The Path of Wisdom

THE world is a fertile mother, refusing none who woo her. She yields impartially to him who comes in search of wisdom and him who is content with folly, responding to each with an offspring made in his own image. He who says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ finds nothing in Nature to contradict him; and yet another, looking upon the same world, will hear the winged creatures, the mountains, and the abyss of ocean declaring, as Saint Augustine heard them, ‘God made us.’ Society may banish the thief, incarcerate the vicious, draw its skirts away from the heretic, but Nature will never disown any of these: she has room for them all as well as for those who observe the proprieties of custom. In the house of Nature there are also many mansions. In her great democracy of time and space every created thing has its own appointed place. Nature is impartial, and we shall look in vain if we expect from her any verdict upon the kind of life men choose to lead in her domain.

And yet, the contradictory conclusions to which men come concerning life present a problem. To say that it is not Nature’s problem does not dispose of it. Rather it is to insist that it is man’s problem. And that insistence is needed. Frequently men defend a departure from custom by maintaining that their indulgence of desire is natural, thereby implying that Nature gives approval. But that is what Nature never does: Nature is indifferent, making no distinction between sin and righteousness. A flowering vine and a rotting carcass at its roots alike illustrate the laws of chemistry and gravitation; and by invoking such principles there is nothing to choose between the hand that offers a cup of water to the thirsting and the hand that flays a shrieking victim. The discrimination which we make between these is not derived from any bias in Nature, but derives from a human bias. And it is to the latter we must turn if we will understand the meaning of morality, and that species of morality, right thinking, which is called wisdom.

On being confronted with the diametrically opposed opinions of men concerning life, a first impulse is to dispose of the confusion by concluding that here we are face to face with an ultimate fact beyond which we cannot progress, to admit that, as concerning tastes, so with the prejudices of the reason there is no disputing. And the temptation is almost overwhelming to be driven to adopt some theory of predestination which, while not accounting for that bias in intelligible terms, at least will lighten the burden of our ignorance and relieve our sense of responsibility. It is the old temptation to invent a vocabulary, pretending we have thereby made a discovery about things, to banish the familiar into regions of the unknown under the guise of offering a solution of its problems and difficulties. But to adopt such a course is a confession of defeat. For to displace any problem from the present and carry it back to creation is to remove it from time altogether and from the world which gave it birth. It is not explanation, but the failure of explanation.

But the recognition of human bias need not lead us to such a confession of defeat: it may and does furnish us with a clue to more hopeful considerations. It leads us to inquire why it is that men living in the same world should come to such radically different conceptions of it. And when we ask, What is the pivot upon which this personal bias turns? and expect a verifiable answer, the whole problem appears in a different light.

For one thing, it invites us to a consideration of the facts of psychology — not, however, that phase of it which deals with neurones and sense organs and which is chiefly concerned with physiology and anatomy, but rather that development of the science which still goes by the name of the New Psychology, dealing with the mechanisms of thought under such terms as complexes, repressions, conflicts, rationalizations, and the like. This latter approach is concerned with the thought process itself, and its examination of the working of the mind reveals the impressive fact that fidelity to the laws of logic is not a decisive factor in generating the wide variety of the opinions, theories, and beliefs embraced by men. As Dr. Bernard Hart has pointed out in following this phase of inquiry, there are none more logical than the insane. ‘The Queen of Sheba’ who scrubs the floor of her ward has a strictly logical explanation of her drab and sorry condition: it is all the result of a gigantic conspiracy against her, and there is no slightest detail in the conduct of friends, relatives, and associates which she does not fit perfectly into the ‘truth’ of her contention. Who then shall decide between her and those who call her ‘truth’ an error and a delusion? Shall we make it a matter of a majority vote, admitting that the day may come when the population of our insane asylums and those outside will change places? That has been suggested. A Persian it was, I believe, who in visiting this country some years ago made the delightful observation that we keep some of our citizens confined to give the impression that the rest of us are sane. But a collective prejudice is simply an individual bias magnified. The upshot of this line of inquiry is that in spite of a perfect logic there are people who find it of no use in helping them to get about in an ambiguous world.

But if the test of reasoning is not found in the quality of logic, where then shall we turn for an understanding of prejudice? And the answer for which we have been seeking is readily found: the test of rationality does not lie in the laws of logic, but is discovered in the application of reason to facts. It is in this direction in which the path of wisdom is discovered. And if the word ‘facts’ seems to be a question-begging term, it may be avoided by stating the principle thus: thinking and reasoning do not occur in isolation from the things thought about and reasoned about, and what is really critical is what thinking accomplishes with the objects of thought.

