FDENG 201 Readings

ow to Mark a Book

by Mortimer J. Adler

Mortimer Adler (1902-2001) promoted fine literature all of his adult life:

he founded and fathered the Great Books Program, edited the

Encyclopedia Britannica, and wrote dozens of books on educational,

intellectual, and philosophical topics. A high school dropout, he attended

Columbia University and eventually earned a PhD. Among his most well-

known works is How to Read a Book (1940). “How to Mark a Book,” an

essay widely circulated for decades, has become a classic argument for

marking a text.

ou know you have to read “between the lines” to get the most out of anything. I want to

persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade

you to “write between the lines.” Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind

of reading.

I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love.

You shouldn’t mark up a book which isn’t yours. Librarians (or your friends) who lend you

books expect you to keep them clean, and you should. If you decide that I am right about the

usefulness of marking books, you will have to buy them. Most of the world’s great books are

available today, in reprint editions, at less than a dollar.

There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you

establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only

the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself,

and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration may make the

point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher’s icebox to your own. But you

do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your

bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your bloodstream to do you any

good.

Confusion about what it means to own a book leads people to a false reverence for paper,

binding, and type—a respect for the physical thing—the craft of the printer rather than the genius

of the author. They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess the beauty,

which a great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting his bookplate inside the cover.

Having a fine library doesn’t prove that its owner has a mind enriched by books; it proves nothing

more than that he, his father, or his wife, was rich enough to buy them.

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There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and best-sellers—

unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns wood-pulp and ink, not books.) The second

has a great many books—a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as

clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his

own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books

or many—every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use,

marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.)

Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact and unblemished a beautifully printed

book, an elegantly bound edition? Of course not. I’d no more scribble all over a first edition of

“Paradise Lost” than I’d give my baby a set of crayons and an original Rembrandt! I wouldn’t

mark up a painting or a statue. Its soul, so to speak, is inseparable from its body. And the beauty

of a rare edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a statue.

But the soul of a book can be separated from its body. A book is more like the score of a

piece of music than it is like a painting. No great musician confuses a symphony with the printed

sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini’s score of the C-minor

Symphony is so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can read it. The reason

why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores—marks them up again and again

each time he returns to study them—is the reason why you should mark your books. If your

respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and

pay your respects to the author.

Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it keeps you awake. (And I

don’t mean merely conscious; I mean wide awake.) In the second place, reading, if it is active, is

thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The marked book is

usually the thought-through book. Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you had, or

the thoughts the author expressed. Let me develop these three points.

If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it must be active. You can’t let

your eyes glide across the lines of a book and come up with an understanding of what you have

read. Now an ordinary piece of light fiction, like, say, “Gone with the Wind,” doesn’t require the

most active kind of reading. The books you read for pleasure can be read in a state of relaxation,

and nothing is lost. But a great book, rich in ideas and beauty, a book that raises and tries to

answer great fundamental questions, demands the most active reading of which you are capable.

You don’t absorb the ideas of John Dewey the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee. You

have to reach for them. That you cannot do while you’re asleep.

If, when you’ve finished reading a book, the pages are filled with your notes, you know that

you read actively. The most famous active reader of great books I know is President Hutchins, of

the University of Chicago. He also has the hardest schedule of business activities of any man I

know. He invariably reads with a pencil, and sometimes, when he picks up a book and pencil in

the evening, he finds himself, instead of making intelligent notes, drawing what he calls “caviar

factories” on the margins. When that happens, he puts the book down. He knows he’s too tired to

read, and he’s just wasting time.

But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of writing, with your

own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better

in your memory. To set down your reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and


the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those

questions.

Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when you had finished

writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. But you don’t have to throw the paper away. The

margins (top and bottom, as well as side), the end-papers, the very space between the lines, are all

available. They aren’t sacred. And, best of all, your marks and notes become an integral part of

the book and stay there forever. You can pick up the book the following week or year, and there

are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. It’s like resuming an

interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off.

And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you and the

author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; naturally, you’ll have the

proper humility as you approach him. But don’t let anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to

be solely on the receiving end. Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn’t consist in

being an empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even

has to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. And marking a

book is literally an expression of your differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.

There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here’s the

way I do it:

1. Underlining: of major points, of important or forceful statements.

2. Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.

3. Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or

twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom corner of

each page on which you use such marks. It won’t hurt the sturdy paper on which most

modern books are printed, and you will be able to take the book off the shelf at any time

and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)

4. Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a

single argument.

5. Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made

points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may

be separated by many pages, belong together.

6. Circling of key words or phrases.

7. Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording

questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a

complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right

through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of

the author’s points in the order of their appearance.

The front end-papers are, to me, the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy

bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making

my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page

by page, or point by point (I’ve already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with

a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the

work.


If you’re a die-hard anti-book marker, you may object that the margins, the space between

the lines, and the end-papers don’t give you room enough. All right. How about using a scratch

pad slightly smaller than the page-size of the book—so that the edges of the sheets won’t

protrude? Make your index, outlines, and even your notes on the pad, and then insert these sheets

permanently inside the front and back covers of the book.

Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your reading. It

probably will. That’s one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have been taken in by the notion

that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for

intelligent reading. Some things should be read quickly and effortlessly, and some should be read

slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to read different

things differently according to their worth. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how

many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through you—how many you

can make your own. A few friends are better than a thousand acquaintances. If this be your aim,

as it should be, you will not be impatient if it takes more time and effort to read a great book than

it does a newspaper.

You may have one final objection to marking books. You can’t lend them to your friends

because nobody else can read them without being distracted by your notes. Furthermore, you

won’t want to lend them because a marked copy is a kind of intellectual diary, and lending it is

almost like giving your mind away.

If your friend wishes to read your “Plutarch’s Lives,” “Shakespeare,” or “The Federalist

Papers,” tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat—but

your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.

ngels on a Pin The Barometer Story

by Alexander Calandra

Alexander Calandra (1911-2006) was a physics professor at Washington

University in St. Louis. He received his PhD from New York University in

1935. The American Association of Physics Teachers awarded him the

Millikan Medal for “notable and creative contributions to the teaching of

physics” in 1979. Calandra’s “Angels on a Pin” is a parable of playful,

creative –even defiant –thinking. It was first published in his 1961

textbook, The Teaching of Elementary Science and Mathematics, and later

in the Saturday Review, December 21, 1968.

ome time ago, I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the

grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a

physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the

system were not set up against the student. The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to

an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I went to my colleague‟s office and read the examination question: “Show how it is

possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.”

The student had answered: “Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long

rope to it, lower the barometer to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope.

The length of the rope is the height of the building.”

I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit, since he had answered

the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well

contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to

certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student

have another try at answering the question. I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I

was surprised that the student did.

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question, with the warning that his answer

should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything.

I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem: he was just

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thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him, and asked him to please go on. In

the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read:

“Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the

barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula S = ½ at2, calculate the

height of the building.”

At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the

student almost full credit.

In my colleague‟s office, I recalled that the student had said he had other answers to the

problem, so I asked him what they were. “Oh, yes,” said the student. “There are many ways of

getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the

barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow,

and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the

height of the building.”

“Fine,” I said. “And the others?”

“Yes,” said the student. “There is a very basic measurement method that you will like. In

this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you

mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and

this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method.

“Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end

of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of „g‟ at the street level and at the top

of the building. From the difference between the two values of „g,‟ the height of the building can,

in principle, be calculated.”

Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem. “Probably the

best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent‟s door.

When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: „Mr. Superintendent, here I have

a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer.‟”

At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this

question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college

instructors trying to teach him how to think, to use the “scientific method,” and to explore the

deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather

than teaching him the structure of the subject.

earning, Our Theology

by M. Kip Hartvigsen

M. Kip Hartvigsen (b. 1950) grew up in Provo, Utah. He studied American

literature at Brigham Young University and rhetoric at Washington State

University, earning a PhD in 1981. At BYU-Idaho, he directed the

composition program and chaired the English Department. His publications

include strategies on teaching critical thinking and texts he has edited for

composition courses at BYU-Idaho. “Learning, Our Theology,” an address

directed to the BYU-Idaho faculty, was delivered in the Idaho Falls Temple

in 2001.

hen I was beginning kindergarten, my family lived in Los Angeles where my father, at

the time, was pursuing a graduate degree at UCLA. Our home was situated just off Santa Monica

Boulevard so that our backyard was adjacent to the side of the temple ground. This honestly

seems like ancient history, but I can remember watching the crane hoist the Angel Moroni to its

place atop the temple steeple, which at the time seemed as tall as an Empire State Building. I can

also remember not long afterwards when serpentine lines of pre-dedication temple visitors wound

around the corner of our home and up the sidewalk to the temple grounds. All of this left an

indelible impression on my five-year-old mind.

Not long after the temple dedication, I remember being at school, a few blocks from home.

I don‘t remember all the particulars—actually I remember more than I wish to recount. My

teacher was giving me a scolding I very much deserved (I‘m sure). Incensed, I charged out of the

gate of the enclosed school yard and started for home. Unable to catch me, the teacher watched as

I ran down the street. Bee-lining the streets of Westwood, I headed for home.

Once there, I hid under my bed until I was found by my mother, who had received a call

from my frantic teacher. Before being paddled and sent right back to school with an apology, I

was pressed by my mother: How had I managed to find my way home? I really don‘t remember

my answer first hand, but my mom always loved to remind me how I responded: ―Gee, Mom, I

followed the Angel Moroni.‖

Reflecting on that experience now, I believe the temple is my way back home. The temple

is the place where I learn about and make covenants to return to my heavenly home and father.

Growing up, I have often heard the temple called the Lord‘s university and have often

wondered as I have sat in this chapel anticipating an endowment session, ―What would the Lord

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have me learn today?‖ I often imagine that I‘m listening to the endowment for the first time to see

what ideas and impressions strike me at that particular time.

I like to think of the temple as a place where learning is ongoing. For me, the temple

symbolizes so much—the presence of God in our midst, the purity and order of God, the physical

reality of God (that He has literally a house wherein to dwell), the progression of our lives

through mortality to hoped for celestial glory. All of this makes the temple rich in symbol. And

along with all of this, the temple symbolizes for me the process and power of learning. The

temple is a symbol that our Heavenly Father values learning in faith, that He expects us to seek

and search for understanding.

I would like to speak this morning about learning and about how Heavenly Father expects

us to spend our life learning. I pray that what I have to share will motivate each of us here in two

ways: (1) to recommit ourselves to learning and (2) to instill our love for learning within the heart

and mind of each person we teach.

Jeffrey Holland, addressing the faculty of Brigham Young University as its president, said,

―The fundamental reason for a ‗school in Zion‘ is plainly and simply because . . . [learning] is our

theology‖ (146). Elder Holland then rehearsed several revelations which clarify the Lord‘s

expectations about learning:

Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more

perfectly in… things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which

have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; . . . a knowledge also

of countries and kingdoms. (Doctrine and Covenants 88:78-79)

Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also

by faith. (Doctrine and Covenants 88:118)

Study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages,

tongues, and people. (Doctrine and Covenants 90:15)

At this point, Elder Holland concluded, as he synthesized several additional revelations

about learning: ―Such knowledge will rise with us in the Resurrection, we are told, and most

sobering of all is the warning ‗It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance‘(Doctrine and

Covenants 131:6), for ‗the glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth‘

(Doctrine and Covenants 93:36), and ‗light and truth forsake that evil one‘ (Doctrine and

Covenants 93:37)‖ (147).

The Prophet Brigham Young, whose name our institution now bears, once asked about our

mortality, ―What are we here for?‖ His answer? ―To learn to enjoy more, and to increase in

knowledge and in experience.‖ ―The object of this existence is to learn‖ (qtd. in Holland 148).

President Gordon B. Hinckley continues to admonish the Saints to learn: ―Acquire all of the

education you can, even if it means great sacrifice . . .‖ (Teachings 172). ―I do not care what you

want to be as long as it is honorable. A car mechanic, a brick layer, a plumber, an electrician, a

doctor, a lawyer, a merchant, but not a thief‖ (Teachings 172). ―There is a tendency on the part of

some graduates to say, ‗Now all of that is behind me.‘ No [President Hinckley rejoins], there is

much more ahead than there is behind. . . . If you should stop [learning], . . . you will only stunt

your intellectual and spiritual growth. Keep everlastingly at it. Read. Read. Read. Read the word

of God in sacred books of scripture. Read from the great literature of the ages. Read what is being


said in our day and time and what will be said in the future‖ (Teachings 171). ―I believe that the

glory of God is intelligence, and that the Almighty takes delight in our efforts to improve and

enrich and enhance our minds‖ (Standing for Something 60).

Brothers and Sisters, latter-day prophets have made it clear—learning is our theology.

Elder John A. Widtsoe even went so far as to assert, ―The support of education is, indeed, one test

of the true Church‖ (qtd. in Holland 160).

What thrills me about our Father in Heaven‘s relationship with us is that He teaches us how

to keep his commandments. Learning is not unlike other commandments. In scripture and latter-

day revelation, He shows us how to learn. Reminding ourselves of the Lord‘s pattern for learning

helps us in two ways. We establish a pattern to enhance our own learning. And we more capably

help others learn.

For the next few minutes, I would like to share what I have discovered about the Lord‘s

pattern for learning.

1. The Lord’s Pattern for Learning Requires Us to Be Meek.

In his essay ―The Disciple Scholar,‖ Elder Neal A. Maxwell teaches us that the ―primary

attribute‖ of a disciple scholar is meekness. Each of us, he reasons, is deficient in our own

particular ways. It is meekness which enables us to recognize these deficiencies and surrender

ourselves to the Savior‘s example and instruction through the Holy Spirit (12-13).

Often, I think, we equate meekness with weakness. However, they are not the same.

Meekness more accurately equates with humility, patience, and submissiveness. Perhaps most of

us here would agree that those students we most enjoy teaching have this quality of meekness

about them. For example, I often sit in conference with my writing students. As we discuss their

papers at my desk, some are so open to suggestion and excited about improving, I too am swept

away in the moment. I feel like a real teacher. Then there are those who are so immediately

defensive that the air of tension becomes palpable. Our exchange is strained. They challenge each

suggestion. I sometimes catch them off guard when I finally say, ―I can‘t help you. You won‘t let

me.‖

Do you see these kinds of patterns reflected in our own relationship with others and, most

importantly, the Lord? The lesson seems to be: In meekness we are teachable, prepared for

spiritual tutorials. In pride, however, we can‘t even discern our need for growth because we think

we already know everything. This latter situation reminds me of what my dad used to jokingly

say, ―I can always tell a well informed person, because his opinion coincides precisely with my

own.‖ We are all familiar with the Lord‘s counsel: ―to be learned is good if . . . [we] hearken unto

the counsels of God.‖ The Lord, however, warns us of the foolishness of men: ―When they are

learned they think they are wise and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it

aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth

them not. And they shall perish‖ (2 Nephi 9:28-29).

This scripture reminds us that learning is good, if we follow the Lord‘s pattern and seek

learning in humility.

This same attitude of meekness enhances learning in all of our pursuits—spiritual and

secular. When 80 years of age and after publishing numerous scholarly volumes, Will Durant, the


eminent historian, remarked in an interview: ―Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know

nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance‖ (qtd. in Butler 25). Here is a

scholar who will never cease learning because his humility keeps his mind open.

The French philosopher-mathematician Pascal creates a metaphor to clarify how the

humble person perceives the process of learning. Pascal describes a circle that by analogy

contains that which is known. That which lies outside of the circle represents that which is not

known. As the circumference of the circle enlarges to contain greater knowledge, the greater

circumference also impinges on ever-larger areas of the unknown. Hence the paradox, education

is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. As President Hinckley teaches, ―The more we

learn, the more we are in a position to learn‖ (Standing 61).

And here‘s an interesting aside: Researchers are discovering ―The more you learn, the more

you‘re able to learn. . . . One theory is that an active brain continues to grow . . . forming new

dendrites, connections between nerve cells that allow cells to talk to each other. The more

dendrites you have, the better able your brain is to store and retrieve information‖ (Paster 1).

But to the point, humility and meekness truly enhance our efforts to learn.

2. The Lord’s Pattern for Learning Requires Diligence and Self-Discipline.

Addressing the students of Brigham Young University in a devotional, President Hinckley

remarked: ―I deplore the terrible waste of the intellectual resources of so many people of this

nation who devote countless hours watching mindless drivel‖ (―Experience‖ 35). Later in his

address, President Hinckley adds, ―To you, I say, don‘t be a couch potato. Be a man or woman

with a mind and a will and a bit of discipline, with a zest for learning that will be cultivated in this

institution while you are here and that will be expanded through all the years to come‖ (36).

I am interested in the verbs the Lord uses to characterize learning. I hear words like ―feast

upon the pleasing words of God,‖ ―seek ye out of the best books,‖ ―search these commandments,‖

―study, and learn, and become acquainted with all good books,‖ ―give diligent heed to the words

of eternal life.‖ Feasting, seeking, searching, studying, giving heed, becoming are all verbs

suggesting much more than casual acquaintance with what we study. Rather, these verbs suggest

that learning is hard work.

All of this reminds me of two legendary Brigham Young University professors when I was

a student there, Eliot A. Butler and Hugh Nibley. When addressing student in a forum assembly,

Professor Butler, a chemist, said: ―To learn is hard work. It requires discipline. And there is much

drudgery. When I hear someone say that learning is fun, I wonder if that person has never learned

or…just never had fun. There are moments of excitement in learning; these seem usually to come

after long periods of hard work, but not after all long periods of hard work.‖ Butler then claims

for a person to be educated ―one‘s own discipline must cause the learning. A favorite line from

the Wisdom of Solomon bears on this: ‗The very true beginning of [wisdom] is the desire of

discipline‘‖ (26).

Along these lines, Hugh Nibley criticizes an attitude he sensed rampant at Brigham Young

University; it goes something like this. I quote Nibley in all of his irony: ―We are not seeking for

truth at the Brigham Young University; we have the truth. . . . The young, with their limited


knowledge, are particularly susceptible [to this attitude]. . . . Why do it the hard way, they ask at

the Brigham Young University, when God has given us the answer book?‖ (115).

Again, the Lord has the answer. ―You have not understood,‖ the Lord chastens Oliver

Cowdery in Section 9 of the Doctrine and Covenants. ―You have supposed that I would give it

unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But behold, I say unto you, that you

must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right‖ (Doctrine and Covenants 9:7-

8). Here the Lord makes clear that ―in the sequential relationship between reason and revelation,

it is important that reason have what we can call ‗the first word‘ and that revelation have ‗the last

word‘‖ (Oaks Lord’s Way 66).

On the occasion of Dallin H. Oaks‘ inauguration as the President of Brigham Young

University, Harold B. Lee taught: ―The acquiring of knowledge by faith is no easy road to

learning. It will demand strenuous effort and continual striving by faith. In short, learning by faith

is no task for a lazy man‖ (91). Harold B. Lee continued, ―Someone [Brigham H. Roberts] has

said, in effect, that,

such a process requires the bending of the whole soul, the calling up from the depths of the

human mind and linking the person with God. The right connection must be formed; then

only comes knowledge by faith, a kind of knowledge that goes beyond secular learning,

that reaches into the realms of the unknown and makes those follow that course great in the

sight of the Lord (91).

This pattern for learning is difficult in our time because we seem to live in a culture pre-

occupied with entertainment and easy living. Yet, I honestly believe, the Lord‘s pattern is clear.

Great treasures of truth—often hidden—are revealed to those who are willing to diligently search

for them. Learning is often not easy.

3. The Lord’s Pattern for Learning Requires Us to Move Beyond the Mere Acquisition of

Knowledge to Understanding and Application.

Nephi taught, ―Feast upon the words of Christ.‖ Feasting, again suggests diligent study. But

Nephi then adds in the same verse: ―for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what

ye should do‖ (2 Nephi 32:3). Combining ―feasting‖ and ―doing,‖ we understand the Lord‘s

pattern for learning includes study and application.

I am amazed at how many contemporary scholars echo Nephi‘s insight about moving

beyond the mere acquisition of information to an understanding and application of that

knowledge. Mathematician Jacob Bronowski wrote, ―No scientific theory is a collection of

facts…. [Rather] science finds order and meaning in our experience‖ (10-11). Writer Theodore

Roszak, says, There‘s ―data, data everywhere, but not a thought to think‖ (qtd. in Muscatine and

Griffith 55). Physicist Richard P. Feynman bemoans how his college-level students ―memorize

everything,‖ but don‘t know what anything means (52). The famous nineteenth century naturalist

Louis Agassiz told his students, ―Facts are stupid things until brought into connection with some

general law‖ (qtd. in Scudder 197). The poet T. S. Eliot characterized this predicament as an

―‗endless cycle‘ in which ‗wisdom‘ is ‗lost in knowledge‘ and ‗knowledge‘ is ‗lost in

information.‘‖ (qtd. in Oaks ―Focus‖ 82-83).


In our most recent General Conference [April 2001], Elder Oaks also referred to the

challenge of sinking in this glut of information, never understanding how to discern the

significant. To illustrate this problem, he shared this humorous story as a warning:

Two men formed a partnership. They built a small shed beside a busy road. They obtained

a truck and drove it to a farmer‘s field, where they purchased a truckload of melons for a

dollar a melon. They drove the loaded truck to their shed by the road, where they sold their

melons for a dollar a melon. They drove back to the farmer‘s field and bought another

truckload of melons for a dollar a melon. Transporting them to the roadside, they again sold

them for a dollar a melon. As they drove back toward the farmer‘s field to get another load,

one partner said to the other, ―We‘re not making much money on this business, are we?‖

―No, we‘re not,‖ his partner replied. ―Do you think we need a bigger truck?‖

Elder Oaks quipped, ―We don‘t need a bigger truckload of information, either. . . .

Available information wisely used is far more valuable than multiplied information allowed to lie

fallow‖ (Oaks ―Focus‖ 82-83).

Surely, then, the challenge we have as learners and teachers is pushing ourselves to discern

the significance of that which we learn. That discernment, often difficult, is the proof of our

understanding. Like Nephi of old who first feasted upon the words of Christ and then likened

them to his own experience, we too should move from the mere acquisition of knowledge to this

understanding and application. ―With all thy getting,‖ the Lord admonishes, ―get understanding‖

(Proverbs 4:7).

With this understanding, we are now in a position to serve—to apply our knowledge of the

spiritual and secular to bless the lives of others. I wonder if this in part is what Elder Maxwell

meant when he wrote, ―For a disciple of Christ, academic scholarship is a form of worship. It is

actually another dimension of consecration‖ (5). Equipped with understanding, we are

instruments in God‘s hands to build his kingdom. Now we better understand, as few people do,

―that education is a part of being about our Father‘s business‖ (Spencer W. Kimball qtd. in Butler

25). And surely, President Hinckley clarifies. ―One does not have to be brilliant to make a

difference in this world, to reach out and help and serve and lead others‖ (Standing 62).

4. The Lord’s Pattern for Learning Requires Us to Focus on That Which Matters.

While latter-day prophets have taught that all truth is circumscribed into one great whole

and to God all things are spiritual, Elder Maxwell reminds us that ―there is no democracy among

truths. They are not of equal significance‖ (3). The ―deep things of God‘ (I Corinthians

2:10,14)…come to us only by revelation from God, and they clearly have a greater significance

than other truths and fleeting facts‖ (4). As Jacob taught, ―No man knoweth of [God‘s] ways save

it be revealed unto him‖ (Jacob 4:8). Again, the Lord‘s pattern for learning helps us to make

necessary distinctions among these truths.

How does He do this? He teaches us individually through the Holy Spirit. And as we

depend upon this guidance I think a miracle occurs. Our tutorials in life are tailored to our

particular needs—in either spiritual or temporal realms. And we never will lose track of that

which matters because the Lord will keep us on a proper course.


The Lord‘s pattern for learning—staying focused on that which matters—is completely

dependent then upon our developing spirituality—something we can each do. Spirituality is a

talent, taught Elder Bruce R. McConkie: ―Above all talents, . . . chief among all endowments—

stands the talent for spirituality‖ (234). This concept should give us great hope. The more we

exercise our spirituality, the stronger our spirituality becomes. And the stronger our spirituality,

the more we are able to learn, the Lord‘s way, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Ultimately, that holy guidance leads us to places we need to be, doing what needs to be

done—in our homes, our wards and stakes, our neighborhoods, (for us) our classrooms, and most

important of all that guidance leads us to where we are at this moment, seated in the Holy

Temple. Here, we learn what Elder Oaks in our most recent General Conference called ―the

highest priority…knowledge‖ (―Focus‖ 84). ―That knowledge is obtained from the explicit and

symbolic teachings of the endowment and from the whisperings of the Spirit that come as we are

desirous to seek and receptive to hear the revelation available to us in...[this] sacred place‖ (84).

Brothers and Sisters, the temple more than any other place I can think of reminds us that

learning is our theology and that the Lord has established a pattern for learning. Here we present

ourselves before the Lord in meekness and humility, here we learn to discipline ourselves and

seek understanding and application of gospel truths, here we focus on what matters most, and

here we know through our faith and righteousness that the Holy Spirit will instruct us personally

about those concerns most important to us.

I am thankful for the Lord‘s pattern of learning. To me it is a great manifestation that each

of us matters to Him.

Works Cited

Bronowski, Jacob. ―The Creative Mind.‖ Hartvigsen 9-14.

Butler, Eliot A. ―Everybody Is Ignorant, Only On Different Subjects.‖ Hartvigsen 21-29.

Feynman, Richard P. ―O Americano, Outra Vez!‖ Hartvigsen 51-56.

Hartvigsen, M. Kip, ed. Thinking About Thinking. 3rd

ed. Ft. Worth: Hartcourt, 2000

Hinckley, Gordon B. ―Out of Your Experience Here.‖ BYU Today March 1991: 18-21+. –

Standing for Something. New York: Times Books, 2000.

Holland, Jeffrey R. ―A School in Zion.‖ Educating Zion. Ed. John W. Welch and Don E. Norton.

Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1996. 143-164.

Lee, Harold B. ―Be Loyal to the Royal within You.” Speeches of the Year: Brigham Young

University Devotional and Ten-Stake Firesides 1973. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young UP,

1974,85-103.

Maxwell, Neal A. ―The Disciple-Scholar.‖ Learning in the Light of Faith, Ed. Henry B. Eyring,

Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1999, 1-18.

McConkie, Bruce R. The Millennial Messiah, Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1982.

Muscatine, Charles, and Marlene Griffith, eds. The Borzoi College Reader 6th ed. New York:

Knopf, 1988.

Nibley, Hugh. ―Zeal without Knowledge.‖ Hartvigsen 111-121.


Oaks, Dallin H. ―Focus and Priorities.‖ Ensign May 2001: 82-84.

Oaks, Dallin H. The Lord’s Way, Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1991.

Paster, Zorba, M.D., ed. Top Health August 2001. 1-2.

Scudder, Samuel. ―Learning to See.‖ Hartvigsen 195-197.

Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley. Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1997.

ropaganda under a Dictatorship

by Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) graduated in English literature from Oxford

and established himself as an important novelist and writer in England.

Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), his most popular novel, describes a

futuristic dystopia that critiques the excesses of modern popular culture,

saturated with technology and mind-altering drugs. “Propaganda under a

Dictatorship” first appeared as Chapter 5 in Brave New World Revisited

(1958), a denunciation of the dehumanizing effects of modern civilization.

t his trial after the Second World War, Hitler’s Minister for Armaments, Albert

Speer, delivered a long speech in which, with remarkable acuteness, he described the Nazi

tyranny and analyzed its methods. “Hitler’s dictatorship,” he said, “differed in one fundamental

point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of

modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for

the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker,

eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject

them to the will of one man. . . . Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the

lowest level—men who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period

of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of

communication, it is possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has

arisen the new type of the uncritical recipient of orders.”

In the Brave New World of my prophetic fable technology had advanced far beyond the

point it had reached in Hitler’s day; consequently the recipients of orders were far less critical

than their Nazi counterparts, far more obedient to the order-giving elite. Moreover, they had been

genetically standardized and postnatally conditioned to perform their subordinate functions, and

could therefore be depended upon to behave almost as predictably as machines. As we shall see

in a later chapter, this conditioning of “the lower leadership” is already going on under the

Communist dictatorships. The Chinese and the Russians are not relying merely on the indirect

effects of advancing technology; they are working directly on the psychophysical organisms of

their lower leaders, subjecting minds and bodies to a system of ruthless and, from all accounts,

highly effective conditioning. “Many a man,” said Speer, “has been haunted by the nightmare that

one day nations might be dominated by technical means. That nightmare was almost realized in

Hitler’s totalitarian system.” Almost, but not quite. The Nazis did not have time and perhaps did

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Propaganda under a Dictatorship 164

not have the intelligence and the necessary knowledge to brainwash and condition their lower

leadership. This, it may be, is one of the reasons why they failed.

Since Hitler’s day the armory of technical devices at the disposal of the would-be dictator

has been considerably enlarged. As well as the radio, the loud-speaker, the moving picture

camera and the rotary press, the contemporary propagandist can make use of television to

broadcast the image as well as the voice of his client, and can record both image and voice on

spools of magnetic tape. Thanks to technological progress, Big Brother can now be almost as

omnipresent as God. Nor is it only on the technical front that the hand of the would-be dictator

has been strengthened. Since Hitler’s day a great deal of work has been carried out in those fields

of applied psychology and neurology which are the special province of the propagandist, the

indoctrinator and the brainwasher. In the past these specialists in the art of changing people’s

minds were empiricists. By a method of trial and error they had worked out a number of

techniques and procedures, which they used very effectively without, however, knowing precisely

why they were effective. Today the art of mind-control is in process of becoming a science. The

practitioners of this science know what they are doing and why. They are guided in their work by

theories and hypotheses solidly established on a massive foundation of experimental evidence.

Thanks to the new insights and the new techniques made possible by these insights, the nightmare

that was “all but realized in Hitler’s totalitarian system” may soon be completely realizable.

But before we discuss these new insights and techniques let us take a look at the nightmare

that so nearly came true in Nazi Germany. What were the methods used by Hitler and Goebbels

for depriving eighty million people of independent thought and subjecting them to the will of one

man? And what was the theory of human nature upon which those terrifyingly successful

methods were based? These questions can be answered, for the most part, in Hitler’s own words.

And what remarkably clear and astute words they are! When he writes about such vast

abstractions as Race and History and Providence, Hitler is strictly unreadable. But when he writes

about the German masses and the methods he used for dominating and directing them, his style

changes. Nonsense gives place to sense, bombast to a hardboiled and cynical lucidity. In his

philosophical lucubrations Hitler was either cloudily daydreaming or reproducing other people’s

half-baked notions. In his comments on crowds and propaganda he was writing of things he knew

by firsthand experience. In the words of his ablest biographer, Mr. Alan Bullock, “Hitler was the

greatest demagogue in history.” Those who add, “only a demagogue,” fail to appreciate the nature

of political power in an age of mass politics. As he himself said, “To be a leader means to be able

to move the masses.” Hitler’s aim was first to move the masses and then, having pried them loose

from their traditional loyalties and moralities, to impose upon them (with the hypnotized consent

of the majority) a new authoritarian order of his own devising. “Hitler,” wrote Hermann

Rauschning in 1939, “has a deep respect for the Catholic church and the Jesuit order; not because

of their Christian doctrine, but because of the ‘machinery’ they have elaborated and controlled,

their hierarchical system, their extremely clever tactics, their knowledge of human nature and

their wise use of human weaknesses in ruling over believers.” Ecclesiasticism without

Christianity, the discipline of a monastic rule, not for God’s sake or in order to achieve personal

salvation, but for the sake of the State and for the greater glory and power of the demagogue

turned Leader—this was the goal toward which the systematic moving of the masses was to lead.

Let us see what Hitler thought of the masses he moved and how he did the moving. The

first principle from which he started was a value judgment: the masses are utterly contemptible.


They are incapable of abstract thinking and uninterested in any fact outside the circle of their

immediate experience. Their behavior is determined, not by knowledge and reason, but by

feelings and unconscious drives. It is in these drives and feelings that “the roots of their positive

as well as their negative attitudes are implanted.” To be successful a propagandist must learn how

to manipulate these instincts and emotions. “The driving force which has brought about the most

tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has

gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind

of hysteria which has surged them into action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must

know the key that will open the door of their hearts,” . . . in post-Freudian jargon, of their

unconscious.

Hitler made his strongest appeal to those members of the lower middle classes who had

been ruined by the inflation of 1923, and then ruined all over again by the depression of 1929 and

the following years. “The masses” of whom he speaks were these bewildered, frustrated and

chronically anxious millions. To make them more masslike, more homogeneously subhuman, he

assembled them, by the thousands and the tens of thousands, in vast halls and arenas, where

individuals could lose their personal identity, even their elementary humanity, and be merged

with the crowd. A man or woman makes direct contact with society in two ways: as a member of

some familial, professional or religious group, or as a member of a crowd. Groups are capable of

being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no

purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking.

Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.

Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of

their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective

responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a

man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant.

He is a victim of what I have called “herd-poisoning.” Like alcohol, herd-poison is an active,

extraverted drug. The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, intelligence and

morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.

During his long career as an agitator, Hitler had studied the effects of herd-poison and had

learned how to exploit them for his own purposes. He had discovered that the orator can appeal to

those “hidden forces” which motivate men’s actions, much more effectively than can the writer.

Reading is a private, not a collective activity. The writer speaks only to individuals, sitting by

themselves in a state of normal sobriety. The orator speaks to masses of individuals, already well

primed with herd-poison. They are at his mercy and, if he knows his business, he can do what he

likes with them. As an orator, Hitler knew his business supremely well. He was able, in his own

words, “to follow the lead of the great mass in such a way that from the living emotion of his

hearers the apt word which he needed would be suggested to him and in its turn this would go

straight to the heart of his hearers.” Otto Strasser called him a “loud-speaker, proclaiming the

most secret desires, the least admissible instincts, the sufferings and personal revolts of a whole

nation.” Twenty years before Madison Avenue embarked upon “Motivational Research,” Hitler

was systematically exploring and exploiting the secret fears and hopes, the cravings, anxieties and

frustrations of the German masses. It is by manipulating “hidden forces” that the advertising

experts induce us to buy their wares—a toothpaste, a brand of cigarettes, a political candidate.

And it is by appealing to the same hidden forces and to others too dangerous for Madison Avenue


to meddle with—that Hitler induced the German masses to buy themselves a Fuehrer, an insane

philosophy and the Second World War.

Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts. Their

critical habit of mind makes them resistant to the kind of propaganda that works so well on the

majority. Among the masses “instinct is supreme, and from instinct comes faith . . . While the

healthy common folk instinctively close their ranks to form a community of the people” (under a

Leader, it goes without saying) “intellectuals run this way and that, like hens in a poultry yard.

With them one cannot make history; they cannot be used as elements composing a community.”

Intellectuals are the kind of people who demand evidence and are shocked by logical

inconsistencies and fallacies. They regard over-simplification as the original sin of the mind and

have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizations which are the

propagandist’s stock in trade. “All effective propaganda,” Hitler wrote, “must be confined to a

few bare necessities and then must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas.” These

stereotyped formulas must be constantly repeated, for “only constant repetition will finally

succeed in imprinting an idea upon the memory of a crowd.” Philosophy teaches us to feel

uncertain about the things that seem to us self-evident. Propaganda, on the other hand, teaches us

to accept as self-evident matters about which it would be reasonable to suspend our judgment or

to feel doubt. The aim of the demagogue is to create social coherence under his own leadership.

But, as Bertrand Russell has pointed out, “systems of dogma without empirical foundations, such

as scholasticism, Marxism and fascism, have the advantage of producing a great deal of social

coherence among their disciples.” The demagogic propagandist must therefore be consistently

dogmatic. All his statements are made without qualification. There are no grays in his picture of

the world; everything is either diabolically black or celestially white. In Hitler’s words, the

propagandist should adopt “a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to

be dealt with.” He must never admit that he might be wrong or that people with a different point

of view might be even partially right. Opponents should not be argued with; they should be

attacked, shouted down, or, if they become too much of a nuisance, liquidated. The morally

squeamish intellectual may be shocked by this kind of thing. But the masses are always

convinced that “right is on the side of the active aggressor.”

Such, then, was Hitler’s opinion of humanity in the mass. It was a very low opinion. Was it

also an incorrect opinion? The tree is known by its fruits, and a theory of human nature which

inspired the kind of techniques that proved so horribly effective must contain at least an element

of truth. Virtue and intelligence belong to human beings as individuals freely associating with

other individuals in small groups. So do sin and stupidity. But the subhuman mindlessness to

which the demagogue makes his appeal, the moral imbecility on which he relies when he goads

his victims into action, are characteristic not of men and women as individuals, but of men and

women in masses. Mindlessness and moral idiocy are not characteristically human attributes; they

are symptoms of herd-poisoning. In all the world’s higher religions, salvation and enlightenment

are for individuals. The kingdom of heaven is within the mind of a person, not within the

collective mindlessness of a crowd. Christ promised to be present where two or three are gathered

together. He did not say anything about being present where thousands are intoxicating one

another with herd-poison. Under the Nazis enormous numbers of people were compelled to spend

an enormous amount of time marching in serried ranks from point A to point B and back again to

point A. “This keeping of the whole population on the march seemed to be a senseless waste of


time and energy. Only much later,” adds Hermann Rauschning, “was there revealed in it a subtle

intention based on a well-judged adjustment of ends and means. Marching diverts men’s thought.

Marching kills thought. Marching makes an end of individuality. Marching is the indispensable

magic stroke performed in order to accustom the people to a mechanical, quasi-ritualistic activity

until it becomes second nature.”

From his point of view and at the level where he had chosen to do his dreadful work, Hitler

was perfectly correct in his estimate of human nature. To those of us who look at men and women

as individuals rather than as members of crowds, or of regimented collectives, he seems hideously

wrong. In an age of accelerating over-population, of accelerating over-organization and ever more

efficient means of mass communication, how can we preserve the integrity and reassert the value

of the human individual? This is a question that can still be asked and perhaps effectively

answered. A generation from now it may be too late to find an answer and perhaps impossible, in

the stifling collective climate of that future time, even to ask the question.

he Trouble with “X” . . .‟

by C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was born in Belfast, Ireland. Best known

among young readers for The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), Lewis was

also an accomplished professor of medieval literature, a literary critic, an

essayist, and a philosopher—particularly as a defender of the Christian

world view. Among his acclaimed works are The Screwtape Letters (1942),

Mere Christianity (1952), and Surprised by Joy (1955). “The Trouble with

X” is taken from God in the Dock (1970), a collection of Lewis’ essays

published after his death.

suppose I may assume that seven out of ten of those who read these lines are in some

kind of difficulty about some other human being. Either at work or at home, either the people

who employ you or those whom you employ, either those who share your house or those whose

house you share, either your in-laws or parents or children, your wife or your husband, are

making life harder for you than it need be in these days. It is to be hoped that we do not often

mention these difficulties (especially the domestic ones) to outsiders. But sometimes we do. An

outside friend asks us why we are looking so glum, and the truth comes out.

On such occasions the outside friend usually says, „But why don‟t you tell them? Why

don‟t you go to your wife (or husband, or father, or daughter, or boss, or landlady, or lodger) and

have it all out? People are usually reasonable. All you‟ve got to do is to make them see things in

the right light. Explain it to them in a reasonable, quiet, friendly way.‟ And we, whatever we say

outwardly, think sadly to ourselves, „He doesn‟t know “X.”‟ We do. We know how utterly

hopeless it is to make „X‟ see reason. Either we‟ve tried it over and over again—tried it till we are

sick of trying it—or else we‟ve never tried it because we saw from the beginning how useless it

would be. We know that if we attempt to „have it all out with “X”‟ there will be either a „scene,‟

or else „X‟ will stare at us in blank amazement and say „I don‟t know what on earth you‟re talking

about;‟ or else (which is perhaps worst of all) „X‟ will quite agree with us and promise to turn

over a new leaf and put everything on a new footing—and then, twenty-four hours later, will be

exactly the same as „X‟ has always been.

You know, in fact, that any attempt to talk things over with „X‟ will shipwreck on the old,

fatal flaw in „X‟s‟ character. And you see, looking back, how all the plans you have ever made

always have shipwrecked on that fatal flaw—on „X‟s‟ incurable jealousy, or laziness, or

touchiness, or muddle-headedness, or bossiness, or ill temper, or changeableness. Up to a certain

‘T

I

The Trouble with „X‟ 238

age you have perhaps had the illusion that some external stroke of good fortune—an

improvement in health, a rise of salary, the end of the war—would solve your difficulty. But you

know better now. The war is over, and you realize that even if the other things happened, „X‟

would still be „X,‟ and you would still be up against the same old problem. Even if you became a

millionaire, your husband would still be a bully, or your wife would still nag or your son would

still drink, or you‟d still have to have your mother-in-law to live with you.

It is a great step forward to realize that this is so; to face the fact that even if all external

things went right, real happiness would still depend on the character of the people you have to

live with—and that you can‟t alter their characters. And now comes the point. When you have

seen this you have, for the first time, had a glimpse of what it must be like for God. For, of

course, this is (in one way) just what God Himself is up against. He has provided a rich, beautiful

world for his people to live in. He has given them intelligence to show them how it can be used,

and conscience to show them how it ought to be used. He has contrived that the things they need

for their biological life (food, drink, rest, sleep, exercise) should be positively delightful to them.

And, having done this, He then sees all His plans spoiled—just as our little plans are spoiled—by

the crookedness of the people themselves. All the things He has given them to be happy with they

turn into occasions for quarreling and jealousy, and excess and hoarding, and tomfoolery1.

You may say it is very different for God because He could, if He pleased, alter people‟s

characters, and we can‟t. But this difference doesn‟t go quite as deep as we may at first think.

God has made it a rule for Himself that He won‟t alter people‟s character by force. He can and

will alter them—but only if the people will let Him. In that way He has really and truly limited

His power. Sometimes we wonder why He has done so, or even wish that He hadn‟t. But

apparently He thinks it worth doing. He would rather have a world of free beings, with all its

risks, than a world of people who did right like machines because they couldn‟t do anything else.

The more we succeed in imagining what a world of perfect automatic beings would be like, the

more, I think, we shall see His wisdom.

I said that when we see how all our plans shipwreck on the characters of the people we

have to deal with, we are „in one way‟ seeing what it must be like for God. But only in one way.

There are two respects in which God‟s view must be very different from ours. In the first place,

He sees (like you) how all the people in your home or your job are in various degrees awkward or

difficult; but when He looks into that home or factory or office He sees one more person of the

same kind—the one you never do see. I mean, of course, yourself. That is the next great step in

wisdom—to realize that you also are just that sort of person. You also have a fatal flaw in your

character. All the hopes and plans of others have again and again shipwrecked on your character

just as your hopes and plans have shipwrecked on theirs.

It is no good passing this over with some vague, general admission such as „Of course, I

know I have my faults.‟ It is important to realize that there is some really fatal flaw in you:

something which gives the others just that same feeling of despair which their flaws give you.

And it is almost certainly something you don‟t know about—like what the advertisements call

„halitosis‟2, which everyone notices except the person who has it. But why, you ask, don‟t the

others tell me? Believe me, they have tried to tell you over and over again, and you just couldn‟t

„take it.‟ Perhaps a good deal of what you call their „nagging‟ or „bad temper‟ or „queerness‟ are

just their attempts to make you see the truth. And even the faults you do know you don‟t know

The Trouble with „X‟ 239

fully. You say, „I admit I lost my temper last night‟; but the others know that you‟re always doing

it, that you are a bad-tempered person. You say, „I admit I drank too much last Saturday‟; but

everyone else knows that you are an habitual drunkard.

That is one way in which God‟s view must differ from mine. He sees all the characters: I

see all except my own. But the second difference is this. He loves the people in spite of their

faults. He goes on loving. He does not let go. Don‟t say, „It‟s all very well for Him; He hasn‟t got

to live with them.‟ He has. He is inside them as well as outside them. He is with them far more

than we could ever be. Every vile thought within their minds (and ours), every moment of spite,

envy, arrogance, greed, and self-conceit comes right up against His patient and longing love, and

grieves His spirit more that it grieves ours.

The more we can imitate God in both these respects, the more progress we shall make. We

must love „X‟ more; and we must learn to see ourselves as a person of exactly the same kind.

Some people say it is morbid to be always thinking of one‟s own faults. That would be all very

well if most of us could stop thinking of our own without soon beginning to think about those of

other people. For unfortunately we enjoy thinking about other people‟s faults: and in the proper

sense of the word „morbid,‟ that is the most morbid3 pleasure in the world.

We don‟t like rationing which is imposed upon us, but I suggest one form of rationing

which we ought to impose on ourselves. Abstain from all thinking about other people‟s faults,

unless your duties as a teacher or parent make it necessary to think about them. Whenever the

thoughts come unnecessarily into one‟s mind, why not simply shove them away? And think of

one‟s own faults instead? For there, with God‟s help, one can do something. Of all the awkward

people in your house or job there is only one whom you can improve very much. That is the

practical end at which to begin. And really, we‟d better. The job has to be tackled some day: and

every day we put it off will make it harder to begin.

What, after all, is the alternative? You see clearly enough that nothing, not even God with

all His power, can make „X‟ really happy as long as „X‟ remains envious, self-centered, and

spiteful. Be sure there is something inside you which, unless it is altered, will put it out of God‟s

power to prevent your being eternally miserable. While that something remains there can be no

Heaven for you, just as there can be no sweet smells for a man with a cold in the nose, and no

music for a man who is deaf. It‟s not a question of God „sending‟ us to Hell. In each of us there is

something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud. The matter is

serious: let us put ourselves in His hands at once—this very day, this very hour.

he Love of Learning Address to the Graduates

by David McCullough

David McCullough (b. 1933) is a contemporary American historian who

has garnered several prestigious awards for his works—including two

Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award. He is also a recipient of the

Presidential Medal of Freedom. McCullough attended Yale University,

earning a degree in English literature. Among his recent books are John

Adams (2001), which has been adapted into an acclaimed TV miniseries,

and 1776 (2005). “The Love of Learning” is a commencement address

McCullough presented on May 19, 2008, at Boston College.

resident Leahy, eminent fellow honorees, distinguished trustees, faculty, and alumni,

proud parents, grandparents, friends and members of the Class of 2008, I am profoundly honored

by so high a tribute conferred by Boston College, and to take part in this glorious celebration. We

haven’t a lot of ceremony left in American life, alas, but commencements do go on, year after

year, and in the grand tradition, with full, appropriate panoply, bringing together, as we see here

today, people from all walks of life, all parts of the country, and indeed of the world, to pay

tribute to genuinely worthy accomplishment. The importance of education has been a prevailing

theme in American life from the beginning and may it ever be so.

* * *

Information. Information at our finger tips. Information without end . . .

The Library of Congress has 650 miles of shelves and books in 470 languages . . .

Napoleon was afraid of cats. . . . A porcupine is born with 30,000 quills. . . . A mosquito beats its

wings 600 times per second. . . . Coal production in the United States is second only to that of

China. . . .

It’s said ad infinitum: ours is the Information Age. There’s never been anything like it since

the dawn of creation. We glory in the Information Highway as other eras gloried in railroads.

Information for all! Information night and day!

. . . A column of air a mile square, starting 50 feet from the ground and extending to 14,000

feet contains an average of 25,000,000 insects. . . . James Madison weighed less than a hundred

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pounds, William Howard Taft, 332 pounds, a presidential record. . . . According to the World

Almanac, the length of the index finger on the Statue of Liberty is 8 feet. . . . The elevation of the

highest mountain in Massachusetts, Mount Greylock, is 3,487 feet. . . . The most ancient living

tree in America, a bristlecone pine in California, is 4,700 years old. . . .

Information is useful. Information is often highly interesting. Information has value,

sometimes great value. The right bit of information at the opportune moment can be worth a

fortune. Information can save time and effort. Information can save your life. The value of

information, facts, figures, and the like, depends on what we make of it—on judgment.

But information, let us be clear, isn’t learning. Information isn’t poetry. Or art. Or

Gershwin or the Shaw Memorial. Or faith. It isn’t wisdom.

Facts alone are never enough. Facts rarely if ever have any soul. In writing or trying to

understand history one may have all manner of “data,” and miss the point. One can have all the

facts and miss the truth. It can be like the old piano teacher’s lament to her student, “I hear all the

notes, but I hear no music.”

If information were learning, you could memorize the World Almanac and call yourself

educated. If you memorized the World Almanac, you wouldn’t be educated. You’d be weird!

Learning is not to be found on a printout. It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning

is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books. And from teachers, and the

more learned and empathetic the better. And from work, concentrated work.

Abigail Adams put it perfectly more than 200 years ago: “Learning is not attained by

chance. It must be sought with ardor and attended with diligence.” Ardor, to my mind, is the key

word.

For many of you of the graduating class, the love of learning has already taken hold. For

others it often happens later and often by surprise, as history has shown time and again. That’s

part of the magic.

Consider the example of Charles Sumner, the great Senator Charles Sumner of

Massachusetts, whose statue stands in the Boston Public Garden facing Boylston Street. As a boy

in school Charles Sumner had shown no particular promise. Nor did he distinguish himself as an

undergraduate at Harvard. He did love reading, however, and by the time he finished law school,

something overcame him. Passionate to know more, learn more, he put aside the beginnings of a

law practice and sailed for France on his own and on borrowed money, in order to attend lectures

at the Sorbonne. It was a noble adventure in independent scholarship, if ever there was.

Everything was of interest to him. He attended lectures on natural history, geology, Egyptology,

criminal law, the history of philosophy, and pursued a schedule of classical studies that would

have gladdened the heart of the legendary Father Thayer of Boston College. He attended lectures

at the Paris medical schools. He went to the opera, the theater, the Louvre, all the while pouring

out his excitement in the pages of his journal and in long letters home. Trying to express what he

felt on seeing the works of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre, he wrote, “They

touched my mind, untutored as it is, like a rich strain of music.”

But there was more. Something else touched him deeply. At lectures at the Sorbonne he

had observed how black students were perfectly at ease with and well received by the other

students. The color of one’s skin seemed to make no difference. Sumner was pleased to see this,


though at first it struck him as strange. But then he thought, as he wrote, that maybe the

“distance” between blacks and whites at home was something white Americans had been taught

and that “does not exist in the nature of things.”

And therein was the seed from which would later arise, in the 1850’s, before the Civil War,

Charles Sumner’s strident stand on the floor of the United States Senate against the spread of

slavery. From his quest for learning he brought home a personal revelation he had not anticipated

and it changed history.

But perhaps, overall, John Adams is as shining an example of the transforming miracle of

education as we have. John Adams came from the humblest of beginnings. His father was a plain

Braintree farmer and shoemaker. His mother was almost certainly illiterate. Because a scholarship

made possible a college education, the boy discovered books. “I discovered books and read

forever,” he later wrote and it was hardly an exaggeration. At age 80, we know, he was happily

embarking on a 16-volume history of France.

When I set out to write the life of John Adams, I wanted not only to read what he and

Abigail wrote, but to read as much as possible of what they read. We’re all what we read to a very

considerable degree.

So there I was past age sixty taking up once again, for the first time since high school and

college English classes, the essays of Samuel Johnson and works of Pope, Swift, and Laurence

Sterne. I read Samuel Richardson’s Clarisa, which was Abigail’s favorite novel; and Cervantes—

Don Quixote—for the first time in my life. What a joy!

Cervantes is part of us, whether we know it or not. Declare you’re in a pickle; talk of birds

of a feather flocking together; vow to turn over a new leaf; give the devil his due, or insist that

mum’s the word, and you’re quoting Cervantes every time.

“I cannot live without books,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Adams late in life, knowing

Adams would understand perfectly. Adams read everything—Shakespeare and the Bible over and

over, and the Psalms especially. He read poetry, fiction, history. Always carry a book with you on

your travels he advised his son, John Quincy. “You will never be alone with a poet in your

pocket.”

In a single year, according to the U. S. Department of Education, among all Americans

with a college education, fully a third read not one novel or short story or poem. Don’t be one of

those, you of the Class of 2008.

Make the love of learning central to your life. What a difference it can mean. If your

experience is anything like mine, the books that will mean the most to you, books that will

change your life, are still to come. And remember, as someone said, even the oldest book is brand

new for the reader who opens it for the first time.

You have had the great privilege of attending one of the finest colleges in the nation, where

dedication to classical learning and to the arts and sciences has long been manifest. If what you

have learned here makes you want to learn more, well that’s the point.

Read. Read, read! Read the classics of American literature that you’ve never opened. Read

your country’s history. How can we profess to love our country and take no interest in its history?

Read into the history of Greece and Rome. Read about the great turning points in the history of

science and medicine and ideas.


Read for pleasure, to be sure. I adore a good thriller or a first-rate murder mystery. But take

seriously—read closely—books that have stood the test of time. Study a masterpiece, take it

apart, study its architecture, its vocabulary, its intent. Underline, make notes in the margins, and

after a few years, go back and read it again.

Make use of the public libraries. Start your own personal library and see it grow. Talk

about the books you’re reading. Ask others what they’re reading. You’ll learn a lot.

And please, please, do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly

rampant among your generation. I’m talking about the relentless, wearisome use of the words,

“like,” and “you know,” and “awesome,” and “actually.” Listen to yourselves as you speak.

Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, “Ask not what your

country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.”

The energetic part so many of you are playing in this year’s presidential race is marvelous.

Keep at it, down to the wire. Keep that idealism alive. Make a difference. Set an example for all

of us.

Go out and get the best jobs you can and go to work with spirit. Don’t get discouraged. And

don’t work just for money. Choose work you believe in, work you enjoy. Money enough will

follow. Believe me, there’s nothing like turning to every day to do work you love.

Walk with your heads up. And remember honesty is the best policy; and yes that, too, is

from Cervantes.

