poetry, the practice of speaking, intelligent sport, public demonstrations.
It is hard to settle exactly the measure of all these things; I have confidence that the reader will find here at least the spirit in which to decide. It is a sure indication both for thought and practice to be able to appreciate the relative value of things.
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We must always be more than we are; the philosopher must be something of a poet, the poet something of a philosopher; the craftsman must be poet and philosopher on occasion, and the people recognize this fact. The writer must be a practical man, and the practical man must know how to write. Every specialist is first of all a person, and the essential quality of the person is beyond anything that he thinks or does.
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I know a man who at the sight of a rapid mountain torrent inevitably thought of the movement of worlds–those masses that rush through space with the same speed, under the governance of the same laws, depending on the same forces, thanks to the same God with whom everything begins and to whom everything returns. Going back to his work he felt himself uplifted by the unique Force, filled with the Presence that is everywhere; and his obscure activity was rooted in communion with all being.
Yet you let your mind get cramped and your heart grow dry, and you imagine that it is loss of time to follow the course of the torrents or to wander among the stars. The universe fills man with its glory, and you do not know it. The star of evening set against the darkening sky is lonely, it wants a place in your thought, and you refuse to admit it. You write, you compute, you string propositions together, you elaborate your theses, and you do not look.
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The intellectual I have in view is a man of wide and varied knowledge complementary to a special study thoroughly pursued; he loves the arts and natural beauty; his mind shows itself to be one in everyday occupations and in meditation: he is the same man in the presence of God, of his fellows, and of his maid, carrying within him a world of ideas and feelings that are not only written down in books and in discourses, but flow into his conversation with his friends, and guide his life.
At bottom, everything is connected and everything is the same thing. Intellectuality admits of no compartments. All the objects of our thought are so many doors into the "secret garden," the "wine cellar" which is the goal of ardent research. Thoughts and activities, realities and their reflections, all have one and the same Father. Philosophy, art, travel, domestic cares, finance, poetry, and tennis can be allied with one another, and conflict only through lack of harmony.
What is necessary every moment is to be where we ought to be and to do the thing that matters. Everything makes one harmony in the concert of the human and the divine.
– A. G. Sertillanges, excerpted from The Worker and the Man in The Intellectual Life (1921)
Everything is in everything /
So acquire the habit of being present at this activity of the material and moral universe. Learn to look; compare what is before you with your familiar or secret ideas. Do not see in a town merely houses, but human life and history. Let a gallery or a museum show you something more than a collection of objects, let it show you schools of art and of life, conceptions of destiny and of nature, successive or varied tendencies of technique, of inspiration, of feeling. Let a workshop speak to you not only of iron and wood, but of man's estate, of work, of ancient and modern social economy, of class relationships. Let travel tell you of mankind; let scenery remind you of the great laws of the world; let the stars speak to you of measureless duration; let the pebbles on your path be to you the residue of the formation of the earth; let the sight of a family make you think of past generations; and let the least contact with your fellows throw light on the highest conception of man. If you cannot look thus, you will become, or be, a man of only commonplace mind. A thinker is like a filter, in which truths as they pass through leave their best substance behind.
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Thus the wise man, at all times and on every road, carries a mind ripe for acquisitions that ordinary folk neglect. The humblest occupation is for him a continuation of the loftiest; his formal calls are fortunate chances of investigation; his walks are voyages of discovery, what he hears and his silent answers are a dialogue that truth carries on with herself within him. Wherever he is, his inner universe is comparing itself with the other, his life with Life, his work with the incessant work of all beings; and as he comes forth from the narrow space in which his concentrated study is done, one gets the impression, not that he is leaving the true behind, but that he is throwing his door wide open so that the world may bring to him all the truth given out in its mighty activities.
— Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges in The Intellectual Life (1921) translated from French by Mary Ryan