Thinks
A think from Thomas Jefferson, more important than ever:
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
(Taken from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800.)
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If the angel deigns to come, it will be because you have convinced her, not by your tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
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Merlyn, on Cheering Up
from The Sword in the Stone, by T. H. White
Sir Ector has given me a glass of canary[1],” said the Wart, “and sent me to see if you can’t cheer me up.”
“Sir Ector,” said Merlyn, “is a wise man.”
“Well,” said the Wart, “what about it?”
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing to do then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn – pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard[2] lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocritisicm[3] and geography and history and economics – why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that, you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plow.”
[1] a kind of wine. This is funny because Canary wasn’t invented yet.[2] this is British for billion. Which word do you like better?[3] I tried looking this up, but couldn’t find it in my dictionary. However, theo means god, and criticism means to consider the merits and demerits of something and judge accordingly. So – you figure it out!