Travel as much as you can, and wherever you go, before checking out of a hotel or motel,

always remember to tip the maid.

My warmest congratulations. In the words of the immortal Jonathan Swift, “May you live

all the days of your life.”

On we go.

rinking Hemlock and

Other Nutritional Matters

by Harold J. Morowitz

Harold J. Morowitz (b. 1927) was educated at Yale, where he later taught

molecular biophysics. Associated with the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration, Morowitz often addresses fellow scientists in his

writing. Other works—including The Wine of Life and Other Essays on

Societies, Energy, and Living (1979) and Mayonnaise and the Origin of

Life (1991)—address a more general audience. “Drinking Hemlock and

Other Nutritional Matters” is an essay included in The Wine of Life.

t was a rather dark, bleak morning, and after rising early I thought it appropriate to turn

on the television and communicate, unidirectionally to be sure, with the outside world. There to

my great surprise was a famous movie star of a few years back discoursing on the evils of sugar.

The former Hollywood idol was vehement in her denunciation of this hexose dimer particularly in

its purified and crystallized form. She denounced it as an “unnatural food,” an epithet that may

well have bruised the egos of the photosynthesizing cane and beet plants. The mental image

evoked was that of a solemn judge sentencing someone in perpetuity for an “unnatural act.” In no

time at all this great lady had me caught up in her crusade, and I kept muttering “hate sucrose” as

I prepared an unnatural extract of coffee beans and dropped in a highly synthetic saccharin tablet.

A few minutes later, when the veil of sleep had lifted and the uncertainty of reason had

replaced the assuredness of emotion, I began to wonder where my cinema heroine had acquired

such self-righteous certainty about biochemical and nutritional matters that have eluded my

colleagues for years. Perhaps all this messy experimental work of grinding and extracting tissue

and otherwise mucking about the laboratory is not the shortest road to truth at all, and we of the

dirty white lab coat crowd are missing some mysterious pathway whereby true nutritional

knowledge comes with blinding insight and transforms the lives of the faithful.

All of this recalled a frequent, painful experience that haunts biomedical scientists like a

recurring nightmare. One is at a cocktail party or other social gathering where someone appears in

the crowd and begins an oratorical declamation on Good Nutrition. The “facts” being set forth are

often inconsistent with everything one knows about metabolic pathways, cell and organ

physiology, enzymology, and common sense. If the listener is so bold as to raise the question,

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“How do you know that?”, he or she is greeted with a look that must have faced Columbus when

he queried, “How do you know the world is flat?”

Nutrition seems to be like politics; everyone is an expert. It would appear that to the

general public years of education are as naught compared to knowledge somehow painlessly

available to everyone, regardless of his familiarity with innumerable facts and theories that

constitute a complex discipline.

The situation described is by no means confined to the choice of foods, and I certainly feel

ill prepared to get involved in the sucrose controversy. Nevertheless, the field of nutrition is a

good example of the many areas where we are constantly subject to a host of dogmatic

statements, some of which are true, some of which are false, and many of which are

indeterminate. The response to each of these assertions should be the query, “How do you know

that what you are saying is indeed a statement of fact?” At this level of question, I believe our

educational system has been a total failure.

Asking how we know the things that we know is part of the philosophic discipline of

epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which is usually taught in upper-level and graduate

philosophy courses and is therefore restricted to a small group of college students. But can there

be any study that is more basic to education? Should not every high school graduate be prepared

to cope with the many incorrect and misleading assertions that come his way every day? On the

surface it seems strange that acquiring skills in assessing the validity of statements is not a core

feature of the school curriculum.

Education, as conceived at present, is largely a matter of transferring subject matter from

teacher to student, and uncertainty is usually settled by appeal to authority, the teacher, a

textbook, or an encyclopedia. The methodological issue of how knowledge is obtained is rarely

mentioned. Thus one of the most important analytical tools that an educated individual should

possess is ignored. This is not to argue against the transfer of information but rather to assert that

by itself it is insufficient protection in a real world containing demagogues and all kinds of

charlatans and hucksters who have a free rein because almost no one is asking the appropriate

questions.

On the issue of sorting out reality, most holders of doctoral degrees are almost as naïve as

grade-school graduates, and all manner of academic disciplines also expend effort on statements

that would be quickly discarded if epistemological criteria were invoked. This takes us back

briefly to the subject of nutrition, where methodological problems make it very difficult to obtain

even pragmatically useful information. Statements are made on the basis of averaging over

populations when we have no ideas of the distribution functions that go into forming the

averages. The impossibility of large-scale experiments with people requires extrapolation of

animal or small-scale human determinations over ranges where the correctness of the

extrapolation procedure is unknown. Nutrition is thus beset with difficulties that are clearly of an

epistemological nature and, until these are resolved, careful scientists will be confined to very

limited statements. Dogmatic assertions will remain the province of cocktail party orators.

The problem of why the theory of knowledge is not taught in the schools is relatively easy

to see. Epistemology is, after all, a dangerous subject. If we start to question the validity of

statements, then the teachers themselves come under question. All assertions about education,

established forms of religion, government, and social mores will also be subject to justification on

Drinking Hemlock and Other Nutritional Matters 276

the grounds of how they are known to be true. For parents and teachers who have not been

through the experience of exploring how we determine facts, it would be unnerving to have their

children continuously questioning the roots of knowledge. Inquiry is indeed a challenge to the

acceptance of things as they are.

To realize the threat to established ways that is perceived in the type of analysis we are

discussing, we need to go back to ancient Athens, where the philosopher Socrates taught his

young followers by the technique of questioning everything and seeking answers. As Will Durant

has noted, “he went about prying into the human soul, uncovering assumptions and questioning

certainties.” This has come to be known as the Socratic method. The citizens of the Greek city-

state condemned the inquiring teacher to death by poisoning with hemlock. One of the most

serious charges against him was “corrupting the young.” The fate of the first propounder of the

Theory of Knowledge has perhaps served as a warning to keep the subject out of the school

system.

There is still an objection that it is dangerous to teach the art and science of inquiry to the

young; I would submit that it is more dangerous not to teach it to them, thus leaving them

vulnerable to the quacks and phonies who now add mass communication to their bag of tricks. If

we believe that rationality will lead the way to the solution of problems, then we must start by

making the examination of what is “real” a part of everyone’s thought. If challenging young

people are a nuisance, think of how much more a menace is presented by young people marching

off in lock step and never questioning where they are going.

The solution seems clear. When we return education to the basics of reading, writing, and

’rithmetic, we should add a fourth R, “Reality.” Starting at the first grade and continuing through

graduate training we must see that students become sensitized to the meaning of what is said and

the realization of how valid knowledge is established. If this seems radical, it is. Drinking

hemlock may be less painful than swallowing some of the drivel that comes over the TV set every

day.

eal Without Knowledge

by Hugh Nibley

Hugh Nibley (1910-2005) was one of the most accomplished scholars of

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nibley joined the history

department at BYU in 1946. For more than four decades, his writings

covered an array of topics: ancient history, politics, classics, education,

science, Egyptology, early Israel, Christian origins, The Book of Mormon,

and temples. “Zeal without Knowledge” originally appeared in Dialogue:

A Journal of Mormon Thought (1978) and was reprinted in Classic

Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless: Essays of Hugh Nibley (1978).

n one of his fascinating scientific survey books, this time dealing with the latest

discoveries about the brain, Nigel Calder notes, ―Two of the most self-evident characteristics of

the conscious mind are that (1) the mind attends to one thing at a time, and (2) that at least once a

day the conscious mind is switched off.‖1 Both of these operations are completely miraculous and

completely mysterious. I would like to talk about the first of them. You can think of only one

thing at a time!

If you put on a pair of glasses, one lens being green, the other being red, you will not see a

frey fusion of the two when you look about you, but a flashing of red and green. One moment

everything will be green, another moment everything will be red. Or you may think you are

enjoying a combination of themes as you listen to a Bach fugue, with equal awareness of every

voice at a time, but you are actually jumping between recognition first of one and then another.

The ear, like the eye, is, in the words of N. S. Sutherland, ―always flickering about. . . . the brain

adds together a great variety of impressions at high speed, and from these we select features from

what we see and make a rapid succession of ‗models‘ of the world in our minds.‖2 Out of what

begins as what William James calls the ―great blooming, buzzing confusion‖ of the infant‘s

world, we structure our own meaningful combination of impressions, and all our lives select out

of the vast number of impressions certain ones which fit best into that structure. As Neisser says,

―The model is what we see and nothing else.‖3 We hold thousands of instantaneous impressions

in suspension just long enough to make our choices and drop those we don‘t want. As one expert

puts it: ―There seems to be a kind of filter inside the head which weakens unwanted signals

without blocking them out. Out of the background of the mind constantly signals deliberate

choices.‖4 Why the mind chooses to focus on one object to the exclusion of all others remains a

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mystery. 5 But one thing is clear: the blocked-out signals are the unwanted ones, and the ones we

favor are our ―deliberate choices.‖

This puts us in the position of the fairy-tale hero who is introduced into a cave of incredible

treasures and permitted to choose from the heap whatever gem he wants—but only one. What a

delightful situation! I can think of anything I want to—absolutely anything! With this provision,

that when I choose to focus my attention on one object, all other objects drop into the

background. I am only permitted to think of one thing at a time, that is one rule of the game.

An equally important rule is that I must keep thinking! Except for the daily shut-off period

I cannot evade the test. ―L‘ame pense toujours,‖ says Malebranche: We are always thinking of

something, selecting what will fit into the world we are making for ourselves. Schopenhauer was

right: ―Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung.‖ And here is an aside I can‘t resist: What would it be like

if I could view and focus on two or more things at once, if I could see at one and the same

moment not only what is right before me, but equally well what is on my left side, my right side,

what is above me and below me? I have the moral certainty that something is there and as my

eyes flicker about, I think I can substantiate that impression. But as to taking a calm and

deliberate look at more than one thing at a time, that is a gift denied us at present. I cannot

imagine what such a view of the world would be like, but it would be more real and correct than

the one we have now. I bring up this obvious point because it is by virtue of this one-dimensional

view of things that we magisterially pass judgment on God. The smart atheist and pious

schoolman alike can tell us all about God—what he can do and what he cannot, what he must be

like and what he cannot be like—on the basis of their one-dimensional experience of reality.

Today the astronomers are harping on the old favorite theme of the eighteenth-century

encyclopedists who, upon discovering the universe to be considerably larger than they thought or

had been taught, immediately announced that man was a very minor creature indeed, would have

to renounce any special claim to divine favor, since there are much bigger worlds than ours for

God to be concerned about, and in the end give up his intimate and private God altogether. This

jaunty iconoclasm rested on the assumption that God is subject to the same mental limitations that

we are; that if he is thinking of Peter, he cannot hardly be thinking of Paul at the same time, let

alone marking the fall of the sparrow. But once we can see the possibilities that lie in being able

to see more than one thing at a time (and in theory the experts tell us there is no reason why we

should not), the universe takes on new dimensions and God takes over again. Let us remember

that quite peculiar to the genius of Mormonism is the doctrine of a God who could preoccupy

himself with countless numbers of things: ―The heavens they are many, and they cannot be

numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine‖ (Moses 1:37).

Plainly, we are dealing with two orders of minds. ―For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are

. . . my thoughts than your thoughts‖ (Isaiah 55:8-9).

But why this crippling limitation on our thoughts if we are God‘s children? It is precisely

this limitation which is the essence of our mortal existence. If every choice I make expresses a

preference; if the world I build up is the world I really love and want, then with every choice I am

judging myself, proclaiming all the day long to God, angels and my fellowmen where my real

values lie, where my treasure is, the things to which I give supreme importance. Hence, in this

life every moment provides a perfect and foolproof test of your real character, making this life a


time of testing and probation. And hence the agonizing cry of the prophet Mormon speaking to

our generation. (―I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus

Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing‖ (Mormon 8:35). He calls upon us, ―Be

wise in the days of your probation . . . ask not, that ye may consume it on your lusts‖ (Mormon

9:28); i.e., that you may use up or consume your probation time just having a good time or doing

what you feel like doing—nothing could be more terrible than that: ―But woe unto him…that

wasteth the days of his probation, for awful is his state!‖ (2 Nephi 9:27, italics added.) It is

throwing our life away, to think of the wrong things, as we are told in the next verse that ―the

cunning plan of the evil one‖ is to get us to do just that; trying, in Brigham Young‘s phrase, to

―decoy our thoughts,‖ to get our minds on trivial thoughts, on the things of this world against

which we have so often been warned.

Sin is waste. It is doing one thing when you should be doing other and better things for

which you have the capacity. Hence, there are no innocent idle thoughts. That is why even the

righteous must repent, constantly and progressively, since all fall short of their capacity and

calling. ―Probably 99 percent of human ability has been wholly wasted,‖ writes Arthur Clarke,

―even today we operate . . . most of our time as automatic machines, and glimpse the profounder

resources of our minds only once or twice in a lifetime.‖6 ―No nation can afford to divert its most

able men into such essentially noncreative and occasionally parasitic occupations as law,

advertising, and banking.‖7 Those officials whom Moroni chides because they ―sit upon [their]

thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor‖ (Alma 60:7) were not deliberately or maliciously harming

anyone—but they were committing grave sin. Why do people feel guilty about TV? What is

wrong with it? Just this—that it shuts out all the wonderful things of which the mind is capable,

leaving it drugged in a state of thoughtless stupor. For the same reason a mediocre school or

teacher is a bad school or teacher. Last week it was announced in the papers that a large

convention concerned with violence and disorder in our schools came to the unanimous

conclusion—student and teachers alike—that the main cause of the mischief was boredom.

Underperformance, the job that does not challenge you, can make you sick: work which puts

repetition and routine in the place of real work begets a sense of guilt; merely doodling and

noodling in committees can give you ulcers, skin rashes, and heart trouble. God is not pleased

with us for merely sitting in meetings: ―How vain and trifling have been our spirits, our

conferences, our councils, our meetings, our private as well as public conversation,‖ wrote the

Prophet Joseph from Liberty Jail, —―too low, too mean, too vulgar, too condescending for the

dignified characters called and chosen of God.‖8

This puts a serious face on things. If we try to evade the responsibility of directing our

minds to the highest possible object, if we try to settle for a milder program at lower stakes and

safer risks, we are immediately slapped and buffeted by a power that will not let us rest. Being

here, we must play the probation game, and we pay an awful forfeit for every effort to evade it.

We must think—but what about? The substance of thought is knowledge. ―The human brain

depends for its normal alertness, reliability and efficiency on a continuous flow of information

about the world . . . the brain craves for information as the body craves for food.‖ 9 Both

individuals and societies can become insane without sufficient stimulus.‖10

If the mind is denied

functioning to capacity, it will take terrible revenge. The penalty we pay for starving our minds is

a phenomenon that is only too conspicuous at the BYU: Aristotle pointed out long ago that a

shortage of knowledge is an intolerable state and so the mind will do anything to escape it; in


particular, it will invent knowledge if it has to. Experimenters have found that ―lack of

information quickly breeds insecurity in a situation where any information is regarded as better

than none.‖11

In that atmosphere, false information flourishes and subjects in tests are ―eager to

listen to and believe any sort of preposterous nonsense.‖12

Why so? We repeat, because the very

nature of man requires him to use his mind to capacity. ―The mind or intelligence which man

possesses,‖ says Joseph Smith, ―is co-equal with God himself.‖ What greater crime than the

minimizing of such capacity? The Prophet continues: ―All the minds and spirits that God ever

sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement. God himself, finding he was in the midst of

the spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the

rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us

in a situation to advance in knowledge.‖13

Expansion is the theme, and we cannot expand the

boundaries unless we first reach those boundaries, which means exerting ourselves to the absolute

limit.

Now we come to a subject with which the Prophet Joseph was greatly concerned. To keep

the Saints always reaching for the highest and best, the utmost of their capacity, requires

enormous motivation—and the gospel supplies it. Nothing can excite men to action like the

contemplation of the eternities. The quality in which the Saints have always excelled is zeal. Zeal

is the engine that drives the whole vehicle, without it we would get nowhere. But without clutch,

throttle, brakes, and steering wheel, our mighty engine becomes an instrument of destruction, and

the more powerful the motor, the more disastrous the inevitable crackup if the proper knowledge

is lacking. There is a natural tendency to let the mighty motor carry us along, to give it its head,

open up and see what it can do. We see this in our society today. Scientists tell us that the

advancement of a civilization depends on two things: (a) the amount of energy at its disposal, and

(b) the amount of information at its disposal.14

Today we have unlimited energy—nuclear power,

but we still lack the necessary information to control and utilize it. We have the zeal but not the

knowledge, so to speak. And this the Prophet Joseph considered a very dangerous situation in the

Church. Speaking to the new Relief Society, he ―commended them for their zeal, but said that

sometimes their zeal was not according to knowledge.‖15

He advised restraint in an effort to keep

things under control. The Society, he observed, ―was growing too fast. It should grow up by

degrees,‖ he said, and ―. . . thus have a select society of the virtuous, and those who would walk

circumspectly.‖16

What good is the power, he asks, without real intelligence and solid knowledge?

He gives the example of those Saints who were carried away at the thought and prospect of ―a

glorious manifestation from God.‖ And bids them ask, ―a manifestation of what? Is there any

intelligence communicated? . . . All the intelligence that can be obtained from them when they

arise, is a shout of ‗glory,‘ or ‗hallelujah,‘ or some incoherent expression; but they have had the

power.‖17

Another time he warned the sisters against being ―subject to overmuch zeal, which

must ever prove dangerous, and cause them to be rigid in a religious capacity.18

Zeal makes us

loyal and unflinching, but God wants more than that. In the same breath, the Prophet said that the

people ―were depending on the Prophet, hence were darkened in their minds, in consequence of

neglecting the duties devolving upon themselves.‖19

They must do their own thinking and

discipline their minds. If not, that will happen again which happened in Kirtland: ―Many, having

a zeal not according to knowledge,‖ said the Prophet, ―. . . have, no doubt, in the heat of

enthusiasm, taught and said many things which are derogatory to the genuine character and

principles of the Church.‖20

Specifically, ―soon after the Gospel was established in Kirtland . . .


many false spirits were introduced, many strange visions were seen, and wild, enthusiastic

notions were entertained . . . many ridiculous things were entered into, calculated to bring

disgrace upon the Church of God.‖21

This was the time when some of the brethren in Kirtland

were out to prove that they were smarter than the Prophet and produced the so-called Egyptian

Alphabet and Grammar to match his production of the Book of Abraham.

This illustrates another point—that knowledge can be heady stuff. It easily leads to an

excess of zeal—to illusions of grandeur and a desire to impress others and achieve eminence. The

university is nothing more nor less than a place of show off: if it ceased to be that, it would cease

to exist. Again, the Prophet Joseph is right on target when he tells us that true knowledge can

never serve that end. Knowledge is individual, he observes, and if a person has it, ―who would

know it? . . . The greatest, the best and the most useful gifts would be known nothing about by an

observer . . . There are only two gifts that could be made visible—the gift of tongues and the gift

of prophecy.‖22

Our search for knowledge should be ceaseless, which means that it is open-ended, never

resting on laurels, degrees, or past achievements. ―If we get puffed up by thinking that we have

much knowledge, we are apt to get a contentious spirit,‖ and what is the cure? ―Correct

knowledge is necessary to cast out that spirit.‖23

The cure for inadequate knowledge is ―ever more

light and knowledge.‖ But who is going to listen patiently to correct knowledge if he thinks he

has the answers already? ―There are a great many wise men and women too in our midst who are

too wise to be taught; therefore they must die in their ignorance.‖24

―I have tried for a number of

years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God; but we frequently see

some of them . . . [that] will fly to pieces like glass as soon as anything comes that is contrary to

their traditions: they cannot stand the fire at all . . .25

[If I] go into an investigation into anything,

that is not contained in the Bible . . . I think there are so many over-wise men here, that they

would cry ‗treason‘ and put me to death.‖26

But, he asks, ―why be so certain that you comprehend

the things of God, when all things with you are so uncertain?27

True knowledge never shuts the

door on more knowledge, but zeal often does. One thinks of the dictum: ―We are not seeking for

truth at the BYU; we have the truth!‖ So did Adam and Abraham have the truth, far greater and

more truth than what we have, and yet the particular genius of each was that he was constantly

―seeking for greater light and knowledge.‖

The young, with their limited knowledge are particularly susceptible to excessive zeal.

Why do it the hard way, they ask at the BYU, when God has given us the answer book? The

answer to that is, because if you use the answer book for your Latin or your math, or anything

else, you will always have a false sense of power and never learn the real thing. ―The people

expect to see some wonderful manifestation, some great display of power,‖ says Joseph Smith,

―or some extraordinary miracle performed; and it is often the case that young members of this

Church, for want of better information, carry along with them their old notions of things, and

sometimes fall into egregious errors.‖28

―Be careful about sending boys to preach the Gospel to

the world,‖ said Joseph Smith. Why? Certainly not because they lacked zeal, that‘s the one thing

they had. The Prophet explains: ―Lest they become puffed up, and fall under condemnation . . .

beware of pride . . . apply yourselves diligently to study, that your minds may be stored with all

necessary information.‖29

That is doing it the hard way. Can‘t the Spirit hurry things up? No—

there is no place for the cram course or quickie, or above all the superficial survey course or

quick trips to the Holy Land, where the gospel is concerned. ―We consider that God has created


man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the

heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect . . . but . . . no

man ever arrived in a moment: he must have been instructed . . . by proper degrees.‖30

―The

things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and

solemn thoughts . . . stretch as high as the utmost heavens.‖31

No short-cuts or easy lessons here!

Note well that the Prophet makes no distinction between things of the spirit and things of the

intellect.

Many years ago, when it was pointed out that BYU graduates were the lowest in the nation

in all categories of the Graduate Record Examination, the institution characteristically met the

challenge by abolishing the examination. It was done on the grounds that the test did not

sufficiently measure our unique ―spirituality.‖ We talked extensively about ―the education of the

whole man,‖ and deplored that educational imbalance that comes when students‘ heads are

merely stuffed with facts—as if there was any danger of that here! But actually, serious

imbalance is impossible if one plays the game honestly: true zeal feeds on knowledge, true

knowledge cannot exist without zeal. Both are ―spiritual‖ qualities. All knowledge is the gospel,

but there must be a priority, ―proper degrees,‖ as he says, in the timing and emphasis of our

learning, lest like the doctors of the Jews, we ―strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.‖

Furthermore, since one person does not receive revelation for another, if we would exchange or

convey knowledge, we must be willing to have our knowledge tested. The gifted and zealous Mr.

Olney was ―disfellowshipped, because he would not have his writings tested by the word of

God,‖ according to Joseph Smith.32

Not infrequently, Latter-day Saints tell me that they have translated a text or interpreted an

artifact, or been led to an archaeological discovery as a direct answer to prayer, and that for me to

question or test the results is to question the reality of revelation; and often I am asked to approve

a theory or ―discovery‖ which I find unconvincing, because it has been the means of bringing

people to the Church. Such practitioners are asking me to take their zeal as a adequate substitute

for knowledge, but like Brother Olney, they refuse to have their knowledge tested. True, ―it needs

revelation to assist us, and give us knowledge of the things of God,‖33

but only the hard worker

can expect such assistance: ―It is not wisdom that we should have all knowledge at once

presented before us; but that we should have little at a time; then we can comprehend it.‖34

We

must know what we are doing, understand the problem, live with it, lay a proper foundation –

how many a Latter-day Saint has told me that he can understand the scriptures by pure revelation

and does not need to toil at Greek or Hebrew as the Prophet and the Brethren did in the School of

the Prophets at Kirtland and Nauvoo? Even Oliver Cowdery fell into that trap and was rebuked

for it. (Doctrine and Covenants 9.) ―The principle of knowledge is the principle of salvation. This

principle can be comprehended by the faithful and diligent,‖ says the Prophet Joseph. 35

New converts often get the idea that, having accepted the gospel, they have arrived at

adequate knowledge. Others say that to have a testimony is to have everything – they have sought

and found the kingdom of heaven; but their minds go right on working just the same, and if they

don‘t keep on getting new and testable knowledge, they will assuredly embrace those ―wild,

enthusiastic notions;‖ of the new converts in Kirtland. Note what a different procedure Joseph

Smith prescribes: ―[The] first Comforter or Holy Ghost has no other effect than pure intelligence

[ it is not a hot, emotional surge]. It is more powerful in expanding the mind, enlightening the

understanding, and storing the intellect with present knowledge, of a man who is of the literal


seed of Abraham, than one who is a Gentile.‖36

―For as the Holy Ghost falls upon one of the

literal seed of Abraham, it is calm and serene; and his whole soul and body are only exercised by

the pure spirit of intelligence.‖37 ―

The Spirit of Revelation is in connection with these blessings. A

person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when

you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas . . . thus, by

learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation.‖38

This is remarkably like the new therapeutic discipline called ―biofeedback.‖

The emphasis is all on the continuous, conscientious, honest acquisition of knowledge. This

admonition to sobriety and diligence goes along with the Prophet‘s outspoken recommendation of

the Jews and their peculiar esteem and diligence for things of the mind. ―If there is anything

calculated to interest the mind of the Saints, to awaken in them the finest sensibilities, and arouse

them to enterprise and exertion, surely it is the great and precious promises to . . . Abraham and . . .

Judah . . . and inasmuch as you feel interested for the covenant people of the Lord, the God of their

fathers shall bless you . . . He will endow you with power, wisdom, might and intelligence, and

every qualification necessary: while your minds will expand wider and wider, until you can . . .

contemplate the mighty acts of Jehovah in all their variety and glory.‖39

In Israel today, they have great contests in which young people and old from all parts of the

world display their knowledge of scripture and skill at music, science, or mathematics, etc., in

grueling competitions. This sort of thing tends to breed a race of insufferably arrogant, conceited

little show-offs—and magnificent performers. They tend to be like the Jews of old, who ―sought for

things that they could not understand,‖ ever ―looking beyond the mark,‖ and hence falling on their

faces: ―they needs must fall.‖ (Jacob 4:14.) Yet Joseph Smith commends their intellectual efforts as

a corrective to the Latter-day Saints, who lean too far in the other direction, giving their young

people and old awards for zeal alone, zeal without knowledge—for sitting in endless meetings, for

dedicated conformity, and unlimited capacity for suffering boredom. We think it more

commendable to get up at 5:00 a.m. to write a bad book than to get up at nine o‘clock to write a

good one—that is pure zeal that tends to breed a race of insufferable, self-righteous prigs and barren

minds. One has only to consider the present outpouring of ―inspirational‖ books in the Church

which bring little new in the way of Knowledge: truisms, and platitudes, kitsch, and clichés have

become our everyday diet. The Prophet would never settle for that. ―I advise you to go on to

perfection and search deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Godliness . . . It has always been my

province to dig up hidden mysteries, new things, for my hearers.‖40

It actually happens at the BYU,

and that not rarely, that students come to a teacher, usually at the beginning of a term, with the

sincere request that he refrain from teaching them anything new. They have no desire, they explain,

to hear what they do not know already! I cannot imagine that happening at any other school, but

maybe it does. Unless we go on to other new things, we are stifling our powers.

