There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.
Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, “that dear delight;” when the love of a modestly elusive truth seemed more glorious – incomparably — than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. “Life has meaning,” we feel with Browning. “To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”
So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-canceling vacillation and futility. We strive with the chaos about and within, but we should believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand. “Life means for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are or meet with!” We are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov –– “one of those who don’t want millions, but an answer to their questions.” We want to seize the value and perspective of passing things and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance.
We want to know that the little things are little, and the things big, before it is too late. We want to see things now as they will seem forever — “in the light of eternity.” We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by harmonizing our desires, for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics — and perhaps in logic and metaphysics, too.
“To be a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “is not merely to have subtle thoughts, or even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.” We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. “Seek ye first the good things of the mind,” Bacon admonishes us, “and the rest will either be supplied, or its loss will not be felt.” Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
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We should study not merely philosophies—but also philosophers. We should spend our time with the saints and martyrs of thought, letting their radiant spirits play about us until perhaps we too, in some measure, shall partake of what da Vinci called “the noblest pleasure, the joy of understanding.”
Each of the philosophers has some lesson for us—if we approach [them] properly. “Do you know,” asks Emerson, “the secret of the true scholar? In every [one of them] there is something… I may learn of [them], and in that I am [their] pupil.” Well, surely we may take this attitude to the masterminds of history without hurt to our pride! And we may flatter ourselves with that other thought of Emerson’s, that when genius speaks to us we feel a ghostly reminiscence of having ourselves, in our distant youth, had vaguely this selfsame thought which genius now speaks, but which we had not art or courage to clothe with form and utterance.
And indeed, great [people] speak to us only so far as we have ears and souls to hear them—only so far as we have in us the roots, at least, of that which flowers out in them. We, too, have had the experiences they had, but we did not suck those experiences dry of their secret and subtle meanings: We were not sensitive to the overtones of the reality that hummed about us. Genius hears the overtones — and the music of the spheres. Genius knows what Pythagoras meant when he said that “philosophy is the highest music.”
So let us listen to these [philosophers], ready to forgive them their passing errors, eager to learn the lessons which they are so eager to teach. “Do you then be reasonable” said old Socrates to Crito, “and do not mind whether the teachers of philosophy are good or bad, but think only of Philosophy herself. Try to examine her well and truly, and if she be evil, seek to turn away all [people] from her — but if she be what I believe she is, then follow her and serve her and be of good cheer.”
I too felt the pull of this “dear delight” almost 50 years ago. Since then it has been a constant companion, even in the most troubling times. I’m fortunate to have encountered philosophy, and I thank all those who introduced me to the world of mind.
