Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

True contentment.

Plato wrote above the door of the academy, “Let no one enter here who is destitute of geometry.” Why did he value geometry so highly? Not merely as an introduction to the study of philosophy, for in one of his dialogues he says, “God geometrizes.” He had an idea that a youth in thinking the theorems of geometry is thinking divine thoughts. When Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion, he exclaimed, in ecstasy, “O God, I think thy thoughts after thee!” When a pupil learns to think the thoughts which the Creator has put into the starry heavens above us and into all nature about us, he is thinking God’s thoughts and tasting the enjoyments of the higher life. When he is taught the right use of books, and given access to a public library, he may acquire the power to think the best thoughts of the best men at their best moments. In nature study, in the reading lesson, in the teaching of science and literature, the school fosters the higher life of the pupil by enabling him to think God’s thoughts and man’s best thoughts as these are enshrined in creation and in the humanities. The objection is sometimes heard that the school makes the working-classes discontented with their lot. “Teach a man to think,” says the opponent of universal education, “and you make him dissatisfied with what he has and knows.” If the school fixes the eye upon wealth, fame, glory, official position, and other things which can be attained only by a few, and which, when sought as the chief end of life, resemble the apples of the Dead Sea, turning to ashes on the lips as soon as they are tasted, then, indeed, the school may doom its pupils to a life of discontent and disappointment. But if the school fixes the eye upon the things of the higher life, things which are within the reach of every boy and girl at school, it lays the foundation for a contentment far transcending the possibilities of a life that turns upon feasting, office-holding, and the things that can be bought with money.

It must be admitted that the exercise of the higher powers carries with it a certain feeling of discontent, but it is a feeling that conditions true progress and is not doomed to ultimate disappointment. The true test of what is preferable is the testimony of those who have knowledge of both modes of existence. Who that knows both does not value the pleasures of thinking above those of eating? Who would exchange the joy of doing right for anything attainable by the man who, for the sake of success, banishes ethics from his business or his politics? “Few human creatures,” says Mill, “would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.” “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is only because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” Who would not rather be an intelligent workingman seeking to better his condition, than an ignoramus contented with little because he knows nothing of the joys of the higher life?

Life’s contradictions.

Tragedy and comedy.

Beauty.

Life is full of contradictions and incongruities and disappointments. Over against these, the school, in its relation to the higher life, has a duty to perform. For the discontent which springs from life’s contradictions and incongruities a safety-valve has been given to man in his ability to laugh. The person who never laughs is as one-sided and abnormal as the person who never prays. The comic is now recognized as one form of the beautiful, and the beautiful is closely allied to the true and the good. Without going into the philosophy of this matter, attention may be drawn to the fact that beauty has a home in the domain of art, as well as of nature; that the queen of the fine arts is poetry; that the greatest poet of all the ages was Shakespeare; that Shakespeare’s literary genius reached its highest flights in tragedies and comedies; that whilst tragedy and comedy are two forms of the beautiful in art, comedy is the highest form of the comic, whilst tragedy is the highest form of the sublime. In teaching us to appreciate the plays of Shakespeare, the school not merely teaches us when to laugh and when to weep, thereby furnishing the safety-valve to let off our discontent and to reconcile us anew to our lot, but puts us in possession of that which money cannot buy,—namely, the ability to appreciate the beautiful in its subtlest and sublimest forms. Who owns the moonlit skies, the millionaire or the poet? Who owns the hills and the valleys, the streams and the mountains; he in whose name the deeds and mortgages are recorded, or he whose soul can appreciate beauty and sublimity? Beauty has a home in nature and in art. It is the province of the school to put us in possession of the beautiful, the sublime, and the comic, for these quite as much as the true and the good belong to the things of the higher life.

Faith, hope, and love.

How about life’s disappointments? Higher than the life of thought is the life of faith and hope and love,—higher, because these are rooted and grounded in the life of thought, ripen above it as its highest fruitage and efflorescence. The nineteenth century has been an age of faith. Every scientific mind has profound faith in nature’s laws, in the universal efficacy of truth; and, like Agassiz and Gray and Drummond, multitudes of the best minds have made the step from faith in natural laws to faith in the laws which govern the spiritual world.

The common people evince a faith almost bordering on credulity in the readiness with which they accept the results of scientific research and investigation. Faith lies at the basis of great achievements. Bismarck declared that if he did not believe in the divine government of the world, he would not serve his country another day. “Take away my faith,” he exclaimed, “and you take away my country, too.” Whilst no religious test can he applied to those who teach in our public schools, our best people prefer teachers who have faith in the unseen to teachers who lack faith in the truths of revelation. In ways that escape observation, the spirit of faith passes from teacher to pupil, and gives the latter a sense of something to live for and something to be achieved.