In our limited time here, what are we going to think about? That is the all important

question. We‘ve been assured that it is not too early to start thinking about things of the eternities.

In fact, Latter-day Saints should be taking rapid strides toward setting up that eternal celestial

order which the Church must embody to be acceptable to God. Also, we are repeatedly instructed

regarding things we should not think about. I would pass this negative thing by lightly, but the

scriptures are explicit, outspoken, and emphatic in this matter; and whenever anyone begins to

talk about serious matters at the BYU, inevitably someone says, ―I would like to spend my time

thinking about such things and studying them, but I cannot afford the luxury. I have to think


about the really important business of life, which is making a living.‖ This is the withering effect

of the intimidating challenge thrown out of all of us from childhood: ―Do you have any money?‖

With its absolute declaration of policy and principle: ―You can have anything in this world for

money!‖ and its paralyzing corollary: ―Without it, you can have nothing!‖ I do not have to tell

you where that philosophy came from. Somebody is out to ―decoy our minds,‖ to use Brigham

Young‘s expression, from the things we should be thinking about to those which we should not

care about at all. The most oft-repeated command in the scriptures, repeated verbatim in the

Synoptic Gospels, the Book of Mormon, and in the Doctrine and Covenants41

is ―Take ye no

thought for the morrow, for what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be

clothed. For consider the lilies of the field . . .‖ We cannot go here into the long catalog of

scripture of commandments telling us to seek for knowledge in one direction but not in another.

―Seek not for riches, but for wisdom‖; ―lay not up treasures on earth,‖ but in heaven, for where

your treasure is, there will your heart be also. You cannot serve two masters, you must choose

one and follow him alone: ―Whatsoever is in the world is not of the Father but is of the world,‖

etc.

We take comfort in certain parables: for example, ―Which of you, intending to build a

tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost . . .‖ (Luke 14:28-30), as if they justified our

present course. But the Lord is not instructing people to take economic foresight in such

matters—they already do that: ―Which of you does not?‖ says the Lord. He points out that people

are only too alert and provident where the things of this world are concerned and says, to their

shame: ―If you‘re so zealous in such matters, why can‘t you take your eternal future seriously?‖

And so he ends the parable with this admonition: ―Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all

that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.‖ That is the same advice, you will observe, that he gave to

the rich young man. The Lord really means what he says when he commands us not to think

about these things; and because we have chosen to find this advice hopelessly impractical ―for

our times‖ (note that the rich young man found it just as impractical for his times!), the treasures

of knowledge have been withheld from us. ―God [has] often sealed up the heavens,‖ said Joseph

Smith, ―because of covetousness in the Church.‖42

You must choose between one route or the

other. If we go on ―lusting after the groveling things of this life,‖ says Brigham Young, we

remain ―fixed with a very limited amount of knowledge, like a door upon its hinges, moving to

and fro from year to year without any visible advancement or improvement . . . Man is made in

the image of God, but what do we know of Him or of ourselves when we suffer ourselves to love

and worship the God of this world—riches?‖ ―I desire to see everybody on the track of

improvement . . . but when you so love your property as though all your affections were placed

on the changing, fading things of earth, it is impossible to increase in knowledge of the truth.‖43

What things should we think about then, and how? Here the Prophet is very helpful. In the

first place, that question itself is what we should think about. We won‘t get very far on our way

until we have faced up to it. But as soon as we start seriously thinking about that, we find

ourselves covered with confusion, overwhelmed by our feelings of guilt and inadequacy—in

other words, repenting for our past delinquency. In this condition, we call upon the Lord for aid

and he hears us. We begin to know what the Prophet Joseph meant about the constant searching,

steadily storing our minds with knowledge and information—the more we get of it, the better we

are able to judge the proper priorities as we feel our way forward, as we become increasingly alert

to the promptings of the Spirit which become ever more clear and more frequent, following the


guidance of the Holy Ghost: and as we go forward, we learn to cope with the hostile world with

which our way is sure to bring us into collision in time. That calls for sacrifice, but what of that?

Eternal life is not cheaply bought.

This may sound very impractical to some, but how often do we have to be reminded of the

illusory and immoral nature of the treasures we are seeking on earth? Even without the vast

powers of destruction that are hanging over our heads at this moment, even in the most peaceful

and secure of worlds, we would see them vanishing before our eyes. Such phenomena as

ephemeralization and replication, once dreams of the science-fiction writers, are rapidly

becoming realities. Speaking of the ephemeralization, of technological obsolescence, Arthur C.

Clark wrote that within the foreseeable future all the most powerful and lucrative callings in our

world will exist no more. Because of new process of synthesizing, organizing, programming basic

materials of unlimited supply into the necessities of life, we shall soon see ―the end of all

factories and perhaps of all transportation of raw materials and all farming. The entire structure of

industry and commerce . . . would cease to exist . . . all material possessions would be literally as

cheap as dirt . . . Then when material objects are intrinsically worthless, perhaps only then will a

real sense of values arise.‖44

Yes, you say, but meantime, ―we must live in the world of the present.‖ Must we? Most

people in the past have got along without the institutions which we think for the moment,

indispensable. And we are expressly commanded to get out of that business. ―No one supposes

for one moment,‖ says Brigham Young, ―that in heaven the angels are speculating, that they are

building railroads and factories, taking advantage of one another, gathering up the substance in

heaven to aggrandize themselves, and that they live on the same principle that we are in the habit

of doing . . . No sectarian Christian in the world believes this; they believe that the inhabitants of

heaven live as a family, that their faith, interests, and pursuits have one end in view—the glory of

God and their own salvation, that they may receive more and more . . . We all believe this, and

suppose we go to work and imitate them as far as we can.‖45

It is not too soon to begin right now.

What are the things of the eternities that we should consider even now? They are the things that

no one ever tires of doing, things in themselves lovely and desirable. Surprisingly, the things of

the eternities are the very things to which the university is supposed to be dedicated. In the Zion

of God, in the celestial and eternal order, where there is no death there will be no morticians,

where there is no sickness there be no more doctors, where there is no decay there will be no

dentists, where there is no litigation there will be no lawyers, where there is no buying and selling

there will be no merchants, where there is no insecurity, there will be no insurance, where there is

no money there will be no banks, where there is no crime there will be no jails, no police; where

there are no excess goods there will be no advertising, no wars, no armies, and so on and so on.

But this happy condition is not limited to celestial realms of the future; it actually has been

achieved by mortal men on this earth a number of items, and represents the only state of society

of which God approves. All the things that are passing away today are the very essence of ―the

economy,‖ but they will be missing in Zion. They are already obsolescent, every one of them is

made work of a temporary and artificial nature for which an artificial demand must be created.

Moreover, few people are really dedicated to them, for as soon as a man has acquired a super-

quota of power and gain, he cuts out and leaves the scene of his triumphs, getting as far away as

he can from the ugly world he has helped create—preferably to Tahiti. The race has shown us

often its capacity to do without these things we now find indispensable. ―The Devil has the


mastery of the earth: he has corrupted it, and has corrupted the children of men. He has led them

in evil until they are almost entirely ruined, and are so far from God that they neither know Him

nor his influence, and have almost lost sight of everything that pertains to eternity. This darkness

is more prevalent, more dense, among the people of Christendom that it is among the heathen.

They have lost sight of all that is great and glorious—of all principles that pertain to life

eternal.‖46

―Suppose that our Father in heaven, our elder brother, the risen Redeemer, the Savior

of the world, or any of the Gods of eternity should act upon this principle, to love truth,

knowledge, and wisdom, because they are all-powerful,‖ says Brigham Young, ―they would cease

to be Gods; . . . the extension of their kingdom would cease, and their God-head come to an

end.‖47

Are we here to seek knowledge or to seek the credits that will get us ahead in the world?

One of the glorious benefits and promises of the gospel given the Saints in these latter days that

―inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed; And inasmuch as they were humble

they might be made strong, and blessed from on high, and receive knowledge from time to time.‖

(Doctrine and Covenants 1:26, 28. Italics added.) But they had to want it and seek for it. What is

that state of things? The late President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote: ―We are informed that many

important things are withheld from us because of the hardness of our hearts and the unwillingness

as members of the Church to abide in the covenants and seek divine knowledge.‖ ―Our faculties

are enlarged,‖ said Joseph Smith, ―in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light

communicated from heaven to the intellect.‖48

―If [a man] does not get knowledge, he will be

brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more

knowledge, and consequently more power than many men who are on the earth. [We need]

revelation to assist us, and give us knowledge of the things of God.‖49

There is indeed an order of

priority. The things of God come first, and the seeker ever tries to become aware of that priority.

―All science,‖ says Karl Popper, ―is eschatology,‖ concerned fundamentally with the questions of

religion. The most important question of all is that of our eternal salvation.

I once acted as counselor to students in the College of Commerce for a couple of years.

Most of these students were unhappy about going into business and admitted that Satan rules this

earth and rules it badly, with blood and horror, but they pointed out the intimidating circumstance

that you cannot have money without playing his game because he owns the treasures of the earth.

They could see he owns them as loot, and by virtue of a legal fiction with which he has, in Joseph

Smith‘s terms, ―riveted the creeds of the fathers,‖ but still the students would ask me in despair,

―If we leave his employ, what will become of us?‖ The answer is simple. Don‘t you trust the

Lord? If you do, he will give you the guidance of the Holy Spirit and you will not end up doing

the things that he has expressly commanded us not to do.

May God help us all in the days of our probation to seek the knowledge he wants us to

seek.

Notes

1. Nigel Calder, The Mind of Man (London: BBC, 1970), p. 25.

2. Ibid., p. 169

3. Loc. Cit.


4. Ibid., p. 29.

5. Ibid., pp. 29, 184

6. Arthur Clarke, Profiles of the Future (N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 197.

7. Ibid., p. 96

8. DHC,3:295f.

9. Calder, p. 33.

10. Clarke, p. 83.

11. Lyall Watson, Supernature (N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1973), p 239.

12. Calder, p. 77.

13. Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, (Salt Lake City:

Deseret Book Co., 1967), p. 354. Italics added. Hereafter cited as TPJS.

14. Carl Sagan, The Cosmic Connection (N.Y.: Dell, 1973), Ch. 34.

15. TPJS, p. 201. Italics added.

16. Ibid.

17. TPJS, p. 204.


19. Ibid. Italics added.

20. TPJS, p. 80.

21. TPJS, pp. 213,214.

22. TPJS, p. 246.

23. TPJS, p. 287.

24. TPJS, p. 309.

25. TPJS, p. 331.

26. TPJS, p. 348.

27. TPJS, p. 320.

28.

TPJS, p. 242.



31. TPJS, p. 137.


33. TPJS, p. 217.

34. TPJS, p. 297.

35. Ibid.

36. TPJS, p. 149.

37. TPJS, pp. 149, 150.

38. TPJS, P. 151.

39. TPJS, p. 163.



41. Matthew 6:25ff, Mark 13:11ff, Luke 12:11ff, 3 Nephi 13:25ff, Doctrine and Covenants

84:81ff.


43. Brigham Young in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London: Latter-day Saints‘ Book

Depot, 1855-86) 7:337; hereafter cited as JD.

44. Clarke, p. 16.

45. JD 17:117f.

46. JD 8:209.

47. JD 1:117.

48. Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, Melchizedek Priesthood Manual,

1972-1973. p. 229.

49. TPJS, p. 217.

xamsmanship and the Liberal Arts

by William G. Perry, Jr.

William Perry (1913-1998) completed his undergraduate and graduate

degrees at Harvard, where, in 1946, he joined the faculty. During his

tenure, he conducted research to determine why certain students thrived

in Harvard’s environment and others, apparently capable, did not. For

five years, Perry interviewed students and later reported his findings in

Examining at Harvard (1967), where “Examsmanship and the Liberal

Arts” first appeared. Perry later elaborated his theories in Forms of

Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years (1970).

ut sir, I don‟t think I really deserve it, it was mostly bull, really.” This disclaimer from

a student whose examination we have awarded a straight “A” is wondrously depressing. Alfred

North Whitehead invented its only possible rejoinder: “Yes sir, what you wrote is nonsense, utter

nonsense. But ah! Sir! It‟s the right kind of nonsense!”

Bull, in this university, is customarily a source of laughter, or a problem in ethics. I shall

step a little out of fashion to use the subject as a take-off point for a study in comparative

epistemology. The phenomenon of bull, in all the honor and opprobrium with which it is regarded

by students and faculty, says something, I think, about our theories of knowledge. So too, the

grades which we assign on examinations communicate to students what these theories may be.

We do not have to be out-and-out logical-positivists to suppose that we have something to

learn about “what we think knowledge is” by having a good look at “what we do when we go

about measuring it.” We know the straight “A” examination when we see it, of course, and we

have reason to hope that the student will understand why his work receives our recognition. He

doesn‟t always. And those who receive lesser honor? Perhaps an understanding of certain

anomalies in our customs of grading good bull will explain the students‟ confusion.

I must beg patience, then, both of the reader‟s humor and of his morals. Not that I ask him

to suspend his sense of humor but that I shall ask him to go beyond it. In a great university the

picture of a bright student attempting to outwit his professor while his professor takes pride in not

being outwitted is certainly ridiculous. I shall report just such a scene, for its implications bear

upon my point. Its comedy need not present a serious obstacle to thought.

As for the ethics of bull, I must ask for a suspension of judgment. I wish that students could

suspend theirs. Unlike humor, moral commitment is hard to think beyond. Too early a moral

judgment is precisely what stands between many able students and a liberal education. The

E

“B

Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts 346

stunning realization that the Harvard Faculty will often accept, as evidence of knowledge, the

cerebrations of a student who has little data at his disposal, confronts every student with an

ethical dilemma. For some it forms an academic focus for what used to be thought of as

“adolescent disillusion.” It is irrelevant that rumor inflates the phenomenon to mythical

proportions. The students know that beneath the myth there remains a solid and haunting reality.

The moral “bind” consequent on this awareness appears most poignantly in serious students who

are reluctant to concede the competitive advantage to the bullster and who yet feel a deep

personal shame when, having succumbed to “temptation,” they themselves receive a high grade

for work they consider “dishonest.”

I have spent many hours with students caught in this unwelcome bitterness. These hours

lend urgency to my theme. I have found that students have been able to come to terms with the

ethical problem, to the extent that it is real, only after a refined study of the true nature of bull and

its relation to “knowledge.” I shall submit grounds for my suspicion that we can be found guilty

of sharing the student‟s confusion of moral and epistemological issues.

I

I present as my “premise,” then, an amoral fabliau. Its hero-villain is the Abominable Mr.

Metzger ‟47. Since I celebrate his virtuosity, I regret giving him a pseudonym, but the peculiar

style of his bravado requires me to honor also his modesty. Bull in pure form is rare; there is

usually some contamination by data. The community has reason to be grateful to Mr. Metzger for

having created an instance of laboratory purity, free from any adulteration by matter. The more

credit is due him, I think, because his act was free from premeditation, deliberation, or hope of

personal gain.

Mr. Metzger stood one rainy November day in the lobby of Memorial Hall. A junior,

concentrating in mathematics, he was fond of diverting himself by taking part in the drama, a

penchant which may have had some influence on the events of the next hour. He was waiting to

take part in a rehearsal in Sanders Theatre, but, as sometimes happens, no other players appeared.

Perhaps the rehearsal had been canceled without his knowledge? He decided to wait another five

minutes.

Students, meanwhile, were filing into the Great Hall opposite, and taking seats at the testing

tables. Spying a friend crossing the lobby toward the Great Hall‟s door, Metzger greeted him and

extended appropriate condolences. He inquired, too, what course his friend was being tested in.

“Oh, Soc. Sci. something-or-other” “What‟s it all about?” asked Metzger, and this, as Homer

remarked of Patroclus, was the beginning of evil for him.

“It‟s about Modern Perspectives on Man and Society and All That,” said his friend. “Pretty

interesting, really.”

“Always wanted to take a course like that,” said Metzger. “Any good reading?”

“Yeah, great. There‟s this book”—his friend did not have time to finish.

“Take your seats please,” said a stern voice beside them. The idle conversation had

somehow taken the two friends to one of the tables in the Great Hall. Both students automatically

obeyed; the proctor put blue books before them; another proctor presented them with copies of

the printed hour-test.


Mr. Metzger remembered afterwards a brief misgiving that was suddenly overwhelmed by

a surge of curiosity and puckish glee. He wrote “George Smith” on the blue book, opened it, and

addressed the first question.

I must pause to exonerate the Management. The Faculty has a rule that no student may

attend an examination in a course in which he is not enrolled. To the wisdom of this rule the

outcome of this deplorable story stands witness. The Registrar, charged with the enforcement of

the rule, has developed an organization with procedures which are certainly the finest to be

devised. In November, however, class rosters are still shaky, and on this particular day another

student, named Smith, was absent. As for the culprit, we can reduce his guilt no further than to

suppose that he was ignorant of the rule, or, in the face of the momentous challenge before him,

forgetful.

We need not be distracted by Metzger‟s performance on the “objective” or “spot” questions

on the test. His D on these sections can be explained by those versed in the theory of probability.

Our interest focuses on the quality of his essay. It appears that when Metzger‟s friend picked up

his own blue book a few days later, he found himself in company with a large proportion of his

section in having received on the essay a C+. When he quietly picked up “George Smith‟s” blue

book to return it to Metzger, he observed that the grade for the essay was A-. In the margin was a

note in the section man‟s hand. It read “Excellent work. Could you have pinned these

observations down a bit more closely? Compare … in … pp…”

Such news could hardly be kept quiet. There was a leak, and the whole scandal broke on

the front page of Tuesday‟s Crimson. With the press Metzger was modest, as becomes a hero. He

said that there had been nothing to it at all, really. The essay question had offered a choice of two

books, Margaret Mead‟s And Keep Your Powder Dry or Geoffrey Gorer‟s The American People.

Metzger reported that having read neither of them, he had chosen the second “because the title

gave me some notion as to what the book might be about.” On the test, two critical comments

were offered on each book, one favorable, one unfavorable. The students were asked to “discuss.”

Metzger conceded that he had played safe in throwing his lot with the most laudatory of the two

comments, “but I did not forget to be balanced.”

I do not have Mr. Metzger‟s essay before me except in vivid memory. As I recall, he took

his first cue from the name Geoffrey, and committed his strategy to the premise that Gorer was

born into an “Anglo-Saxon” culture, probably English, but certainly “English speaking.” Having

heard that Margaret Mead was a social anthropologist, he inferred that Gorer was the same. He

then entered upon his essay, centering his inquiry upon what he supposed might be the problems

inherent in an anthropologist‟s observation of a culture which was his own, or nearly his own.

Drawing in part from memories of table-talk on cultural relativity and in part from creative logic,

he rang changes on the relation of observer to observed, and assessed the kind and degree of

objectivity which might accrue to an observer through training as an anthropologist. He

concluded “that the book in question did in fact contribute a considerable range of “objective,”

and even „fresh,‟” insights into the nature of our culture. “At the same time,” he warned, “these

observations must be understood within the context of their generation by a person only partly

freed from his embeddedness in the culture he is observing, and limited in his capacity to

transcend those particular tendencies and biases which he has himself developed as a personality

in his interaction with this culture since his birth. In this sense the book portrays as much the


character of Geoffrey Gorer as it analyzes that of the American people.” It is my regrettable duty

to report that at this moment of triumph Mr. Metzger was carried away by the temptations of

parody and added, “We are thus much the richer.”

In any case, this was the essay for which Metzger received his honor grade and his public

acclaim. He was now, of course, in serious trouble with the authorities.

I shall leave him for the moment to the mercy of the Administrative Board of Harvard

College and turn the reader‟s attention to the section man who ascribed the grade. He was in

much worse trouble. All the consternation in his immediate area of the Faculty and all the glee in

other areas fell upon his unprotected head. I shall now undertake his defense.

I do so not simply because I was acquainted with him and feel a respect for his intelligence:

I believe in the justice of his grade! Well, perhaps “justice” is the wrong word in a situation so

manifestly absurd. This is more a case in “equity.” That is, the grade is equitable if we accept

other aspects of the situation which are equally absurd. My proposition is this: if we accept as

valid those C grades which were accorded students who, like Metzger‟s friend, demonstrated a

thorough familiarity with the details of the book without relating their critique to the

methodological problems of social anthropology, then “George Smith” deserved not only the

same, but better.

The reader may protest that the C‟s given to students who showed evidence only of

diligence were indeed not valid and that both these students and “George Smith” should have

received E‟s. To give the diligent E is of course not in accord with custom. I shall take up this

matter later. For now, were I to allow the protest, I could only restate my thesis: that “George

Smith‟s” E would, in a college of liberal arts, be properly a “better” E.

At this point I need a short-hand. It is a curious fact that there is no academic slang for the

presentation of evidence of diligence alone. “Parroting” won‟t do; it is possible to “parrot” bull. I

must beg the reader‟s pardon, and, for reasons almost too obvious to bear, suggest “cow.”

Stated as nouns, the concepts look simple enough:

cow (pure): data, however relevant, without relevancies.

bull (pure): relevancies, however relevant, without data.

The reader can see all too clearly where this simplicity would lead. I can assure him that I

would not have imposed on him this way were I aiming to say that knowledge in this university is

definable as some neuter compromise between cow and bull, some infertile hermaphrodite. This

is precisely what many diligent students seem to believe: that what they must learn to do is to

“find the right mean” between “amounts” of detail and “amounts” of generalities. Of course this

is not the point at all. The problem is not quantitative, nor does its solution lie on a continuum

between the particular and the general. Cow and bull are not poles of a single dimension. A clear

notion of what they really are is essential to my inquiry, and for heuristic purposes I wish to

observe them further in the celibate state.

When the pure concepts are translated into verbs, their complexities become apparent in the

assumptions and purposes of the students as they write:

To cow (v. intrans.) or the acting of cowing:

To list data (or perform operations) without awareness of, or comment upon, the

contexts, frames of reference, or points of observation which determine the origin, nature,


and meaning of the data (or procedures). To write on the assumption that “a fact is a fact.”

To present evidence of hard work as a substitute for understanding, without any intent to

deceive.

To bull (v. intrans.) or the act of bulling:

To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which

would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present

evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into

supposing a familiarity with content.

At the level of conscious intent, it is evident that cowing is more moral, or less immoral,

than bulling. To speculate about unconscious intent would be either an injustice or a needless

elaboration of my theme. It is enough that the impression left by cow is one of earnestness,

diligence, and painful naïveté. The grader may feel disappointment or even irritation, but these

feelings are usually balanced by pity, compassion, and a reluctance to hit a man when he‟s both

down and moral. He may feel some challenge to his teaching, but none whatever to his one-ups-

manship. He writes in the margin: “See me.”

We are now in a position to understand the anomaly of custom: As instructors, we always

assign bull an E, when we detect it; whereas we usually give cow a C, even though it is always

obvious.

After all, we did not ask to be confronted with a choice between morals and understanding

(or did we?). We evince a charming humanity, I think, in our decision to grade in favor of morals

and pathos. “I simply can’t give this student an E after he has worked so hard.” At the same time

we tacitly express our respect for the bullster‟s strength. We recognize a colleague. If he knows

so well how to dish it out, we can be sure that he can also take it.

Of course it is just possible that we carry with us, perhaps from our own school-days, an

assumption that if a student is willing to work hard and collect “good hard facts” he can always

be taught to understand their relevance, whereas a student who has caught onto the forms of

relevance without working at all is a lost scholar.

But this is not in accord with our experience.

It is not in accord either, as far as I can see, with the stated values of a liberal education. If a

liberal education should teach students “how to think,” not only in their own fields but in fields

outside their own—that is, to understand “how the other fellow orders knowledge,” then bulling,

even in its purest form, expresses an important part of what a pluralist university holds dear,

surely a more important part than the collecting of “facts that are facts” which schoolboys learn to

do. Here then, good bull appears not as ignorance at all but as an aspect of knowledge. It is both

relevant and “true.” In a university setting good bull is therefore of more value than “facts,”

which, without a frame of reference, are not even “true” at all.

Perhaps this value accounts for the final anomaly: as instructors, we are inclined to reward

bull highly, where we do not detect its intent, to the consternation of the bullster‟s acquaintances.

And often we do not examine the matter too closely. After a long evening of reading blue books

full of cow, the sudden meeting with a student who at least understands the problems of one‟s

field provides a lift like a draught of refreshing wine, and a strong disposition toward trust.


This was, then, the sense of confidence that came to our unfortunate section man as he read

“George Smith‟s” sympathetic considerations.

II

In my own years of watching over students‟ shoulders as they work, I have come to believe

that this feeling of trust has a firmer basis than the confidence generated by evidence of diligence

alone. I believe that the theory of a liberal education holds. Students who have dared to

understand man‟s real relation to his knowledge have shown themselves to be in a strong position

to learn content rapidly and meaningfully, and to retain it. I have learned to be less concerned

about the education of a student who has come to understand the nature of man‟s knowledge,

even though he has not yet committed himself to hard work, than I am about the education of the

student who, after one or two terms at Harvard, is working desperately hard and still believes that

collected “facts” constitute knowledge. The latter, when I try to explain to him, too often

understands me to be saying that he “doesn‟t put in enough generalities.” Surely he has “put in

enough facts.”

I have come to see such quantitative statements as expressions of an entire, coherent

epistemology. In grammar school the student is taught that Columbus discovered America in

1492. The more such items he gets “right” on a given test the more he is credited with “knowing.”

From years of this sort of thing it is not unnatural to develop the conviction that knowledge

consists of the accretion of hard facts by hard work.

The student learns that the more facts and procedures he can get “right” in a given course,

the better will be his grade. The more courses he takes, the more subjects he has “had,” the more

credits he accumulates, the more diplomas he will get, until, after graduate school, he will emerge

with his doctorate, a member of the community of scholars.

The foundation of this entire life is the proposition that a fact is a fact. The necessary

correlate of this proposition is that a fact is either right or wrong. This implies that the standard

against which the rightness or wrongness of a fact may be judged exists someplace—perhaps

graven upon a tablet in a Platonic world outside and above this cave of tears. In grammar school

it is evident that the tablets which enshrine the spelling of a word or the answer to an arithmetic

problem are visible to my teacher who need only compare my offerings to it. In high school I

observe that my English teachers disagree. This can only mean that the tablets in such matters as

the goodness of a poem are distant and obscured by clouds. They surely exist. The pleasing of

befuddled English teachers degenerates into assessing their prejudices, a game in which I have no

protection against my competitors more glib of tongue. I respect only my science teachers,

authorities who really know. Later I learn from that “This is only what we think now.” But

eventually surely . . . Into this epistemology of education, apparently shared by teachers in such

terms as “credits,” “semester hours” and “years of French,” the student may invest his ideals, his

drive, his competitiveness, his safety, his self-esteem, and even his love.

College raises other questions: by whose calendar is it proper to say that Columbus

discovered America in 1492? How, when, and by whom was the year 1 established in this

calendar? What of other calendars? In view of the evidence for Leif Ericson‟s previous visit (and

the American Indians), what historical ethnocentrism is suggested by the use of the word


“discover” in this sentence? As for Leif Ericson, in accord with what assumptions do you order

the evidence?