It is an honored doctrine that achievement is dependent upon the selection of a goal, and then abandoning all other loves to cleave only to this. But the facts of life, exemplified equally in success and in failure, teach quite otherwise. These insist that achievement is not primarily a matter of desire and persistence, though these do play a significant if not a decisive rôle. What is no less important than the selection of a goal is knowing something quite definite about the nature of that goal, and what is no less important than devotion and persistence in attaining it is knowing something quite definite about the means by which it can be attained. All the desire of the baby for the moon will never bring it to his arms, nor will the most painstaking search of the prospector reveal the hidden gold unless he seeks in places where it may be found. To say that Nature is indifferent to the desires of man does not mean that man can be indifferent to Nature. It matters exceedingly to him if not to her what he chooses to do with facts. Wisdom is born when man discovers that the reason finds no tracks laid down for it in the world in which it operates, but that the mind of sage and fool, learned and simple alike, bumps along until it encounters a fact, and what is really critical is what the mind chooses to do with that fact. And the emphasis is on the do: thinking is also a doing, an accomplishing.

Man can do a number of things with facts. He may ignore them, and then they will send him sprawling, cripple him, or destroy him. He may hate them and vent his anger by beating his head or his heart against them, only to find himself torn and bleeding. He may turn facts into questions, and then they will forever haunt him. He may behold in them a secret to be explored or a mystery to be worshiped; and in one case they will bring him to a seat in a laboratory, in the other they will bring him to his knees. Having made his choice as to what to do with facts, they will certainly do something to him. Action and reaction is another law of Nature from which there is no escape. His decision may eventually bring him to the madhouse or to fame, to the bliss of Heaven or the torments of Hell. Choose he may and does and must; but he chooses at the peril of his life and soul.

And so we are prepared to give a more adequate answer to our question: What is there in the way in which people reason that leads them to such contrary conclusions about the world and the kind of life it is their lot to live therein? It is at the source a difference in the way they face and dispose of facts, whether their thinking follows the lead of things, or whether, on the contrary, they insist that things should follow the lead of their thinking; to state it paradoxically, whether they build up their prejudices before facing facts, or whether they arrive at their prejudices after examining them. Between these two attitudes lies the abyss which separates the path of wisdom from that of folly.

The mind of man climbs to a new level when it discovers that facts are not enemies, but the familiar furniture of a world which it may call its home. Then it no longer dreads them, but accepts them with a sincere humility akin to piety, purging itself of all anxiety and renouncing the alchemy of fancy which makes them seem other than they are. Matthew Arnold quotes somewhere from Bishop Butler: ‘Since things are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be, why then should men wish to be deceived?’ Why indeed? To face the spectre of deception resolutely is to banish it utterly. Building its foundation upon facts, the soul may go forward unafraid, strong in the confidence that knowledge of facts gives it a power over them, strong in the confidence that, knowing things for what they are, it may employ them to build a better and a more beautiful world.

Thus the wise man finds in his wisdom a reward for the kind of life he has led, a kind of life whose energies have been directed toward understanding the world in which he lives in order that he may live well therein. Not that he need or can postpone either of these interests in favor of the other. They are not mutually exclusive. His thinking well is part of his living well. By seeking humbly into the ways of things he discovers wisdom, and through knowing the ways of things he becomes a creator. In this he finds an ample field for the joyous exercise of his soul. To be spiritual is also to be wise.

And with the discovery of the path of wisdom his whole attitude toward Nature is reborn. No longer does he look upon Nature as a fickle mistress, bringing forth a protean brood to every chance lover. That she may be so entreated he will admit. That she is impartial in her fertile motherhood he will not deny. But with wisdom comes the revelation that, while she may be indifferent to man, man may not be indifferent to her; that her favor may be sought and won, or dallied with and lost. And he who walks the path of wisdom will be swept by a longing to win her from all idle lovers, to hold her to his heart and breathe his own love into her. Humbly and patiently he will sit at her feet, striving to understand her ways and seeking to learn the secret concealed behind her impassive face. And as he gazes there will come one time the fleeting beauty of a smile. Perhaps it was the mirroring of his love; perhaps the quickening of her own soul. The path of wisdom is a discovery which leads on to others.