These questions and their answers are not “more” knowledge. They are devastation. I do

not need to elaborate upon the epistemology, or rather epistemologies, they imply. A fact has

become at last “an observation or an operation performed in a frame of reference.” A liberal

education is founded in an awareness of frame of reference even in the most immediate and

empirical examination of data. Its acquirement involves relinquishing hope of absolutes and of

the protection they afford against doubt and the glib-tongued competitor. It demands an ever

widening sophistication about systems of thought and observation. It leads, not away from, but

through the arts of gamesmanship to a new trust.

This trust is in the value and integrity of systems, their varied character, and the way their

apparently incompatible metaphors enlighten, from complementary facets, the particulars of

human experience. As one student said to me: “I used to be cynical about intellectual games. Now

I want to know them thoroughly. You see I came to realize that it was only when I knew the rules

of the game cold that I could tell whether what I was saying was tripe.”

We too often think of the bullster as cynical. He can be, and not always in a light-hearted

way. We have failed to observe that there can lie behind cow the potential of a deeper and more

dangerous despair. The moralism of sheer work and obedience can be an ethic that, unwilling to

face a despair of its ends, glorifies its means. The implicit refusal to consider the relativity of both

ends and means leaves the operator in an unconsidered proprietary absolutism. History bears

witness that in the pinches this moral superiority has no recourse to negotiation, only to force.

A liberal education proposes that man‟s hope lies elsewhere; in the negotiability that can

arise from an understanding of the integrity of systems and of their origins in man‟s address to his

universe. The prerequisite is the courage to accept such a definition of knowledge. From then on,

of course, there is nothing incompatible between such an epistemology and hard work. Rather the

contrary.

I can now at last let bull and cow get together. The reader knows best how a productive

wedding is arranged in his own field. This is the nuptial he celebrates with a straight A on

examinations. The masculine context must embrace the feminine particular, though itself “born of

woman.” Such a union is knowledge itself, and it alone can generate new contexts and new data

which can unite in their turn to form new knowledge.

In this happy setting we can congratulate in particular the Natural Sciences, long thought to

be barren ground to the bullster. I have indeed drawn my examples of bull from the Social

Sciences, and by analogy from the Humanities. Essay-writing in these fields has long been

thought to nurture the art of bull to its prime. I feel, however, that the Natural Sciences have no

reason to feel slighted. It is perhaps no accident that Metzger was a mathematician. As part of my

researches for this paper, furthermore, a student of considerable talent has recently honored me

with an impressive analysis of the art of amassing “partial credits” on examinations in advanced

physics. Though beyond me in some respects, his presentation confirmed my impression that

instructors of Physics frequently honor on examinations operations structurally similar to those

requisite in a good essay.

The very qualities that make the Natural Sciences fields of delight for the eager gamesman

have been essential to their marvelous fertility.


III

As priests of these mysteries, how can we make our rites more precisely expressive? The

student who merely cows robs himself, without knowing it, of his education and his soul. The

student who only bulls robs himself, as he knows full well, of the joys of inductive discovery—

that is, of engagement. The introduction of frames of reference in the new curricula of

Mathematics and Physics in the schools is a hopeful experiment. We do not know yet how much

of these potent revelations the very young can stand, but I suspect they may rejoice in them more

than we have supposed. I can‟t believe they have never wondered about Leif Ericson and that

word “discovered,” or even about 1492. They have simply been too wise to inquire.

Increasingly in recent years better students in the better high schools and preparatory

schools are being allowed to inquire. In fact they appear to be receiving both encouragement and

training in their inquiry. I have the evidence before me.

Each year for the past five years all freshmen entering Harvard and Radcliffe have been

asked in freshman week to “grade” two essays answering an examination question in History.

They are then asked to give their reasons for their grades. One essay, filled with dates, is 99%

cow. The other, with hardly a date in it, is a good essay, easily mistaken for bull. The “official”

grades of these essays are, for the first (alas!) C+ “because he has worked so hard,” and for the

second (soundly, I think) B+. Each year a larger majority of freshmen evaluate these essays as

would the majority of the faculty, and for the faculty‟s reasons, and each year a smaller minority

give the higher honor to the essay offering data alone. Most interesting, a larger number of

students each year, while not over-rating the second essay, award the first the straight E

appropriate to it in a college of liberal arts.

For us who must grade such students in a university, these developments imply a new

urgency, did we not feel it already. Through our grades we describe for the students, in the

showdown, what we believe about the nature of knowledge. The subtleties of bull are not

peripheral to our academic concerns. That they penetrate to the center of our care is evident in our

feelings when a student whose good work we have awarded a high grade reveals to us that he

does not feel he deserves it. Whether he disqualifies himself because “there‟s too much bull in it,”

or worse because “I really don‟t think I‟ve worked that hard,” he presents a serious educational

problem. Many students feel this sleaziness; only a few reveal it to us.

We can hardly allow a mistaken sense of fraudulence to undermine our students‟

achievements. We must lead students beyond their concept of bull so that they may honor

relevancies that are really relevant. We can willingly acknowledge that, in lieu of the date 1492, a

consideration of calendars and of the word “discovered,” may well be offered with intent to

deceive. We must insist that this does not make such considerations intrinsically immoral, and

that, contrariwise, the date 1492 may be no substitute for them. Most of all, we must convey the

impression that we grade understanding qua understanding. To be convincing, I suppose we must

concede to ourselves in advance that a bright student‟s understanding is understanding even if he

achieved it by osmosis rather than by hard work in our course.

These are delicate matters. As for cow, its complexities are not what need concern us.

Unlike good bull, it does not represent partial knowledge at all. It belongs to a different theory of

knowledge entirely. In our theories of knowledge it represents total ignorance, or worse yet, a


knowledge downright inimical to understanding. I even go so far as to propose that we award no

more C‟s for cow. To do so is rarely, I feel, the act of mercy it seems. Mercy lies in clarity.

The reader may be afflicted by a lingering curiosity about the fate of Mr. Metzger. I hasten

to reassure him. The Administrative Board of Harvard College, whatever its satanic reputation, is

a benign body. Its members, to be sure, were on the spot. They delighted in Metzger‟s exploit, but

they were responsible to the Faculty‟s rule. The hero stood in danger of probation. The debate

was painful. Suddenly one member, of a refined legalistic sensibility, observed that the rule

applied specifically to “examinations” and that the occasion had been simply an hour-test. Mr.

Metzger was merely “admonished.”

icomachean Ethics

by Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) is universally acknowledged as one of the

greatest philosophers of all time. Considered the “Father of Western

Thought,” Aristotle’s ideas, insights, and methods are still actively

studied today. Having originally learned philosophy from Plato, Aristotle

later opened his own school dedicated to the continual analysis and

improvement of thought. He wrote extensively about science, ethics,

philosophy, literature, and politics. “Nicomachean Ethics” was originally

written about 350 BCE.

1

irtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main

owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time),

while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is one that is

formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the

moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to

its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to

move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire

be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be

trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in

us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later

exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or often

hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did

not come to have them by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also

happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we

learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so

too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave

acts.

This is confirmed by what happens in states; for legislators make the citizens good by

forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it

miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced

and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-

N

V

Nicomachean Ethics 6

players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men

will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there

would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their

craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions

with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of

danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same

is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others

self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances.

Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we

exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences

between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of

another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.

2

Since, then, the present inquiry does not aim at theoretical knowledge like the others (for

we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise

our inquiry would have been of no use), we must examine the nature of actions, namely how we

ought to do them; for these determine also the nature of the states of character that are produced,

as we have said. Now, that we must act according to the right rule is a common principle and

must be assumed-it will be discussed later, i.e. both what the right rule is, and how it is related to

the other virtues. But this must be agreed upon beforehand, that the whole account of matters of

conduct must be given in outline and not precisely, as we said at the very beginning that the

accounts we demand must be in accordance with the subject-matter; matters concerned with

conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The

general account being of this nature, the account of particular cases is yet more lacking in

exactness; for they do not fall under any art or precept but the agents themselves must in each

case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of

navigation.

But though our present account is of this nature we must give what help we can. First, then,

let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we

see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the

evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and

similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that

which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case

of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from and fears everything

and does not stand his ground against anything becomes a coward, and the man who fears nothing

at all but goes to meet every danger becomes rash; and similarly the man who indulges in every

pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the man who shuns every

pleasure, as boors do, becomes in a way insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed

by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.

But not only are the sources and causes of their origination and growth the same as those of

their destruction, but also the sphere of their actualization will be the same; for this is also true of

the things which are more evident to sense, e.g. of strength; it is produced by taking much food


and undergoing much exertion, and it is the strong man that will be most able to do these things.

So too is it with the virtues; by abstaining from pleasures we become temperate, and it is when

we have become so that we are most able to abstain from them; and similarly too in the case of

courage; for by being habituated to despise things that are terrible and to stand our ground against

them we become brave, and it is when we have become so that we shall be most able to stand our

ground against them.

3

We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts; for the

man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man

who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent, and he who stands his ground against things that are terrible

and delights in this or at least is not pained is brave, while the man who is pained is a coward. For

moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we

do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to

have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight

in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education.

Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and every passion and every

action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with

pleasures and pains. This is indicated also by the fact that punishment is inflicted by these means;

for it is a kind of cure, and it is the nature of cures to be effected by contraries.

Again, as we said but lately, every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with

the kind of things by which it tends to be made worse or better; but it is by reason of pleasures

and pains that men become bad, by pursuing and avoiding these—either the pleasures and pains

they ought not or when they ought not or as they ought not, or by going wrong in one of the other

similar ways that may be distinguished. Hence men even define the virtues as certain states of

impassivity and rest; not well, however, because they speak absolutely, and do not say ‘as one

ought’ and ‘as one ought not’ and ‘when one ought or ought not’, and the other things that may be

added. We assume, then, that this kind of excellence tends to do what is best with regard to

pleasures and pains, and vice does the contrary.

The following facts also may show us that virtue and vice are concerned with these same

things. There being three objects of choice and three of avoidance, the noble, the advantageous,

the pleasant, and their contraries, the base, the injurious, the painful, about all of these the good

man tends to go right and the bad man to go wrong, and especially about pleasure; for this is

common to the animals, and also it accompanies all objects of choice; for even the noble and the

advantageous appear pleasant.

Again, it has grown up with us all from our infancy; this is why it is difficult to rub off this

passion, engrained as it is in our life. And we measure even our actions, some of us more and

others less, by the rule of pleasure and pain. For this reason, then, our whole inquiry must be

about these; for to feel delight and pain rightly or wrongly has no small effect on our actions.

Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus’ phrase, but both

art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder; for even the good is better when it is

harder. Therefore for this reason also the whole concern both of virtue and of political science is


with pleasures and pains; for the man who uses these well will be good, he who uses them badly

bad.

That virtue, then, is concerned with pleasures and pains, and that by the acts from which it

arises it is both increased and, if they are done differently, destroyed, and that the acts from which

it arose are those in which it actualizes itself—let this be taken as said.

4

The question might be asked; what we mean by saying that we must become just by doing

just acts, and temperate by doing temperate acts; for if men do just and temperate acts, they are

already just and temperate, exactly as, if they do what is in accordance with the laws of grammar

and of music, they are grammarians and musicians.

Or is this not true even of the arts? It is possible to do something that is in accordance with

the laws of grammar, either by chance or at the suggestion of another. A man will be a

grammarian, then, only when he has both done something grammatical and done it

grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance with the grammatical knowledge in himself.

Again, the case of the arts and that of the virtues are not similar; for the products of the arts

have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character,

but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does

not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition

when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts,

and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and

unchangeable character. These are not reckoned in as conditions of the possession of the arts,

except the bare knowledge; but as a condition of the possession of the virtues knowledge has little

or no weight, while the other conditions count not for a little but for everything, i.e. the very

conditions which result from often doing just and temperate acts.

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate

man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who

also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts

that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing

these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being

philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen

attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not

be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by

such a course of philosophy.

5

Next we must consider what virtue is. Since things that are found in the soul are of three

kinds—passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean

appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and

in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in virtue

of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, e.g. of becoming angry or being pained or


feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with

reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too

weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions.

Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad

on the ground of our passions, but are so called on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and

because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is

not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain

way), but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed.

Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are modes of choice or

involve choice. Further, in respect of the passions we are said to be moved, but in respect of the

virtues and the vices we are said not to be moved but to be disposed in a particular way.

For these reasons also they are not faculties; for we are neither called good nor bad, nor

praised nor blamed, for the simple capacity of feeling the passions; again, we have the faculties

by nature, but we are not made good or bad by nature; we have spoken of this before. If, then, the

virtues are neither passions nor faculties, all that remains is that they should be states of character.

Thus we have stated what virtue is in respect of its genus.

6

We must, however, not only describe virtue as a state of character, but also say what sort of

state it is. We may remark, then, that every virtue or excellence both brings into good condition

the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well; e.g. the

excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the excellence of the eye

that we see well. Similarly the excellence of the horse makes a horse both good in itself and good

at running and at carrying its rider and at awaiting the attack of the enemy. Therefore, if this is

true in every case, the virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good

and which makes him do his own work well.

How this is to happen we have stated already, but it will be made plain also by the

following consideration of the specific nature of virtue. In everything that is continuous and

divisible it is possible to take more, less, or an equal amount, and that either in terms of the thing

itself or relatively to us; and the equal is an intermediate between excess and defect. By the

intermediate in the object I mean that which is equidistant from each of the extremes, which is

one and the same for all men; by the intermediate relatively to us that which is neither too much

nor too little—and this is not one, nor the same for all. For instance, if ten is many and two is few,

six is the intermediate, taken in terms of the object; for it exceeds and is exceeded by an equal

amount; this is intermediate according to arithmetical proportion. But the intermediate relatively

to us is not to be taken so; if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too

little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for

the person who is to take it, or too little—too little for Milo, too much for the beginner in athletic

exercises. The same is true of running and wrestling. Thus a master of any art avoids excess and

defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this—the intermediate not in the object but

relatively to us.


If it is thus, then, that every art does its work well—by looking to the intermediate and

judging its works by this standard (so that we often say of good works of art that it is not possible

either to take away or to add anything, implying that excess and defect destroy the goodness of

works of art, while the mean preserves it; and good artists, as we say, look to this in their work),

and if, further, virtue is more exact and better than any art, as nature also is, then virtue must have

the quality of aiming at the intermediate. I mean moral virtue; for it is this that is concerned with

passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both

fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt

both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with

reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right

way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. Similarly with

regard to actions also there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. Now virtue is concerned with

passions and actions, in which excess is a form of failure, and so is defect, while the intermediate

is praised and is a form of success; and being praised and being successful are both characteristics

of virtue. Therefore virtue is a kind of mean, since, as we have seen, it aims at what is

intermediate.

Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited, as

the Pythagoreans conjectured, and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only

in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to

hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the

mean of virtue;

For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean

relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the

man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which

depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices

respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both

finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition

which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.

But not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for some have names that already

imply badness, e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft, murder;

for all of these and suchlike things imply by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the

excesses or deficiencies of them. It is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them; one

must always be wrong. Nor does goodness or badness with regard to such things depend on

committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, but simply to

do any of them is to go wrong. It would be equally absurd, then, to expect that in unjust,

cowardly, and voluptuous action there should be a mean, an excess, and a deficiency; for at that

rate there would be a mean of excess and of deficiency, an excess of excess, and a deficiency of

deficiency. But as there is no excess and deficiency of temperance and courage because what is

intermediate is in a sense an extreme, so too of the actions we have mentioned there is no mean

nor any excess and deficiency, but however they are done they are wrong; for in general there is

neither a mean of excess and deficiency, nor excess and deficiency of a mean.


7

We must, however, not only make this general statement, but also apply it to the individual

facts. For among statements about conduct those which are general apply more widely, but those

which are particular are more genuine, since conduct has to do with individual cases, and our

statements must harmonize with the facts in these cases. We may take these cases from our table.

With regard to feelings of fear and confidence courage is the mean; of the people who exceed, he

who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (many of the states have no name), while the man who

exceeds in confidence is rash, and he who exceeds in fear and falls short in confidence is a

coward. With regard to pleasures and pains—not all of them, and not so much with regard to the

pains—the mean is temperance, the excess self-indulgence. Persons deficient with regard to the

pleasures are not often found; hence such persons also have received no name. But let us call

them ‘insensible’.

With regard to giving and taking of money the mean is liberality, the excess and the defect

prodigality and meanness. In these actions people exceed and fall short in contrary ways; the

prodigal exceeds in spending and falls short in taking, while the mean man exceeds in taking and

falls short in spending. (At present we are giving a mere outline or summary, and are satisfied

with this; later these states will be more exactly determined.) With regard to money there are also

other dispositions—a mean, magnificence (for the magnificent man differs from the liberal man;

the former deals with large sums, the latter with small ones), an excess, tastelessness and

vulgarity, and a deficiency, niggardliness; these differ from the states opposed to liberality, and

the mode of their difference will be stated later. With regard to honour and dishonour the mean is

proper pride, the excess is known as a sort of ‘empty vanity’, and the deficiency is undue

humility; and as we said liberality was related to magnificence, differing from it by dealing with

small sums, so there is a state similarly related to proper pride, being concerned with small

honours while that is concerned with great. For it is possible to desire honour as one ought, and

more than one ought, and less, and the man who exceeds in his desires is called ambitious, the

man who falls short unambitious, while the intermediate person has no name. The dispositions

also are nameless, except that that of the ambitious man is called ambition. Hence the people who

are at the extremes lay claim to the middle place; and we ourselves sometimes call the

intermediate person ambitious and sometimes unambitious, and sometimes praise the ambitious

man and sometimes the unambitious. The reason of our doing this will be stated in what follows;

but now let us speak of the remaining states according to the method which has been indicated.

With regard to anger also there is an excess, a deficiency, and a mean. Although they can

scarcely be said to have names, yet since we call the intermediate person good-tempered let us

call the mean good temper; of the persons at the extremes let the one who exceeds be called

irascible, and his vice irascibility, and the man who falls short an inirascible sort of person, and

the deficiency inirascibility.

There are also three other means, which have a certain likeness to one another, but differ

from one another: for they are all concerned with intercourse in words and actions, but differ in

that one is concerned with truth in this sphere, the other two with pleasantness; and of this one

kind is exhibited in giving amusement, the other in all the circumstances of life. We must

therefore speak of these too, that we may the better see that in all things the mean is praise-

worthy, and the extremes neither praiseworthy nor right, but worthy of blame. Now most of these


states also have no names, but we must try, as in the other cases, to invent names ourselves so that

we may be clear and easy to follow. With regard to truth, then, the intermediate is a truthful sort

of person and the mean may be called truthfulness, while the pretence which exaggerates is

boastfulness and the person characterized by it a boaster, and that which understates is mock

modesty and the person characterized by it mock-modest. With regard to pleasantness in the

giving of amusement the intermediate person is ready-witted and the disposition ready wit, the

excess is buffoonery and the person characterized by it a buffoon, while the man who falls short

is a sort of boor and his state is boorishness. With regard to the remaining kind of pleasantness,

that which is exhibited in life in general, the man who is pleasant in the right way is friendly and

the mean is friendliness, while the man who exceeds is an obsequious person if he has no end in

view, a flatterer if he is aiming at his own advantage, and the man who falls short and is

unpleasant in all circumstances is a quarrelsome and surly sort of person.

There are also means in the passions and concerned with the passions; since shame is not a

virtue, and yet praise is extended to the modest man. For even in these matters one man is said to

be intermediate, and another to exceed, as for instance the bashful man who is ashamed of

everything; while he who falls short or is not ashamed of anything at all is shameless, and the

intermediate person is modest. Righteous indignation is a mean between envy and spite, and these

states are concerned with the pain and pleasure that are felt at the fortunes of our neighbours; the

man who is characterized by righteous indignation is pained at undeserved good fortune, the

envious man, going beyond him, is pained at all good fortune, and the spiteful man falls so far

short of being pained that he even rejoices. But these states there will be an opportunity of

describing elsewhere; with regard to justice, since it has not one simple meaning, we shall, after

describing the other states, distinguish its two kinds and say how each of them is a mean; and

similarly we shall treat also of the rational virtues.

8

There are three kinds of disposition, then, two of them vices, involving excess and

deficiency respectively, and one a virtue, viz. the mean, and all are in a sense opposed to all; for

the extreme states are contrary both to the intermediate state and to each other, and the

intermediate to the extremes; as the equal is greater relatively to the less, less relatively to the

greater, so the middle states are excessive relatively to the deficiencies, deficient relatively to the

excesses, both in passions and in actions. For the brave man appears rash relatively to the coward,

and cowardly relatively to the rash man; and similarly the temperate man appears self-indulgent

relatively to the insensible man, insensible relatively to the self-indulgent, and the liberal man

prodigal relatively to the mean man, mean relatively to the prodigal. Hence also the people at the

extremes push the intermediate man each over to the other, and the brave man is called rash by

the coward, cowardly by the rash man, and correspondingly in the other cases.

These states being thus opposed to one another, the greatest contrariety is that of the

extremes to each other, rather than to the intermediate; for these are further from each other than

from the intermediate, as the great is further from the small and the small from the great than both

are from the equal. Again, to the intermediate some extremes show a certain likeness, as that of

rashness to courage and that of prodigality to liberality; but the extremes show the greatest


unlikeness to each other; now contraries are defined as the things that are furthest from each

other, so that things that are further apart are more contrary.

To the mean in some cases the deficiency, in some the excess is more opposed; e.g. it is not

rashness, which is an excess, but cowardice, which is a deficiency, that is more opposed to

courage, and not insensibility, which is a deficiency, but self-indulgence, which is an excess, that

is more opposed to temperance. This happens from two reasons, one being drawn from the thing

itself; for because one extreme is nearer and liker to the intermediate, we oppose not this but

rather its contrary to the intermediate, e.g. since rashness is thought liker and nearer to courage,

and cowardice more unlike, we oppose rather the latter to courage; for things that are further from

the intermediate are thought more contrary to it. This, then, is one cause, drawn from the thing

itself; another is drawn from ourselves; for the things to which we ourselves more naturally tend

seem more contrary to the intermediate. For instance, we ourselves tend more naturally to

pleasures, and hence are more easily carried away towards self-indulgence than towards

propriety. We describe as contrary to the mean, then, rather the directions in which we more often

go to great lengths; and therefore self-indulgence, which is an excess, is the more contrary to

temperance.

9

That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is so, and that it is a mean between

two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because its character

is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, has been sufficiently stated. Hence

also it is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to

find the middle of a circle is not for every one but for him who knows; so, too, any one can get

angry—that is easy—or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right

extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor

is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.

Hence he who aims at the intermediate must first depart from what is the more contrary to

it, as Calypso advises—

Hold the ship out beyond that surf and spray.

For of the extremes one is more erroneous, one less so; therefore, since to hit the mean is

hard in the extreme, we must as a second best, as people say, take the least of the evils; and this

will be done best in the way we describe. But we must consider the things towards which we

ourselves also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one thing, some to another; and this

will be recognizable from the pleasure and the pain we feel. We must drag ourselves away to the

contrary extreme; for we shall get into the intermediate state by drawing well away from error, as

people do in straightening sticks that are bent.

Now in everything the pleasant or pleasure is most to be guarded against; for we do not

judge it impartially. We ought, then, to feel towards pleasure as the elders of the people felt

towards Helen, and in all circumstances repeat their saying; for if we dismiss pleasure thus we are

less likely to go astray. It is by doing this, then, (to sum the matter up) that we shall best be able

to hit the mean.


But this is no doubt difficult, and especially in individual cases; for or is not easy to

determine both how and with whom and on what provocation and how long one should be angry;

for we too sometimes praise those who fall short and call them good-tempered, but sometimes we

praise those who get angry and call them manly. The man, however, who deviates little from

goodness is not blamed, whether he do so in the direction of the more or of the less, but only the

man who deviates more widely; for he does not fail to be noticed. But up to what point and to

what extent a man must deviate before he becomes blameworthy it is not easy to determine by

reasoning, any more than anything else that is perceived by the senses; such things depend on

particular facts, and the decision rests with perception. So much, then, is plain, that the

intermediate state is in all things to be praised, but that we must incline sometimes towards the

excess, sometimes towards the deficiency; for so shall we most easily hit the mean and what is

right.

nlocking the Sacred Text

by Marilyn Arnold

Marilyn Arnold is an emeritus professor of English at BYU, where she also

served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Director of the Center for the

Study of Christian Values in Literature. She earned a PhD in American

literature from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and established

herself as a preeminent scholar. In recent years, Arnold has published

several novels and essays. “Unlocking the Sacred Text” was first published

in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, and later anthologized in

Expressions of Faith: Testimonies of Latter-day Saint Scholars (1996).

nlike the Scientist of faith, who studies the work of the Creator every time he or she

enters the laboratory or the field, the English teacher studies the product of the human mind,

relentlessly pursuing meaning and delight in the written word. To the onlooker there may seem to

be little connection between literary studies and religious faith; but to me there is an almost

inseparable bond. In fact, it was not until I began to read sacred texts with the skills I had

acquired in studying nonsacred texts that the eyes of my understanding truly began to open. Most

assuredly, my training in literary analysis has enhanced my reading of scripture and my testimony

of its divine origin.

Of the many hundreds of texts I have read, none has touched me more profoundly than the

Book of Mormon. Without question, it is the greatest book I have ever encountered. The near-

perfect blend of poetry and truth is, in my view, simply unequaled. I confess, however, that I have

not always appreciated its greatness, and for too many years my reading was sporadic and merely

dutiful. I knew that the Book of Mormon contained some splendid passages, but as a whole it had

not grabbed me and shaken me into a realization of its unparalleled magnificence. Three things

transformed the book for me, though it was not I that changed the book, but the book that

changed me. The first transforming event was my decision to read the Book of Mormon in

earnest, from cover to cover, investing the same concentrated energy that I would accord a

complex and masterful literary text. The second transforming event grew out of the first; it was

the decisive entrance of the Spirit into my study of the book, and hence into my life, with

unprecedented intensity and constancy. The third transforming event also great out of the first; it

was the prayerful desire to experience the great change of heart described by King Benjamin and

Alma, to be more than an “active Mormon,” to be spiritually born as a child of Christ.

U

U

Unlocking the Sacred Text 16

These three events, in concert, permanently transformed my inner life. They implanted in

my soul an indescribable love of the Book of Mormon, of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and of his

church. At the time this change was occurring, my friends may have recognized the same lengthy

frame and the same silly grin they had always known, but I knew I was not the person they had

charitably tolerated all those years. It was as if I harbored a sweet secret that I was too shy to talk

about. I now wanted desperately to live more purely, to correct my innumerable character flaws,

to abandon my sins. What happened to me during that period of intense study, prayer, and self-

assessment remains with me still.

Since that time, I have undertaken a yet more concentrated study of the Book of Mormon,

and with each reading it almost magically expands to meet my increased ability to comprehend it.

Truly, this is no ordinary book, and I am grateful that the practice of literary analysis, though

anything but an exact science, has given me useful tools in the study of sacred texts. Then, too,

the Book of Mormon has its parallels with good fiction, for both contain narratives that offer

insight into human experience. And while fiction is not true in a literal sense, it can most surely

be true in an absolute sense. But the Book of Mormon is much more than fiction, for it is

factually true as well as philosophically and morally true. The Book of Mormon is more than

history, too.

All readers, specialists or not, have much in common, and like most, I am drawn to great

texts out of love. Consequently, emotion, positive or negative, to some extent shapes my reading

and accompanies my objective responses to the written word. We should not be embarrassed by

an emotional response to genuine greatness. The emotion that overwhelms me when I read an

exceptional text like the Book of Mormon bears no resemblance to the cheap tears that are the

stock in trade of tasteless popular literature. Such tears are induced by shallow notions,

stereotypical characters, and shopworn images rather than by truth and artistry. Countless years of

studying written texts have, I hope, fixed in me some small ability to distinguish between the

good and the bad, the true and the false, the genuine and the spurious, the original and the

imitative. When I read a book, I no longer have to ask with Hamlet, “Is this an honest ghost?”

In my experience, the first few pages of a book are critical; if a book is deceitful, its

opening pages will betray it. I challenge anyone to apply that test to the Book of Mormon. Can an

honest reader of the following lines doubt that Nephi is who he says he is and that he writes what

he knows to be absolute truth?

I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, … and having seen many afflictions in

the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days;

yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I

make a record of my proceedings in my days ….

And I know that the record which I make is true; and I make it with mine own hand;

and I make it according to my knowledge. (1 Nephi 1:1, 3)

Nephi’s forthrightness is apparent in every line. He opens by naming himself, paying

homage to his parents and his God, and bearing testimony about his record. Thus, we learn

immediately that the narrative voice belongs to someone who is candid, respectful, dutiful, and

grateful, someone who is likely to cut a very straight course. No hedging, no circumventing, no

embroidering the truth. In fact, the very structure of verse three projects Nephi’s sincerity through

the use of three sturdy parallel clauses, all beginning with the words “And I” followed by a single


syllable verb “And I Know,” “and I make,” “and I make.” That same sincerity is also conveyed

through word repetition. The first sentence contains a subordinate clause that introduces the

words “I make,” words that Nephi deliberately repeats in the two independent clauses that follow.

Nephi’s prompt self-introduction takes on added significance, too, as we come to realize that

throughout the Book of Mormon the Lord and his servants almost invariably announce who they

are, while Satan and his servants rarely do. The honest have nothing to hide; the devious have

everything to hide. By immediately announcing his identity and fealty, therefore, Nephi serves

reliable notice that he is who he says he is and that he intends to prepare a true record.

Although I consider other factors, my preference in approaching a text is to appraise its

value by examining the internal evidence the text itself presents. History, biography, critical

theory, and literary fashion are all legitimate and interesting doors through which to enter and

interpret a piece of literature. But to limit analysis to one or more of those approaches is, I think,

to remain in the foyer rather than to enter the living quarters of the work. It is to assess, merely,

and never possess. Whatever frustrations the Book of Mormon presents to the historian or the

anthropologist, it lends itself particularly well to my brand of close textual reading. In fact,

external information about the record’s creation and its cultural setting is so sparse that the words

on the page are very nearly the reader’s only tangible resource. Except for concurrent biblical

history and archaeological findings in Mesoamerica, we are largely ignorant of the world that

engendered the Book of Mormon.

Coincidentally, because the Book of Mormon arrives with so few cultural trappings, the

diligent, spiritually attuned seeker can study and appreciate it with no specialized academic

preparation for the task, no extensive historical background, and no external biographical data.

Even so, I regard it as a great personal blessing that my formal training is of the sort that adds

significantly to my study of the Book of Mormon. Possibly I “see more” because I am trained to

see more. Most certainly, the Spirit finds me a readier pupil than I might otherwise have been.

Perhaps I can illustrate briefly how my academic preparation translates into “seeing.”

Obviously, even inexperienced readers of the Book of Mormon readily perceive the opposition

between Nephi and his brothers Laman and Lemuel because the narrative openly and repeatedly

alludes to it. But while many readers might overlook the conflict’s deeper significance, I see in

this wrenching polarization a striking proof of Lehi’s powerful discourse on the necessity of

opposition in all things. Furthermore, readers might not notice the aptness in the positioning of

Lehi’s discourse; it is delivered in the patriarchal blessing pronounced upon Jacob, a younger son

who has painfully witnessed firsthand the opposition between Nephi and his older brothers.

Indeed Jacob’s whole existence has been marked by opposition; I think Lehi wants him to

understand that, despite its concomitant pain, opposition makes possible the exercise of agency

and is therefore a vital aspect of the plan of salvation.

As if echoing itself, but in much subtler tones, the text also reveals a contrast (though not a

conflict) between Nephi and Jacob, thereby creating a kind of benign subtext on the theme of

opposition. Although Jacob is gifted in language and solid in his testimony, to me he seems

unusually tender, even a bit fragile, in his emotional makeup. Clearly, Jacob is no Nephi, nor

need he be, but in a written text, as in life, he can serve as a complementary foil to his physically

and spiritually imposing brother. Just who is this Jacob? One of the consummate pleasures of

studying literature is the discovery of character. Whereas in real life, the essential person, the


inner self, is carefully hidden from public gaze, in literature the very soul of a character can be

opened, exposing a multitude of buried thoughts and anxieties. Jacob is a case in point. We often

rush past Jacob because his hour on the stage is short and because Nephi quite naturally

overshadows his more reticent younger brother. But under scrutiny the text actually reveals more

than a little about Jacob.

Although Nephi’s narrative is many times the length of Jacob’s, we seldom see Nephi’s

inner self, the individual behind the courageous and faithful son, the undaunted prophet and the

mighty leader. As narrator, he selects what will be told, and he chooses not to include his own

sermons to his people or much personal musing. A notable exception, of course, is the lovely

“psalm” that comprises verses 16-35 of 2 Nephi 4. But even then, Nephi formalizes the

expression and distances himself from self-revelation by employing the overly personal, but

rhetorically impersonal, frame of the psalm. Conversely, the textual imprints of Jacob’s character,

and their replication in the hidden chambers of our own souls, are readily described by the alert

eye.

Any consideration of Jacob must take into account the matter of Nephi’s influence. In

literary studies, giants like Shakespeare can be seen as massive watersheds of influence, changing

what successive writers do ever afterward. As southern fictionist Flannery O’Connor wryly

observed, “The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the

writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the

same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.”1 Nephi is just this sort of irrepressible human

locomotive, and Jacob is sure to measure himself against Nephi and his achievement. Jacob

himself is dutiful and conscientious in the extreme, but to what extent is that aspect of his

character attributable to the presence and the enduring expectations of Nephi? Furthermore, does

Nephi’s death leave Jacob feeling abandoned and inadequate to the task ahead? More pronounced

still is the distinct strain of melancholy that stamps Jacob’s character, but it probably derives from

another source. Consider this: Jacob was born in the wilderness and transported as a youngster on

a long and arduous sea voyage, a voyage filled with terrifying cosmic and family tumult and

ending in a strange, seemingly uninhabited land. And unlike his older brothers, who at least had

roots and memory in civilized society, Jacob lived under the menace of bitter conflict and

imminent annihilation most of his life.

The text does not make an issue of Jacob’s suffering, but it provides enough indicators to

offer a window into his character. For instance, Lehi shows his awareness of Jacob’s situation and

nature when he begins Jacob’s patriarchal blessing with these words: “And now, Jacob, .… Thou

art my first-born in the days of my tribulation in the wilderness. And behold, in thy childhood

thou hast suffered afflictions and much sorrow, because of the rudeness of thy brethren” (2 Nephi

2:1). Earlier, at sea, when Laman’s and Lemuel’s brutality toward Nephi heaps agony on the

heads of Lehi and Sariah, the record notes that “Jacob and Joseph also, being young, having need

of much nourishment, were grieved because of the afflictions of their mother” (1 Nephi 18:19).

It appears from the text, too, that conflict and grief have engendered in Jacob an intense

empathy toward the suffering of others. Jacob’s compassion is particularly evident in an

emotional sermon he delivers after Nephi’s death, a sermon quite different in tone and content

from the earlier one recorded by Nephi (see 2 Nephi 6-10). In the later sermon, although painfully

reluctant to harrow the already injured feelings of the women and children in the congregation,


Jacob chastises the Nephite men for marital infidelity. Their wives and children, and others too,

he declares, have come to hear the word of God, but will instead “have daggers placed to pierce

their souls and wound their delicate minds” (Jacob 2:9). Jacob reiterates his concern in verse 35

of chapter 2, where he speaks of the “sobbing” of the broken hearts of the Nephite women and

children over their husbands’ and fathers’ iniquities. Indeed, he says, “many hearts died, pierced

with deep wounds.”

The sensitivity and compassion I see in Jacob seem almost to spring from the melancholy

begotten by exile and isolation. In public, and prior to Nephi’s death, Jacob tries to put a positive

cast on his people’s circumstances, but his statement nonetheless reveals a deep-seated sense of

their exile: “Let us … not hang down our heads, for we are not cast off; nevertheless, we have

been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord

has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea” (2 Nephi 10:20). In private,

speaking not to his people but to future generations, an older Jacob does not mask his feelings:

The time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a

dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem,

born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and

contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days. (Jacob 7:26)

To skim that passage and miss its tone of heartbreak, its revelation of Jacob’s character and

his perception of his circumstances, is to miss a rich opportunity for human understanding. Most

certainly Jacob, like Nephi, paid dearly for his faith. The text also affirms that he was beloved of

the Lord, for even when Nephi was alive, Jacob was visited by Christ and by angels. Moreover,

Jacob was first among the Nephites to learn—from an angel—that the name of the Holy One of

Israel would be Christ (see 2 Nephi 10:3). And anyone uninitiated to Jacob’s rhetorical gifts need

only study in detail the sermon fragment that Nephi elects to copy into his own chronicle.

My point is simply this: The Book of Mormon is an inspired text whose possibilities could

not be exhausted in a lifetime of study, much less a lifetime of pulling isolated passages for

Sunday lessons and talks. I am particularly blessed to be a student of literary texts, for my

academic pursuits have enriched, even prompted, my study of scripture. More than that, the Spirit

that sometimes illuminates sacred texts for me also seems to lend insight and discernment to my

reading of nonsacred texts. In all, the felicitous merging of these two important strands of my

study and my life has immeasurably increased my understanding and appreciation, not only of

books, but of the very essence of study and life.

Note

1.

Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, ed. Sally and Robert

Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), 45.

f Studies

by Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) earned his living primarily as a lawyer in

the courts of Queen Elizabeth and King James, eventually becoming the

Lord Chancellor of England. Additionally, he was a successful author,

influential philosopher, and early practitioner of the essay as a literary

genre. His works include Novum Organum (1620), a discussion of

empiricism as the basis of scientific reasoning, and The Advancement

of Learning (1605), a study of human knowledge. His short essay “Of

Studies” was written in 1597.

tudies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in

privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and

disposition of business. For expert men can execute and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one,

but the general counsels and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are

learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is

affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar. They perfect

nature, and are perfected by experience, for natural abilities are like natural plants that need

pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they

be bounded in by experience. Crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise

men use them, for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above

them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted,

nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to

be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only

in parts; others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence

and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others, but

that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books; else distilled

books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a

ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a

great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need

have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the

mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend.

O

S

hinking Straight

by M. Russell Ballard

Melvin Russell Ballard, Jr. (b. 1928) grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. As

a young man, he attended the University of Utah and served a mission to

England. Prior to his call as a full-time Church leader, Elder Ballard’s

career centered in automotive, real estate, and investment businesses.

Since 1985, he has been a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“Thinking Straight” is based on an address Elder Ballard delivered at

BYU on November 29, 1983, and later published in the New Era, March

1985.

n 1978 when I stood at this pulpit, I was impressed to talk to the students that were here

about the great role that lay ahead in their lives to become leaders in the Church in 1988. Many of

those students who sat where you are now sitting are out in the Church. I know of several who are

now serving as bishops of their wards. I know of many of the sisters who were sitting in the same

seats you occupy who are now serving as the presidents of their Relief Society or Primary or

Young Women program. So, I suppose when we talk to you about the realities that you will in

fact be the leaders of the Church in a few years, that we can demonstrate from past experience

that that truly is going to occur in your lives if you are ready.

In 1978 we had 950 stakes of the Church. Five and a half years later we have 1,450 stakes

of the Church. The Church is moving forward, it is growing, it is meeting its ongoing charge and

commission from the Lord to fill the whole earth. As more stakes are created, as more wards and

branches are created, the pressure bears down heavily for leaders who are prepared to administer

these units of the Church. You indeed will be the leaders in a few short years and beyond, of

course, as calls will come to you.

Having had the opportunity to see the Church in its operations worldwide over the past few

years and coming to the assignment of a General Authority from the business community, I have

had some interesting experiences which I have been able to reflect on. I have tried to isolate a

principle that, if understood and properly practiced, can help you be successful in your journey

through mortality. That principle I have felt to speak about is learning to think straight. I

recognize that all of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking that you wish you had studied

harder now that you anticipate final exams. I realize that sometimes some of you think that you

are thinking too much. But my charge to you this morning is to develop the skill and the

capability of thinking straight.

T

I

Thinking Straight 26

In my office I have a little plaque that reads, “Above all else, brethren, let us think

straight”—the last known words spoken by my grandfather Elder Melvin J. Ballard in mortality.

As I understand the circumstances, Grandfather, after a very grueling experience of preaching the

gospel all through the eastern part of the United States, drove his own car from New York to Salt

Lake City. When he came into the driveway at his home, he collapsed and was rushed to the LDS

Hospital and was found to have an acute case of leukemia. He never came out of the hospital. He

went in and out of coma, but as I have had it told to me by my father, who was there, Grandfather

pushed himself up on his elbows and looked into his hospital room as though he were addressing

a congregation or a group and said with clarity, “And above all else, brethren, let us think

straight.” I don’t go into my office any day of the week that I don’t see that, and I find that it

helps me a little bit.

How do we learn to think straight? The book of Proverbs has a little guide that might be

helpful: “Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise” (Proverbs 19:20). I

would suggest that straight thinking probably begins with careful listening. It seems to me that

those men I have associated with who have seemed to have the instinctive ability to think straight

are men who are very good listeners and are able to extract, as they receive counsel and

instruction, those principles that will be eternally important in their lives.

I would like to suggest that it is important to take the time to learn the facts. All the years

that I was in business a little sign on my desk read, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. My mind is

already made up.” Sometimes you can get locked into that kind of a thought process. I had it there

in order to stimulate thinking on the part of those who associated with me and emphasize that we

did indeed want to deal with the facts.

Fact finding sometimes requires patience, time, and very careful consideration. A friend of

the Church of years and years who has since passed away was a man by the name of Lord

Thomson of Fleet. At the age of 67, Lord Thomson started out to build a great empire, and in a

very short time the Thomson Enterprises consisted of 464 different independent businesses. It is

one of the most successful business ventures in the entire world. He wrote a book in the twilight

of his life and said these words about thinking:

“Let us be honest with ourselves and consider how averse we all are to [thinking]. Thinking

is work. . . . Sloppy and inconclusive thinking becomes a habit. The more one does it the

more one is unfitted to think a problem through to a proper conclusion” (After I Was Sixty,

London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975, p. 106).

We can learn to be careful, fact-filled thinkers, or we can become sloppy, inconclusive

thinkers. We are living in a world, in my opinion, which is crying out, perhaps like never before,

for sound, solid, well-groomed thinkers.

I would like to continue with a further statement of Lord Thomson:

“If I have any advice to pass on, as a successful man, it is this: if one wants to be successful,

one must think; one must think until it hurts. One must worry a problem in one’s mind until

it seems there cannot be another aspect of it that hasn’t been considered. Believe me, that is

hard work and from my close observation, I can say that there are few people indeed who

are prepared to perform this arduous and tiring work. But let me go further and assure you of


this: while, in the early stages, it is hard work and one must accept it as such, later one will

find that it is not so difficult, that the thinking apparatus has become trained; it is trained

even to do some of the thinking subconsciously. . . . The pressure that one had to use on

one’s poor brain in the early stages is no longer necessary; . . . one’s mental computer

arrives at decisions instantly or during a period when the brain seems to be resting. It is only

the rare and most complex problems that require the hard toil of protracted mental effort”

(p. 106).

In effect, what he is saying is that if we learn to make good decisions in our youth, we will build

up a bank account, “a bank of experience,” on which we can draw in later years, and decision

making will become less painful. You get to a point in life where problems that might almost

seem insurmountable to you today, when passed by someone as old as I am, seem relatively

simple. That is because we have thought and experienced and worked through some of these

problems.

There are those who become professional thinkers. I don’t want to encourage that. So that

you don’t misunderstand me, I would like to quote Brigham Young:

“Some think too much, and should labor more. Others labor too much, and should think

more, and thus maintain an equilibrium between the mental and physical members of the

individual; then you will enjoy health and vigor, will be active, and ready to discern truly,

and judge quickly. Is it not your privilege to have discernment to circumscribe all things, no

matter what subject comes before you, and to at once know the truth concerning any

matter?” (Journal of Discourses, 3:248).

I have met in my lifetime men who should really be out in a productive setting who are still

studying. I think that there is a point at which you graduate and go on to the things that you want

to try to accomplish in life.

There will be a lot of things as you go through life that you are going to be concerned

about. Some of you are undoubtedly thinking about what it is you want to do with your life.

President Harold B. Lee gives some very good counsel to those of us who are thinking

about our futures.

“If there should come a problem as to what kind of business a man should be

engaged in, whether he should invest in this matter or that, whether he should marry this

girl or that one, where he should marry, and how he should marry-when it comes to the

prosecuting of the work to which we are assigned, how much more certainly will those

decisions be if always we recall that all we do, and all the decisions we make, should be

made with the eternal goal in mind: with an eye single to the ultimate glory of man in the

celestial world.

“If all our selfish motives, then, and all our personal desires and expediency would be

subordinated to the desire to know the will of the Lord, one could have the companionship

of heavenly vision. If our problems be too great for human intelligence or too much for

human strength, we too, if we are faithful and appeal rightly unto the source of divine

power, might have standing by us in our hour of peril or great need an angel of God. One

who lives thus worthy of a testimony that God lives and that Jesus is the Christ, and who is


willing to reach out to Him in constant inquiry to know if his course is approved, is the one

who is living life to its full abundance here and is preparing for the Celestial world, which

is to live eternally with his Heavenly Father” (Stand Ye In Holy Places, Salt Lake City:

Deseret Book Col, 1974, pp. 102-3).

Well then, if you learn to think straight, you can begin at any point where you are today and

apply some of these basic principles to help in the mighty and heavy responsibilities of life. And

if you are living righteously and worthily, in such a way that you can supplicate the Lord for

direction, according to President Lee, you can expect to have divine inspiration and direction.

I have a very good friend who was the chief executive officer and manager of a very large

corporation. The call came to him to preside over a mission, and like so many of our wonderful

men who have great skills and capabilities and responsibilities, when the call came from the Lord,

there was no question. He had thought enough through his life that it was instantaneous in his

thought process to accept the call. What was to happen to the business? What was to happen to

this great enterprise? Well, situations were worked out, and management was worked out to the

best degree. But in three years lots of things can happen to a business when the guiding light is

not there to lead on a day to day basis. Ultimately, some of the assets of the company were sold.

But toward the end of the mission of this great man, an opportunity arose. Within days after his

release, he was back in business with a program far bigger than anything he had before he was

called to be a mission president and is presently managing and, I believe, bringing about one of

the major corporations to be based in the state of Utah.

Now how did he do that? Well, I suppose by the mistakes he had learned through his life,

but most importantly he had learned to think straight so when this second opportunity came up it

was easier for him to define, to determine, to make decisions, and to move forward.

I would like to just share one more statement from Lord Thomson as it pertains to this

manner of thinking:

“It was at least partly due to my discovery over a fairly long period, but more than

ever during these latter years in Edinburgh and London, that experience was a very

important element in the management side of business and it was, of course, the one thing

that I had plenty of. I could go further and say that for management to be good it generally

must be experienced. [I’d like to pause for just a moment and ask you to think of the

implications of Mr. Thomson’s statement for Church leadership.] To be good at anything at

all requires a lot of practice. . . . The more one is exposed to the necessity of making

decisions, the better one’s decision-making becomes. . . .

“. . . I was entirely convinced that, through the years, in my brain as in a computer, I

had stored details of the problems themselves, the decisions reached and the results

obtained; everything was neatly filed away there for future use. Then, later, when a new

problem arose, I would think it over and, if the answer was not immediately apparent, I

would let it go for a while, and it was as if it went the rounds of the brain cells looking for

guidance that could be retrieved, for by next morning, when I examined the problem again,

more often than not the solution came up right away. That judgment seemed to be come to

almost unconsciously, and my conviction is that during the time I was not consciously


considering the problem, my subconscious had been turning it over and relating it to my

memory; it had been held up to the light of the experiences I had in the past years, and the

way through the difficulties became obvious. I am pretty sure that older men have had this

same evidence of the brain’s subconscious work.

“This makes it all very easy, you may say. But, of course, it doesn’t happen easily.

That bank of experience from which I was able to draw in the later years was not easily

funded” (pp. 104-5).

I would suggest to you that you are funding your bank. You are funding it in many different

ways. Some of you young women will become mothers, and maybe you will never work actively

in the field that you graduate in, but I’ll tell you that when those children come and climb on your

lap and start asking you some of the questions that children ask as they are trying to get through

grade school, junior high school, and high school, you will be grateful that you got this bank that

you are presently funding at school.

Now I would like to add one other dimension to this business of thinking. How do you

develop the inherent, native ability to have good judgment, just good common sense? As I look

about me and see men whom I admire, who I think are successful in their fields, most generally

they just know how to respond with good judgment and good common sense. Lord Chesterfield is

quoted as saying, “Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know

of: abide by it, it will counsel you beset” (in A New Dictionary of Quotations, ed. H. L. Mencken,

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942, p. 1084). Benjamin Franklin said, “Where sense is wanting,

everything is wanting” (in A New Dictionary of Quotations, p. 1084). Not using common sense

can be fatal. I don’t know the odds of this. Consider the pharmacist who was compounding a

prescription that called for as much strychnine as you could put on the face of a dime. He didn’t

have a dime so he used two nickels. We don’t need that kind of common sense, I could tell you

story after story after story here of those kinds of exercises of common sense and what I would

hope would happen in your thinking process as you study and try to become the very best you

can, that you learn to think straight with the foundation being the building of a bank from which

you can instinctively draw good judgment and common sense.

Now in all of this the Lord has given us some very wonderful counsel. That counsel is that

the problems of life-whether they be in business, government, society, or church-those problems

can best be solved by following this little formula that he gave to Oliver Cowdery in the ninth

section of the Doctrine and Covenants.

“Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you,

when you took no thought save it was to ask me.”

“But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must

ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you;

therefore, you shall feel that it is right” (Doctrine and Covenants 9:7-8).

Now you all know that, you have read it, you have quoted it to each other in your various

teaching relationships, and I call on you to practice it.

At the risk of having all of you lose your faith I am going to tell you a story about my own

life. When most of you were still in the spirit world, I signed an Edsel franchise with Ford Motor


Company. Some of you may not know what the Edsel was. The older brethren know that that was

probably the most disastrous national marketing mistake that was ever made in the United States.

Ford Motor Company had spent over two hundred million dollars pulling together an automobile.

Henry Ford II was then the president of Ford Motor Company. The car would carry his father’s

name. The promotion, the anticipation, the excitement were just unbelievable.

You could appreciate what it was like for me, being a relatively young businessman and

having all the power of Ford Motor Company being brought about to encourage me to become

the Edsel dealer for Salt Lake City. I wrestled with that. I said to my father, who was a great man

in my life, “Before I sign the franchise, I want to see the car.” They made a special arrangement

for us to fly to California to view the car. Now, I am wrestling about this, I’m talking to the Lord

about it, I’m asking for direction, it’s a big decision, it involves a lot of money, a lot of

commitment on my part. We walked in, my father and I, and saw that line of automobiles, and the

minute I saw them, I had the distinct impression not to go ahead with the franchise.

I got away from that circumstance, and then the powers started to work on me again,

influential sales techniques, all the promises of what this line of cars was going to do. It was

going to be the greatest thing that ever came into the automobile industry. And I allowed myself

to drift from that mooring. I had followed the counsel of the ninth section of the Doctrine and

Covenants, but I wavered from the impression that the Lord had given me, and I made the

decision to sign the franchise, then went through the torments of the damned, almost. If we had

more time, I could tell you that it’s not fun to lose a lot of money fast. And regardless of what I

did, I couldn’t stop it. Ultimately, the franchise was sold, and this was, I suppose, a learning

experience that causes me to now be able to sit down with just about anybody who wants to talk

about the automobile business and almost instinctively draw from that bank of experience over

those years and give pretty good counsel.

I think I can think straight when it comes to those kinds of things because of the things

which I suffered, and perhaps we need to understand that failure is part of life. We are not going

to be successful in everything we do, but we never need to fail to learn the lesson. We can place

in the bank of our memories and our existence those things that will cause us to become

increasingly more powerful and most importantly increasingly more helpful to the building of the

kingdom of God.

Well, we have so much that we look to you for, the youth of the Church. You just can’t

imagine the conversations that go on at the Church headquarters about you. We worry about you,

we pray for you. Not that we don’t trust you. That is not the case at all. We just want you to be

ready. We want you to be prepared. We want you to be able to think straight in a very crooked-

thinking world. There are many things going on all about us at almost every level—international,

national, local—that are going to require the soundest, the best, the most solid-thinking

generation that our Father in Heaven has ever raised. We believe you can be that generation. We

want to do our part as your leaders. We want to sustain you and to help you. We want you to

become the very best you.

I would asks our Heavenly Father to bless you with the instinctive desire to plead with him

in prayer that you might come to the point in your life that you are thinking straight. For straight


thinkers, my brothers and sisters, do not make serious mistakes in life. One who is thinking

straight does not have moral problems. One who is thinking straight really does not have

problems with the Word of Wisdom. He doesn’t have problems paying tithing. He doesn’t have

problems with being righteous and good.

As you build your bank while you are here at this great university, be willing to struggle,

and really struggle if necessary, and ask your Heavenly Father to bless you to be a good thinker, a

straight thinker. Then when you are called upon to be the bishop of your ward or to be a member

of the high council of the stake or to be the president of your elders quorum or to preside over the

Relief Society or the Primary or the Young Women organization, you will be able to bless those

who will look to you for leadership.

God bless you then to struggle with this, make it part of you, that you will be the great

source and the great power for the building of the Church in the future. I leave my witness and

testimony with you that I know that Jesus is the Christ, this is his Church, he does preside over it,

and we are on his errand. I leave this testimony humbly in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

amen.

earning to Love Learning

by David A. Bednar

David A. Bednar (b. 1952) received both a BA in communications and an

MA in organizational communication from Brigham Young University. He

then earned a PhD in organizational behavior at Purdue University and

later taught management in the College of Business Administration at the

University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He served as President of BYU-

Idaho before being ordained an apostle in April 2004. “Learning to Love

Learning,” a talk presented at BYU, April 2008, was later adapted for

publication in the February 2010 issue of the Ensign.

earning to love learning is central to the gospel of Jesus Christ, is vital to our ongoing

spiritual and personal development, and is an absolute necessity in the world in which we do now

and will yet live, serve, and work. I want to briefly discuss the importance of learning to love

learning in three aspects of our lives.

Learning to Love Learning Is Central to

the Gospel of Jesus Christ

The overarching purpose of Heavenly Father’s great plan of happiness is to provide His

spirit children with opportunities to learn. The Atonement of Jesus Christ and the agency afforded

to all of the Father’s children through the Redeemer’s infinite and eternal sacrifice are divinely

designed to facilitate our learning. The Savior said, ―Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in

the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me‖ (D&C 19:23).

We are assisted in learning of and listening to the words of Christ by the Holy Ghost, even

the third member of the Godhead. The Holy Ghost reveals and witnesses the truth of all things

and brings all things to our remembrance (see John 14:26, 16:13; Moroni 10:5; D&C 39:6). The

Holy Ghost is the teacher who kindles within us an abiding love of and for learning.

We repeatedly are admonished in the revelations to ask in faith when we lack knowledge

(see James 1:5–6), to ―seek learning, even by study and also by faith‖ (D&C 88:118), and to

inquire of God that we might receive instruction from His Spirit (see D&C 6:14) and ―know

mysteries which are great and marvelous‖ (D&C 6:11). The restored Church of Jesus Christ

exists today to help individuals and families learn about and receive the blessings of the Savior’s

gospel.

L

L

Learning to Love Learning 33

A hierarchy of importance exists among the things you and I can learn. Indeed, all learning

is not equally important. The Apostle Paul taught this truth in his second epistle to Timothy as he

warned that in the latter days many people would be ―ever learning, and never able to come to the

knowledge of the truth‖ (2 Timothy 3:7).

Some facts are helpful or interesting to know. Some knowledge is useful to learn and apply.

But gospel truths are essential for us to understand and live if we are to become what our

Heavenly Father yearns for us to become. The type of learning I am attempting to describe is not

merely the accumulation of data and facts and frameworks; rather, it is acquiring and applying

knowledge for righteousness.

The revelations teach us that ―the glory of God is intelligence‖ (D&C 93:36). We typically

may think the word intelligence in this scripture denotes innate cognitive ability or a particular

gift for academic work. In this verse, however, one of the meanings of intelligence is the

application of the knowledge we obtain for righteous purposes. As President David O. McKay

(1873–1970) taught, the learning ―for which the Church stands—is the application of knowledge

to the development of a noble and Godlike character.‖1

You and I are here on the earth to prepare for eternity, to learn how to learn, to learn things

that are temporally important and eternally essential, and to assist others in learning wisdom and

truth (see D&C 97:1). Understanding who we are, where we came from, and why we are on the

earth places upon each of us a great responsibility both to learn how to learn and to learn to love

learning.

Learning to Love Learning Is Vital to

Our Ongoing Spiritual and Personal Development

President Brigham Young (1801–1877) was a learner. Although President Young had only

11 days of formal schooling, he understood the need for learning both the wisdom of God and the

things of the world. He was a furniture maker, a missionary, a colonizer, a governor, and the

Lord’s prophet.

I marvel at both the way Brigham Young learned and how much he learned. He never

ceased learning from the revelations of the Lord, from the scriptures, and from good books.

Perhaps President Young was such a consummate learner precisely because he was not

constrained unduly by the arbitrary boundaries so often imposed through the structures and

processes of formal education. He clearly learned to love learning. He clearly learned how to

learn. He ultimately became a powerful disciple and teacher precisely because he first was an

effective learner.

President Young repeatedly taught that ―the object of [our mortal] existence is to learn.‖2

The following statements by President Young emphasize this truth:

―The religion embraced by the Latter-day Saints, if only slightly understood, prompts

them to search diligently after knowledge. There is no other people in existence more

eager to see, hear, learn, and understand truth.‖3


―Put forth your ability to learn as fast as you can, and gather all the strength of mind

and principle of faith you possibly can, and then distribute your knowledge to the

people.‖4

―This work is a progressive work, this doctrine that is taught the Latter-day Saints in its

nature is exalting, increasing, expanding and extending broader and broader until we

can know as we are known, see as we are seen.‖5

―We are in the school [of mortality] and keep learning, and we do not expect to cease

learning while we live on earth; and when we pass through the veil, we expect still to

continue to learn and increase our fund of information. That may appear a strange idea

to some; but it is for the plain and simple reason that we are not capacitated to receive

all knowledge at once. We must therefore receive a little here and a little there.‖6

―We might ask, when shall we cease to learn? I will give you my opinion about it:

never, never.‖7

Brigham Young’s acceptance of and conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ fueled his

unceasing curiosity and love of learning. The ongoing spiritual and personal

development evidenced in his life is a worthy example for you and for me.

Learning to Love Learning Is an Absolute Necessity

in the World in Which We Do Now and Will Yet

Live, Serve, and Work

On the landmark sign located at the entrance to Brigham Young University, the following

motto is found: ―Enter to learn; go forth to serve.‖ This expression certainly does not imply that

everything necessary for a lifetime of meaningful service can or will be obtained during a few

short years of higher education. Rather, the spirit of this statement is that students come to receive

foundational instruction about learning how to learn and learning to love learning. Furthermore,

students’ desires and capacities to serve are not ―put on hold‖ during their university years of

intellectual exploration and development.

May I respectfully suggest an addition to this well-known motto that is too long to put on

the sign but important for us to remember regardless of which university or college we attend:

―Enter to learn to love learning and serving; go forth to continue learning and serving.‖

Academic assignments, test scores, and a cumulative GPA do not produce a final and

polished product. Rather, students have only started to put in place a foundation of learning upon

which they can build forever. Much of the data and knowledge obtained through a specific major

or program of study may rapidly become outdated and obsolete. The particular topics investigated

and learned are not nearly as important as what has been learned about learning. As we press

forward in life—spiritually, interpersonally, and professionally—no book of answers is readily

available with guidelines and solutions to the great challenges of life. All we have is our capacity

to learn and our love of and for learning.

I believe a basic test exists of our capacity to learn and of the measure of our love of

learning. Here is the test: When you and I do not know what to do or how to proceed to achieve a


particular outcome—when we are confronted with a problem that has no clear answer and no

prescribed pattern for resolution—how do we learn what to do?

This was precisely the situation in which Nephi found himself as he was commanded to

build a ship. ―And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a

ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters‖ (1

Nephi 17:8).

Nephi was not a sailor. He had been reared in Jerusalem, an inland city, rather than along

the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. It seems unlikely that he knew much about or had

experience with the tools and skills necessary to build a ship. He may not have ever previously

seen an oceangoing vessel. In essence, then, Nephi was commanded and instructed to build

something he had never built before in order to go someplace he had never been before.

I doubt that any of us will be commanded to build a ship as was Nephi, but each of us will

have our spiritual and learning capabilities tested over and over again. The ever-accelerating rate

of change in our modern world will force us into uncharted territory and demanding

circumstances.

For example, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s college graduates will

have between 10 and 14 different jobs by the time they are 38 years old. And the necessary skills

to perform successfully in each job assignment will constantly change and evolve.

For much of my career as a professor, there was no Internet, no Google, no Wikipedia, no

YouTube, and no telepresence. The Internet only began to be widely used by the general public in

the mid-1990s. Prior to that time, no courses were taught about and no majors were offered in

Internet-related subjects. I remember teaching myself HTML and experimenting with ways

student learning could be enhanced through this new and emerging technology. In contrast, most

students today have never known and cannot imagine a world without the Internet and its

associated technologies. Can we even begin to imagine how much things will continue to change

during the next 15 years?

Because vast amounts of information are so readily available and sophisticated

technologies make possible widespread and even global collaboration, we may be prone to put

our ―trust in the arm of flesh‖ (2 Nephi 4:34; see also 28:31) as we grapple with complex

challenges and problems. We perhaps might be inclined to rely primarily upon our individual and

collective capacity to reason, to innovate, to plan, and to execute. Certainly we must use our God-

given abilities to the fullest, employ our best efforts, and exercise appropriate judgment as we

encounter the opportunities of life. But our mortal best is never enough.

President Young testified that we are never left alone or on our own:

―My knowledge is, if you will follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, as

recorded in the New Testament, every man and woman will be put in possession of the Holy

Ghost. … They will know things that are, that will be, and that have been. They will understand

things in heaven, things on the earth, and things under the earth, things of time, and things of

eternity, according to their several callings and capacities.‖8

Learning to love learning equips us for an ever-changing and unpredictable future.

Knowing how to learn prepares us to discern and act upon opportunities that others may not


readily recognize. I am confident we will pass the test of learning what to do when we do not

know what to do or how to proceed.

I witness the living reality of God the Eternal Father; of our Savior and Redeemer, even the

Lord Jesus Christ; and of the Holy Ghost. I also declare my witness that the gospel of Jesus Christ

has been restored to the earth in these latter days.

I pray your love of learning will grow ever deeper, ever richer, and ever more complete, in

the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Notes

1. David O. McKay, ―True Education,‖ Improvement Era, March 1957, 141.

2. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young (1997), 85.

3. Teachings: Brigham Young, 194.






he Better for My Foes The Role of Opposition

by Elouise Bell

Elouise M. Bell is a retired English teacher who worked at Brigham Young

University for more than thirty-five years. During various sabbaticals, Bell

taught at the University of Arizona, the University of Massachusetts in

Amherst, and Berzenyi College in Hungary. She has served on the Young

Women General Board and on the Utah Arts Council. She has written for

three Utah newspapers and has authored several books. “The Better for My

Foes” appeared originally in a 1991 issue of Sunstone.

draw my inspiration from two sources—the noted American political philosopher and

journalist Walter Lippmann and the clown or fool from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Since

clowning is the older and in some ways more serious profession, let us begin there.

As you remember, the fools in Shakespeare’s dramas are anything but fools. Often the

greatest wisdom of a play comes from that quarter. The clown in Twelfth Night is no exception. In

Act V, scene l, Orsino, the duke of Illyria, says to the clown by way of greeting, “How dost thou,

my good fellow?”

The clown replies, “Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.”

The duke tries to correct him: “Just the contrary—the better for thy friends.”

“No sir, the worse.”

“How can that be?”

“Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me plainly I am an

ass, so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused.

So that . . . the worse for my friends, and the better for my foes.”

To which the duke replies. “Why this is excellent.” Which, I hope to establish, it is indeed.

The same insight came to King Lear after he had been so reduced in circumstances that he

was literally naked and homeless upon the moor in a raging storm. Speaking in anger and

bitterness about the many lackeys and paid flatterers who had clustered around him in his former

days of glory, he said, “They told me I was ague-proof.” That is, they flattered him so

outrageously that he believed he was immune even from the common afflictions such as ague or

flu, which are the lot of humankind.

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The Better for My Foes 38

Thus Lear is pointing out that sometimes those who agree easily and quickly with us do us

a disservice. And the clown is explaining that those whom we may consider our foes can actually

be our greatest benefactors.

The concept of valued opposition is not, I fear, very well understood in Mormon culture.

And without it we cause ourselves and others needless grief and may actually hinder what we

would advance. As I have listened to speeches and public discussions, read letters to the editors of

several newspapers both in Utah and outside, heard people debate among themselves on various

controversies—ranging from the activities of the Environmental Protection Agency to the merits

of a constitutional amendment on equal rights—I have observed four general attitudes, four ways

of viewing opposition. There are surely others, but these four seem to predominate: (1) opposition

as persecution, (2) opposition as counsel for the defense, (3) opposition as airing of personal

opinion, and (4) opposition as sand in the shoes.

The first attitude reveals what we could call a Hatfield-McCoy pattern of response, a

“Them ‘n Us” philosophy, whose motto is, “Fire at Will, For the Enemy Is All Around Us!” This

philosophy teaches that the opposition is basically a passel of no-good skunks out to get Us in

every way possible and that even though this week our concern may be with stopping them from

stealing our hogs, we can never let our guard down. Next week They (or someone in cahoots with

Them) will be trying to poison the well or dynamite the privy. In other words this camp views the

opposition as unmitigated evil, and as far as listening to the opposition goes, they listen only long

enough to fix the enemy position before blasting away.

(When I originally formulated these ideas, I wrote, “I really don’t think this militia group to

be very large, but they are loud.” Today I feel a deeper concern. The ranks of the self-appointed

righteous seem to be swelling, if not yet a majority.)

For Mormons, and for many other Christians, the problem arises, I believe, out of the

confusion of human opposition—in matters political, economic, educational, even religious—

with the supernatural. It is understandably easy but unequivocally dangerous to move from

viewing Satan as the opposition to viewing any mortal opposition as satanic. To put it another

way, all that is of Satan is opposition, but all that opposes us is not satanic. Yet down through the

centuries, such an attitude has often prevailed as men have made the slippery step from “This is

what we believe” to “This is what God believes, and death to the infidels who believe otherwise.”

Not every skirmish is a holy war. We can effectively root out waste and inefficiency in

public office without believing that every politician is in the pay of Satan. We can debate how our

communities and valleys can best be developed and protected without convincing ourselves and

others that those who oppose us (on whatever side they happen to be) are advance men for the

adversary. We can consider how best to structure our schools without consigning the neighbor

who disagrees with us to the legions of Lucifer.

Now to the second attitude toward opposition. This is in many respects a more intelligent

approach to opposition, so much so in fact that I’m going to call it the lawyer’s attitude. But

intelligent as this attitude is in the right place, it is still not the appropriate stance for people trying

seriously to discover how best to regulate our government, outfit our schools, develop our

resources, and incorporate a moral ethic into our society.

This attitude toward opposition says, “We must listen to the opposition, study them closely,

read their literature, and hear their spokespersons, in order that we may know how to refute their


arguments.” I call this the lawyer’s attitude because the lawyer does not go into court to tell all

she knows of a case, and certainly she does not go into court to learn what she does not know. In

fact an old axiom says that a lawyer must never ask of a witness any question to which she, the

lawyer, does not already know the answer. There must be, in short, no surprises. The lawyer is in

court, is being paid, to advocate one particular position with all the skill and eloquence she has.

She must try to outwit her opponents by guessing what form their questioning will take. She must

try to know about any evidence they plan to introduce, any witness they may call. She tries to

think of every point the opposing lawyers could conceivably make—not so that she can change

her mind about what she believes but so that she will be prepared in court for any direction the

argument may take.

Given the nature of our judicial system, such an attitude is professionally justified. One or

more lawyers represent each side of a case, and the judge and jury decide the truth as best they

can. But the individual truth seeker who has the lawyer’s attitude about the opposition is

shortchanging himself, for who will be the judge if he has already made up his mind before he

hears what the other side has to say, if he listens only to refute? Such a person has skipped a

crucial step.

The third attitude is related to the second in that it allows all opponents “their day in court.”

This attitude—and I have heard it widely voiced in the church—says, “You are entitled to your

own opinion, but this is what I believe” (implying, “And I don’t intend to change”). What could

be fairer than that? Well, fair it may be, but foolish it certainly is. Remember Shakespeare’s fool?

He did not merely allow his foes to talk. He listened to them and was ready to change his views

on the basis of what they said if it was logical and valid. Yet many of us today think of ourselves

as enlightened because we are willing to “let others have their say” without seriously considering

their say. The danger of this approach is brilliantly explained by the great essayist Walter

Lippmann in an article entitled “The Indispensable Opposition” (August 1939, The Atlantic

Monthly). In this essay Lippmann is discussing why it is so important to protect the right of free

speech:

“We take, it seems to me, a naively self-righteous view when we argue as if the right of our

opponents to speak were something that we protect because we are magnanimous, noble, and

unselfish. The compelling reason … is that we must protect the right of our opponents to speak

because we must hear what they have to say.

“This is the creative principle of freedom of speech, not that it is a system for the tolerating

of error, but that it is a system for finding the truth. . . . And so, if we truly wish to understand why

freedom is necessary in a civilized society, we must begin by realizing that, because freedom of

discussion improves our own opinions, the liberties of other men are our own vital necessity. . . .

“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being,

always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will

push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise, he

will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But, though it hurts,

he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason

and good sense.”

And thus we have returned to the point put forth by the fool. If we are as wise as he, we too

will listen to the opposition in order to learn—not merely to fix their positions so we may fire


upon them, nor to know their arguments so we may defeat them, nor simply to allow them “equal

time” to air their opinions. We will listen to others to learn if our own perceptions are right and

true, conscious always that they may not be.

Now there is yet another attitude toward opposition, which is both an attitude and a cause

of our problems with opposition generally. I call it the “sand in the shoes” theory. It is related to

the “Hatfield-McCoy” school, although proponents are very different in temperament and

profoundly different in theology.

The “sand in the shoes” view says that opposition is necessary and inevitable. As we climb

the mountain in our great quest, there is bound to be sand in our shoes from time to time. We

must simply persevere, patiently removing the sand when it becomes too great an obstruction.

Such a philosophy seems eminently sane and courageous, and of course it is, when applied to

obstacles such as one’s individual crosses—sickness, sorrow, misfortune, what Shakespeare calls

“the whips and scorns of time.” If that is what one means by opposition, then all is well. But

when this philosophy becomes muddied, and opposition broadens to mean “those on the other

side” and is considered part of the divinely-decreed testing of one’s mettle, then danger sets in.

Although the “sand in the shoe” philosopher may be softer spoken than the “persecuted

righteous,” the roots of their problems are similar—confusing opposition with evil.

And at this point we have come to the quick of the ulcer. For Mormons, opposition has a

special meaning, deeply felt if rarely examined, a meaning which grows out of a specific

scripture. It is my theory—and I stress that term—that a general misunderstanding of this passage

prevails and accounts for our many inappropriate attitudes toward any who line up on the other

side of us.

The scripture is found in 2 Nephi 2:11. Father Lehi says to his son Jacob: “For it needs be,

that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness

could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor

bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body

it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption,

happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.”

How do we understand this scripture? It seems to me that a great many people interpret it

by making two columns—righteousness, holiness, and good on one side (Column A) and

wickedness, misery, and bad on the other (Column B). Column B is the opposition, admittedly

bad but still necessary so that we might achieve, appreciate, and enjoy Column A, the good things

of life.

Lehi, however, says that even wickedness could not come to pass, nor misery nor evil,

without opposition. If we take the view that the valiant need opposition to build up spiritual

muscles, as it were, why would the wicked need it? Do they also need “sand in the shoes” to be

tested, to develop character? Notice also that Lehi does not say, “righteousness needs opposition.”

Though often understood this way, the passage reads differently. Lehi says that it is necessary

that there be an opposition in all things. Without that condition as a given, righteousness could

not be brought to pass. Righteousness wouldn’t even happen in the first place. Quite a different

concept.

A few verses on in that same chapter, Lehi speaks of the Lord creating our first parents and

the beasts and fowls of the air and then says that after this was done, “It must needs be that there


was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet

and the other bitter” (2 Ne. 2:15). Which fruit was sweet: the fruit of the tree of life or the fruit of

the forbidden tree? The word order (plus the additional evidence of Moses 4:12) would suggest it

was the forbidden fruit which was sweet and the fruit of the tree of life which was bitter. Is the

tree of life, the tree Adam and Eve were encouraged to eat, bad then because it is bitter? Is the

bitterness “opposition”? If the tree of life is bitter, must we list it in Column B?

The answer to this question may lie in the earlier verse in the words which explain that “all

things must needs be a compound in one.” Lehi says, “It must needs be that there is an opposition

in all things.” Notice in all things, not to. Could we restate this to say that in all aspects of life

there must be and there is a mixture of good and bad, right and wrong, holiness and misery? This

mixture, this opposition of qualities, produces a state of constant motion, movement, interchange,

growth—of life. Lehi explains, “if it should be one body”—if there were not this compound of

qualities—”it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death.”

Consider the possibility (which I believe to be valid) that the “opposition” Lehi speaks of is

not in fact the “bad” or “wrong” side of things (Column B) but instead the mixture itself, the

intermingling process, the fact that all things in life are a compound. In this sense opposition is

not at all a negative circumstance, although it involves negative qualities as well as positive ones.

Because we have misinterpreted “opposition” to mean all the “evils” in Column B, we carry over

that connotation to our political, economic, social, environmental, and other debates and consider

our human opposition as “evil” or “bad” also—or at least we consider their ideas as such. Our

misunderstanding of the word has misled us.

In summary of this point then: while I definitely believe we are given struggles and pain

and problems in this life in order to strengthen our characters and fortify our souls, to classify our

political and other philosophical opposition as part of the “necessary evil” of this life is to accuse

them falsely and to martyr ourselves undeservedly.

I offer in conclusion a quotation from LDS president Harold B. Lee: “It is good to be

faithful. It is better to be faithful and competent.” I believe we will be more competent in our

roles as parents, citizens, office holders, and members who would be instrumental in building a

Zion society if we thought more deeply and more carefully about the nature of opposition. As a

practical start I offer the following suggestions:

1. Beware the impulse to divide opposing camps into Column A and Column B—the

good guys and the bad guys. Usually any given political or social stance has both merit

and weakness—the “compound in one”—including the view you are proposing.

2. Beware making a person, rather than a position, the opposition. If we do that we run

the risk of losing that person as an ally on another issue about which we both agree.

Moreover, if we think of persons as the opposition, we may end up arguing

personalities rather than issues, and at that point reason goes out the window.

3. Beware of establishing a predictable pattern of opposition. Emerson taught us that “A

foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” If you can always predict what

side of an issue I’m going to be on, that’s a sign that I am prejudging, biasing my

response, or judging something besides the issues and the arguments.

4. Beware of self-listening to the opposition. This is listening just long enough to decide

how you’re going to answer, and then not thinking beyond that point.


5. Beware of never changing your mind. I would have very little confidence in a person

who had never changed his or her mind on an issue, who had never said, “Well, I

thought about that some more; I studied that a bit more deeply, and decided I was

wrong.”

6. Beware of the passion to take a stand, any stand, now, rather than wait and ponder. Be

mature enough and confident enough to be able to live with a few loose ends, a few

uncertainties.

7. Beware of confusing God’s infallibility with your own. Because the church has access

to divine truth, it does not follow that any Mormon who quotes scripture to support his

or her view must of necessity be right.

8. Beware abandoning the wisdom of Moroni 10:4, which exhorts us to seek truth with a

sincere heart and real intent. If this advice is valid in such a weighty quest as a

testimony, surely it is a good model to follow in lesser matters such as political issues.

But just as the scripture asks the investigator to seek with real intent, so in temporal

matters we must study, which includes listening to our opponents, with truly open

minds. The famed historian Marchette Chute has wisely said, “If you know in advance

what the truth will be, you will never find it.”

The still-young experiment of democracy has had many critics from the days it was first

tried in the western world. One of the most oft-repeated objections to government of and by the

people is that most people simply do not have the philosophical and rational training and

understanding to make wise decisions about government and civic affairs. Most people, according

to the nay-sayers, will always be ruled by passion, swayed by prejudice, seduced by propaganda,

and hence incapable of enlightened self-government. I do not agree with the nay-sayers. The

dangers they warn of are real but not irrevocable. I believe government of and by the people can

work. But it can only work when we train ourselves in the principles of sound thinking, when we

are ever mindful of the absolute indispensability of that man or woman across the aisle or on the

other side of the platform, when we, like Shakespeare’s wise Fool, know enough to treasure our

“foe,” the opposition.

austian Economics Hell Hath No Limits

by Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) earned a bachelor’s degree from the University

of Kentucky in 1956 and a master’s in 1957. He has taught at several

universities and published more than 40 works of fiction, nonfiction, and

poetry. He writes about his perception of the good life: the connection to

place and other people, agriculture, frugality, and faith. Berry is a fellow

of the Temenos Academy, a society devoted to the study of faith.

“Faustian Economics” was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 2008.

he general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily

foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far,

have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such

“biofuels” as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that “science will

find an answer.” The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the

American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending,

wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

This belief was always indefensible—the real names of global warming are Waste and

Greed—and by now it is manifestly foolish. But foolishness on this scale looks disturbingly like a

sort of national insanity. We seem to have come to a collective delusion of grandeur, insisting that

all of us are “free” to be as conspicuously greedy and wasteful as the most corrupt of kings and

queens. (Perhaps by devoting more and more of our already abused cropland to fuel production

we will at last cure ourselves of obesity and become fashionably skeletal, hungry but—thank

God!—still driving.)

The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness.

We have obscured the issue by refusing to see that limitlessness is a godly trait. We have

insistently, and with relief, defined ourselves as animals or as “higher animals.” But to define

ourselves as animals, given our specifically human powers and desires, is to define ourselves as

limitless animals—which of course is a contradiction in terms. Any definition is a limit, which is

why the God of Exodus refuses to define Himself: “I am that I am.”

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Faustian Economics 44

Even so, that we have founded our present society upon delusional assumptions of

limitlessness is easy enough to demonstrate. A recent “summit” in Louisville, Kentucky, was

entitled “Unbridled Energy: The Industrialization of Kentucky’s Energy Resources.” Its subjects

were “clean-coal generation, biofuels, and other cutting-edge applications,” the conversion of

coal to “liquid fuels,” and the likelihood that all this will be “environmentally friendly.” These

hopes, which “can create jobs and boost the nation’s security,” are to be supported by government

“loan guarantees . . . investment tax credits and other tax breaks.” Such talk we recognize as

completely conventional. It is, in fact, a tissue of clichés that is now the common tongue of

promoters, politicians, and journalists. This language does not allow for any computation or

speculation as to the net good of anything proposed. The entire contraption of “Unbridled

Energy” is supported only by a rote optimism: “The United States has 250 billion tons of

recoverable coal reserves—enough to last 100 years even at double the current rate of

consumption.” We humans have inhabited the earth for many thousands of years, and now we can

look forward to surviving for another hundred by doubling our consumption of coal? This is

national security? The world-ending fire of industrial fundamentalism may already be burning in

our furnaces and engines, but if it will burn for a hundred more years, that will be fine. Surely it

would be better to intend straightforwardly to contain the fire and eventually put it out! But once

greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits. It has no

place for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It will do anything. It is monstrous

by definition.

In keeping with our unrestrained consumptiveness, the commonly accepted basis of our

economy is the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth,

limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt. The idea of a limitless economy

implies and requires a doctrine of general human limitlessness: all are entitled to pursue without

limit whatever they conceive as desirable—a license that classifies the most exalted Christian

capitalist with the lowliest pornographer.

This fantasy of limitlessness perhaps arose from the coincidence of the Industrial

Revolution with the suddenly exploitable resources of the New World—though how the supposed

limitlessness of resources can be reconciled with their exhaustion is not clear. Or perhaps it

comes from the contrary apprehension of the world’s “smallness,” made possible by modern

astronomy and high-speed transportation. Fear of the smallness of our world and its life may lead

to a kind of claustrophobia and thence, with apparent reasonableness, to a desire for the

“freedom” of limitlessness. But this desire, paradoxically, reduces everything. The life of this

world is small to those who think it is, and the desire to enlarge it makes it smaller, and can

reduce it finally to nothing.

However it came about, this credo of limitlessness clearly implies a principled wish not

only for limitless possessions but also for limitless knowledge, limitless science, limitless

technology, and limitless progress. And, necessarily, it must lead to limitless violence, waste,

war, and destruction. That it should finally produce a crowning cult of political limitlessness is

only a matter of mad logic.

The normalization of the doctrine of limitlessness has produced a sort of moral

minimalism: the desire to be efficient at any cost, to be unencumbered by complexity. The

minimization of neighborliness, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-


subordination—this is the culture of which our present leaders and heroes are the spoiled

children.

Our national faith so far has been: “There’s always more.” Our true religion is a sort of

autistic industrialism. People of intelligence and ability seem now to be genuinely embarrassed by

any solution to any problem that does not involve high technology, a great expenditure of energy,

or a big machine. Thus an X marked on a paper ballot no longer fulfills our idea of voting. One

problem with this state of affairs is that the work now most needing to be done—that of

neighborliness and caretaking—cannot be done by remote control with the greatest power on the

largest scale. A second problem is that the economic fantasy of limitlessness in a limited world

calls fearfully into question the value of our monetary wealth, which does not reliably stand for

the real wealth of land, resources, and workmanship but instead wastes and depletes it.

That human limitlessness is a fantasy means, obviously, that its life expectancy is limited.

There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time

of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation

for our pillage of this one. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart, by

means of science and technology, our economic stupidity. The hope that we can cure the ills of

industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. We are, in

short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world.

This constraint, however, is not the condemnation it may seem. On the contrary, it returns

us to our real condition and to our human heritage, from which our self-definition as limitless

animals has for too long cut us off. Every cultural and religious tradition that I know about, while

fully acknowledging our animal nature, defines us specifically as humans—that is, as animals (if

the word still applies) capable of living not only within natural limits but also within cultural

limits, self-imposed. As earthly creatures, we live, because we must, within natural limits, which

we may describe by such names as “earth” or “ecosystem” or “watershed” or “place.” But as

humans, we may elect to respond to this necessary placement by the self-restraints implied in

neighborliness, stewardship, thrift, temperance, generosity, care, kindness, friendship, loyalty,

and love.

In our limitless selfishness, we have tried to define “freedom,” for example, as an escape

from all restraint. But, as my friend Bert Hornback has explained in his book The Wisdom in

Words, “free” is etymologically related to “friend.” These words come from the same Indo-

European root, which carries the sense of “dear” or “beloved.” We set our friends free by our love

for them, with the implied restraints of faithfulness or loyalty. And this suggests that our

“identity” is located not in the impulse of selfhood but in deliberately maintained connections.

Thinking of our predicament has sent me back again to Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical

History of Doctor Faustus. This is a play of the Renaissance; Faustus, a man of learning, longs to

possess “all Nature’s treasury,” to “Ransack the ocean . . . And search all corners of the new-

found world. . .” To assuage his thirst for knowledge and power, he deeds his soul to Lucifer,

receiving in compensation for twenty-four years the services of the sub-devil Mephistophilis

nominally Faustus’s slave but in fact his master. Having the subject of limitlessness in mind, I

was astonished on this reading to come upon Mephistophilis’s description of hell. When Faustus

asks, “How comes it then that thou art out of hell?” Mephistophilis replies, “Why, this is hell, nor


am I out of it.” And a few pages later he explains:

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place, but where we [the damned] are is hell,

And where hell is must we ever be.

For those who reject heaven, hell is everywhere, and thus is limitless. For them, even the thought

of heaven is hell.

It is only appropriate, then, that Mephistophilis rejects any conventional limit: “Tut,

Faustus, marriage is but a ceremonial toy. If thou lovest me, think no more of it.” Continuing this

theme, for Faustus’s pleasure the devils present a sort of pageant of the seven deadly sins, three of

which—Pride, Wrath, and Gluttony—describe themselves as orphans, disdaining the restraints of

parental or filial love.

Seventy or so years later, and with the issue of the human definition more than ever in

doubt, John Milton in Book VII of Paradise Lost returns again to a consideration of our urge to

know. To Adam’s request to be told the story of creation, the “affable Archangel” Raphael agrees

“to answer thy desire/Of knowledge within bounds [my emphasis] . . . ,” explaining that

Knowledge is as food, and needs no less

Her temperance over appetite, to know

In measure what the mind may well contain;

Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns

Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.

Raphael is saying, with angelic circumlocution, that knowledge without wisdom, limitless

knowledge, is not worth a fart; he is not a humorless archangel. But he also is saying that

knowledge without measure, knowledge that the human mind cannot appropriately use, is

mortally dangerous.

I am well aware of what I risk in bringing this language of religion into what is normally a

scientific discussion. I do so because I doubt that we can define our present problems adequately,

let alone solve them, without some recourse to our cultural heritage. We are, after all, trying now

to deal with the failure of scientists, technicians, and politicians to “think up” a version of human

continuance that is economically probable and ecologically responsible, or perhaps even

imaginable. If we go back into our tradition, we are going to find a concern with religion, which

at a minimum shatters the selfish context of the individual life, and thus forces a consideration of

what human beings are and ought to be.

This concern persists at least as late as our Declaration of Independence, which holds as

“self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain

unalienable rights . . .” Thus among our political roots we have still our old preoccupation with

our definition as humans, which in the Declaration is wisely assigned to our Creator; our rights

and the rights of all humans are not granted by any human government but are innate, belonging

to us by birth. This insistence comes not from the fear of death or even extinction but from the

ancient fear that in order to survive we might become inhuman or monstrous.

And so our cultural tradition is in large part the record of our continuing effort to

understand ourselves as beings specifically human: to say that, as humans, we must do certain

things and we must not do certain things. We must have limits or we will cease to exist as


humans; perhaps we will cease to exist, period. At times, for example, some of us humans have

thought that human beings, properly so called, did not make war against civilian populations, or

hold prisoners without a fair trial, or use torture for any reason.

Some of us would-be humans have thought too that we should not be free at anybody else’s

expense. And yet in the phrase “free market,” the word “free” has come to mean unlimited

economic power for some, with the necessary consequence of economic powerlessness for others.

Several years ago, after I had spoken at a meeting, two earnest and obviously troubled young

veterinarians approached me with a question: How could they practice veterinary medicine

without serious economic damage to the farmers who were their clients? Underlying their

question was the fact that for a long time veterinary help for a sheep or a pig has been likely to

cost more than the animal is worth. I had to answer that, in my opinion, so long as their practice

relied heavily on selling patented drugs, they had no choice, since the market for medicinal drugs

was entirely controlled by the drug companies, whereas most farmers had no control at all over

the market for agricultural products. My questioners were asking in effect if a predatory economy

can have a beneficent result. The answer too often is No. And that is because there is an absolute

discontinuity between the economy of the seller of medicines and the economy of the buyer, as

there is in the health industry as a whole. The drug industry is interested in the survival of

patients, we have to suppose, because surviving patients will continue to consume drugs.

Now let us consider a contrary example. Recently, at another meeting, I talked for some

time with an elderly, and some would say an old-fashioned, farmer from Nebraska. Unable to

farm any longer himself, he had rented his land to a younger farmer on the basis of what he called

“crop share” instead of a price paid or owed in advance. Thus, as the old farmer said of his renter,

“If he has a good year, I have a good year. If he has a bad year, I have a bad one.” This is what I

would call community economics. It is a sharing of fate. It assures an economic continuity and a

common interest between the two partners to the trade. This is as far as possible from the

economy in which the young veterinarians were caught, in which the powerful are limitlessly

“free” to trade, to the disadvantage, and ultimately the ruin, of the powerless.

It is this economy of community destruction that, wittingly or unwittingly, most scientists

and technicians have served for the past two hundred years. These scientists and technicians have

justified themselves by the proposition that they are the vanguard of progress, enlarging human

knowledge and power, and thus they have romanticized both themselves and the predatory

enterprises that they have served.

As a consequence, our great need now is for sciences and technologies of limits, of

domesticity, of what Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has called

“homecoming.” These would be specifically human sciences and technologies, working, as the

best humans always have worked, within self-imposed limits. The limits would be the accepted

contexts of places, communities, and neighborhoods, both natural and human.

I know that the idea of such limitations will horrify some people, maybe most people, for

we have long encouraged ourselves to feel at home on “the cutting edges” of knowledge and

power or on some “frontier” of human experience. But I know too that we are talking now in the

presence of much evidence that improvement by outward expansion may no longer be a good

idea, if it ever was. It was not a good idea for the farmers who “leveraged” secure acreage to buy

more during the 1970s. It has proved tragically to be a bad idea in a number of recent wars. If it is


a good idea in the form of corporate gigantism, then we must ask, For whom? Faustus, who wants

all knowledge and all the world for himself, is a man supremely lonely and finally doomed. I

don’t think Marlowe was kidding. I don’t think Satan is kidding when he says in Paradise Lost,

“Myself am Hell.”

If the idea of appropriate limitation seems unacceptable to us, that may be because, like

Marlowe’s Faustus and Milton’s Satan, we confuse limits with confinement. But that, as I think

Marlowe and Milton and others were trying to tell us, is a great and potentially a fatal mistake.

Satan’s fault, as Milton understood it and perhaps with some sympathy, was precisely that he

could not tolerate his proper limitation; he could not subordinate himself to anything whatever.

Faustus’s error was his unwillingness to remain “Faustus, and a man.” In our age of the world it is

not rare to find writers, critics, and teachers of literature, as well as scientists and technicians,

who regard Satan’s and Faustus’s defiance as salutary and heroic.

On the contrary, our human and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements

but rather inducements to formal elaboration and elegance, to fullness of relationship and

meaning. Perhaps our most serious cultural loss in recent centuries is the knowledge that some

things, though limited, are inexhaustible. For example, an ecosystem, even that of a working

forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible. A small place, as I know

from my own experience, can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty,

solace, and pleasure—in addition to its difficulties—that cannot be exhausted in a lifetime or in

generations.

To recover from our disease of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea that we have

a right to be godlike animals, that we are potentially omniscient and omnipotent, ready to

discover “the secret of the universe.” We will have to start over, with a different and much older

premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity, of limits. We

must learn again to ask how we can make the most of what we are, what we have, what we have

been given. If we always have a theoretically better substitute available from somebody or

someplace else, we will never make the most of anything. It is hard to make the most of one life.

If we each had two lives, we would not make much of either. Or as one of my best teachers said

of people in general: “They’ll never be worth a damn as long as they’ve got two choices.”

To deal with the problems, which are after all are inescapable, of living with limited

intelligence in a limited world, I suggest that we may have to remove some of the emphasis we

have lately placed on science and technology and have a new look at the arts. For an art does not

propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich itself within bounds that are

accepted prior to the work.

It is the artists, not the scientists, who have dealt unremittingly with the problem of limits.

A painting, however large, must finally be bounded by a frame or a wall. A composer or

playwright must reckon, at a minimum, with the capacity of an audience to sit still and pay

attention. A story, once begun, must end somewhere within the limits of the writer’s and the

reader’s memory. And of course the arts characteristically impose limits that are artificial: the

five acts of a play, or the fourteen lines of a sonnet. Within these limits artists achieve

elaborations of pattern, of sustaining relationships of parts with one another and with the whole,

that may be astonishingly complex. And probably most of us can name a painting, a piece of


music, a poem or play or story that still grows in meaning and remains fresh after many years of

familiarity.

We know by now that a natural ecosystem survives by the same sort of formal intricacy,

ever-changing, inexhaustible, and no doubt finally unknowable. We know further that if we want

to make our economic landscapes sustainably and abundantly productive, we must do so by

maintaining in them a living formal complexity something like that of natural ecosystems. We

can do this only by raising to the highest level our mastery of the arts of agriculture, animal

husbandry, forestry, and, ultimately, the art of living.

It is true that insofar as scientific experiments must be conducted within carefully observed

limits, scientists also are artists. But in science one experiment, whether it succeeds or fails, is

logically followed by another in a theoretically infinite progression. According to the underlying

myth of modern science, this progression is always replacing the smaller knowledge of the past

with the larger knowledge of the present, which will be replaced by the yet larger knowledge of

the future.

In the arts, by contrast, no limitless sequence of works is ever implied or looked for. No

work of art is necessarily followed by a second work that is necessarily better. Given the

methodologies of science, the law of gravity and the genome were bound to be discovered by

somebody; the identity of the discoverer is incidental to the fact. But it appears that in the arts

there are no second chances. We must assume that we had one chance each for The Divine

Comedy and King Lear. If Dante and Shakespeare had died before they wrote those poems,

nobody ever would have written them.

The same is true of our arts of land use, our economic arts, which are our arts of living.

With these it is once-for-all. We will have no chance to redo our experiments with bad agriculture

leading to soil loss. The Appalachian mountains and forests we have destroyed for coal are gone

forever. It is now and forevermore too late to use thriftily the first half of the world’s supply of

petroleum. In the art of living we can only start again with what remains.

And so, in confronting the phenomenon of “peak oil,” we are really confronting the end of

our customary delusion of “more.” Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a

limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice.

To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice, and a viable

one if we can recover the necessary political sanity. Of course it makes sense to consider

alternative energy sources, provided they make sense. But also we will have to re-examine the

economic structures of our lives, and conform them to the tolerances and limits of our earthly

places. Where there is no more, our one choice is to make the most and the best of what we have.

from he Creative Mind

by Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974), a native of Poland, earned a PhD in

mathematics at Cambridge University. Disturbed by the upheaval

surrounding Hitler’s rise to power, Bronowski explored the devastation

of war, particularly the impact of science and technology on humanity.

Bronowski’s fame spread with the 1977 publication of The Ascent of

Man, a collection of essays. “The Creative Mind” is based on a lecture

he delivered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953; it

later was included in his Science and Human Values in 1956.

5

hat is the insight with which the scientist tries to see into nature? Can it indeed be called

either imaginative or creative? To the literary man the question may seem merely silly. He has

been taught that science is a large collection of facts; and if this is true, then the only seeing

which scientists need do is, he supposes, seeing the facts. He pictures them, the colorless

professionals of science, going off to work in the morning into the universe in a neutral,

unexposed state. They then expose themselves like a photographic plate. And then in the

darkroom or laboratory they develop the image, so that suddenly and startlingly it appears,

printed in capital letters, as a new formula for atomic energy.

Men who have read Balzac and Zola are not deceived by the claims of these writers that

they do no more than record the facts. The readers of Christopher Isherwood do not take him

literally when he writes ‗I am a camera.‘ Yet the same readers solemnly carry with them from

their schooldays this foolish picture of the scientist fixing by some mechanical process the facts

of nature. I have had of all people a historian tell me that science is a collection of facts, and his

voice had not even the ironic rasp of one filing cabinet reproving another.

It seems impossible that this historian had ever studied the beginnings of a Scientific

discovery. The Scientific Revolution can be held to begin in the year 1543 when there was

brought to Copernicus, perhaps on his deathbed, the first printed copy of the book he had finished

about a dozen years earlier. The thesis of this book is that the earth moves around the sun. When

did Copernicus go out and record this fact with his camera? What appearance in nature prompted

his outrageous guess? And in what odd sense is this guess to be called a neutral record of fact?

Less than a hundred years after Copernicus, Kepler published (between 1609 and 1619) the

three laws which describe the paths of the planets. The work of Newton and with it most of our

mechanics spring from these laws. They have a solid, matter of fact sound. For example, Kepler

T

W

from The Creative Mind 51

says that if one squares the year of a planet, one gets a number which is proportional to the cube

of its average distance from the sun. Does anyone think that such a law is found by taking enough

readings and then squaring and cubing everything in sight? If he does, then as a scientist, he is

doomed to a wasted life; he has as little prospect of making a scientific discovery as an electronic

brain has.

It was not this way that Copernicus and Kepler thought, or that scientists think today.

Copernicus found that the orbits of the planets would look simpler if they were looked at from the

sun and not from the earth. But he did not in the first place find this by routine calculation. His

first step was a leap of imagination to lift himself from the earth, and put himself wildly,

speculatively into the sun.1 ‗The earth conceives from the sun,‘ he wrote; and ‗the sun rules the

family of stars.‘ We catch in his mind an image, the gesture of the virile man standing the sun,

with arms outstretched, overlooking the planets. Perhaps Copernicus took the picture from the

drawings of the youth with outstretched arms which the Renaissance teachers put into their books

on the proportions of the body. Perhaps he had seen Leonardo‘s drawings of his loved pupil Salai.

I do not know. To me, the gesture of Copernicus, the shining youth looking outward from the sun,

is still vivid in a drawing which William Blake in 1780 based on all these: the drawing which is

usually called Glad Day.2

Kepler‘s mind, we know, was filled with just such fanciful analogies; and we know what

they were. Kepler wanted to relate the speeds of the planets to the musical intervals. He tried to fit

the five regular solids into their orbits. None of these likenesses worked, and they have been

forgotten; yet they have been and they remain the stepping stones of every creative mind. Kepler

felt for his laws by way of metaphors, he searched mystically for likenesses with what he knew in

every strange corner of nature. And when among these guesses he hit upon his laws, he did not

think of their numbers as the balancing of a cosmic bank account, but as a revelation of the unity

of all nature. To us, the analogies by which Kepler listened for the movement of the planets in the

music of the spheres are farfetched.3 Yet are they more so than the wild leap by which Rutherford

and Bohr in our own century found a model for the atom in, of all places, the planetary system.

6

No scientific theory is a collection of facts. It will not even do to call a theory true or false

in the simple sense in which every fact is either so or not so. The Epicureans held that matter is

made of atoms two thousand years ago and we are now tempted to say that their theory was true.

But if we do so we confuse their notion of matter with our own. John Dalton in 1808 first saw the

structure of matter as we do today, and what he took from the ancients was not their theory but

something richer, their image: the atom. Much of what was in Dalton‘s mind was as vague as the

Greek notion, and quite as mistaken. But he suddenly gave life to the new facts of chemistry and

the ancient theory together, by fusing them to give what neither had: a coherent picture of how

matter is linked and built up from different kinds of atoms. The act of fusion is the creative act.

All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses. The search may be on a grand scale,

as in the modern theories which try to link the fields of gravitation and electromagnetism. But we

do not need to be browbeaten by the scale of science. There are discoveries to be made by

snatching a small likeness from the air too, if it is bold enough. In 1935 the Japanese physicist

Hideki Yukawa wrote a paper which can still give heart to a young scientist. He took as his


starting point the known fact that waves of light can sometimes behave as if they were separate

pellets. From this he reasoned that the forces which held the nucleus of an atom together might

sometimes also be observed as if they were solid pellets. A schoolboy can see how thin Yukawa‘s

analogy is, and his teacher would be severe with it. Yet Yukawa without a blush calculated the

mass of the pellet he expected to see, and waited. He was right; his meson was found, and a range

of other mesons, neither the existence nor the nature of which had been suspected before. The

likeness had borne fruit.

The scientist looks for order in the appearance of nature by exploring such likenesses. For

order does not display itself of itself; if it can be said to be there at all, it is not there for the mere

looking. There is no way of pointing a finger or a camera at it; order must be discovered and, in a

deep sense, it must be created. What we see, as we see it, is mere disorder.

This point has been put trenchantly in a fable by Karl Popper. Suppose that someone

wished to give his whole life to science. Suppose that he therefore sat down, pencil in hand, and

for the next twenty, thirty, forty years recorded in notebook after notebook everything that he

could observe. He may be supposed to leave out nothing: today‘s humidity, the racing results, the

level of cosmic radiation and the stockmarket prices and the look of Mars, all would be there. He

would have compiled the most careful record of nature that has ever been made; and, dying in the

calm certainty of a life well spent, he would of course leave his notebooks to the Royal Society.

Would the Royal Society thank him for the treasure of a lifetime of observation? It would not.

The Royal Society would treat his notebooks exactly as the English bishops have treated Joanna

Southcott‘s box. It would refuse to open them at all, because it would know without looking that

the notebooks contain only a jumble of disorderly and meaningless items.

7

Science finds order and meaning in our experience, and sets about this in quite a different

way. It sets about it as Newton did in the story which he himself told in his old age, and of which

the schoolbooks give only a caricature. In the year 1665, when Newton was twenty-two, the

plague broke out in southern England, and the University of Cambridge was closed. Newton

therefore spent the next eighteen months at home, removed from traditional learning, at a time

when he was impatient for knowledge and, in his own phrase, ‗I was in the prime of my age for

invention.‘ In this eager, boyish mood, sitting one day in the garden of his widowed mother, he

saw an apple fall. So far the books have the story right; we think we even know the kind of apple;

tradition has it that it was a Flower of Kent. But now they miss the crux of the story. For what

struck the young Newton at the sight was not the thought that the apple must be drawn to the

earth by gravity; that conception was older than Newton. What struck him was the conjecture that

the same force of gravity, which reaches to the top of the tree, might go on reaching out beyond

the earth and its air, endlessly into space. Gravity might reach the moon: this was Newton‘s new

thought; and it might be gravity which holds the moon in her orbit. There and then he calculated

what force from the earth (falling off as the square of the distance) would hold the moon, and

compared it with the known force of gravity at tree height. The forces agreed; Newton says

laconically, ‗I found them answer pretty nearly.‘ Yet they agreed only nearly; the likeness and the

approximation go together, for no likeness is exact. In Newton‘s sentence modern science is full

grown.


It grows from a comparison. It has seized a likeness between two unlike appearances; for

the apple in the summer garden and the grave moon overhead are surely as unlike in their

movements as two things can be. Newton traced in them two expressions of a single concept,

gravitation: and the concept (and the unity) are in that sense his free creation. The progress of

science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had long seemed

unlike. Faraday did this when he closed the link between electricity and magnetism. Clerk

Maxwell did it when he linked both with light. Einstein linked time with space, mass with energy,

and the path of light past the sun with the flight of a bullet; and spent his dying years in trying to

add to these likenesses another, which would find a single imaginative order between the

equations of Clerk Maxwell and his own geometry of gravitation.

8

When Coleridge tried to define beauty, he returned always to one deep thought: beauty, he

said, is ‗unity in variety.‘4 Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild

variety of nature – or more exactly, in the variety of our experience. Poetry, painting, the arts are

the same search, in Coleridge‘s phrase, for unity in variety. Each in his own way looks for

likenesses under the variety of human experience. What is a poetic image but the seizing and the

exploration of a hidden likeness, in holding together two parts of a comparison which are to give

depth each to the other? When Romeo finds Juliet in the tomb, and thinks her dead, he uses in his

heartbreaking speech the words,

Death that hath suckt the honey of thy breath.

The critic can only haltingly take to pieces the single shock which this image carries. The

young Shakespeare admired Marlowe, and Marlowe‘s Faustus had said of the ghostly kiss of

Helen of Troy that it sucked forth his soul. But that is a pale image; what Shakespeare has done is

to fire it with the single word honey. Death is a bee at the lips of Juliet, and the bee is an insect

that stings; the sting of death was a commonplace phrase when Shakespeare wrote. The sting is

there, under the image; Shakespeare has packed it into the word honey; but the very word rides

powerfully over its own undertones. Death is a bee that stings other people, but it comes to Juliet

as if she were a flower; this is the moving thought under the instant image. The creative mind

speaks in such thoughts.

The poetic image here is also, and accidentally, heightened by the tenderness which town

dwellers now feel for country ways. But it need not be; there are likenesses to conjure with, and

images as powerful, within the man-made world. The poems of Alexander Pope belong to this

world. They are not countrified, and therefore readers today find them unemotional and often

artificial. Let me then quote Pope: here he is in a formal satire face to face, towards the end of his

life, with his own gifts. In eight lines he looks poignantly forward towards death and back to the

laborious years which made him famous.

Years foll‘wing Years, steal something ev‘ry day,

At last they steal us from our selves away;

In one our Frolicks, one Amusements end,

In one a Mistress drops, in one a Friend:

This subtle Thief of Life, this paltry Time,

What will it leave me, if it snatch my Rhime?


If ev‘ry Wheel of that unweary‘d Mill

That turn‘d ten thousand Verses, now stands still.

The human mind had been compared to what the eighteenth century called a mill, that is to

a machine, before, Pope‘s own idol Bolingbroke had compared it to a clockwork. In these lines

the likeness goes deeper, for Pope is thinking of the ten thousand Verses which he had translated

from Homer: what he says is sad and just at the same time, because this really had been a

mechanical and at times a grinding task.5 Yet the clockwork is present in the image too; when the

wheels stand still, time for Pope will stand still for ever; we feel that we already hear, over the

horizon, Faust‘s defiant reply to Mephistopheles, which Goethe had not yet written – ‗let the

clock strike and stop, let the hand fall, and let time be at an end.‘

Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:

Verweile doch! du bist so schön!

Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,

Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!

Dann Mag die Totenglocke schallen,

Dann bist du deines Dienstes frei,

Die Uhr mag stehn, der Zeiger fallen,

Es sei die Zeit für mich vorbei!6

I have quoted Pope and Goethe because their metaphor here is not poetic; it is rather a hand

reaching straight into experience and arranging it with new meaning. Metaphors of this kind need

not always be written in words. The most powerful of them all is simply the presence of King

Lear and his Fool in the hovel of a man who is shamming madness, while lightning rages outside.

Or let me quote another clash of two conceptions of life, from a modern poet. In his later poems

W. B. Yeats was troubled by the feeling that in shutting himself up to write, he was missing the

active pleasures of life; and yet it seemed to him certain that the man who lives for these

pleasures will leave no lasting work behind him. He said this at times very simply, too:

The intellect of man is forced to choose

Perfection of the life, or of the work.

This problem, whether a man fulfills himself in work or in play, is of course more common

than Yeats allowed; and it may be more commonplace. But it is given breadth and force by the

images in which Yeats pondered it.

Get all the gold and silver that you can,

Satisfy ambition, or animate

The trivial days and ram them with the sun,

And yet upon these maxims meditate:

All women dote upon an idle man

Although their children need a rich estate:

No man has ever lived that had enough

Of children‘s gratitude or woman‘s love.7

The love of women, the gratitude of children: the images fix two philosophies as nothing

else can. They are tools of creative thought, as coherent and as exact as the conceptual images

with which science works: as time and space, or as the proton and the neutron.


9

The discoveries of science, the works of art are explorations- more, are explosions, of a

hidden likeness. The discoverer or the artist presents in them two aspects of nature and fuses them

into one. This is the act of creation, in which an original thought is born, and it is the same act in

original science and original art. But it is not therefore the monopoly of the man who wrote the

poem or who made the discovery. On the contrary, I believe this view of the creative act to be

right because it alone gives a meaning to the act of appreciation. The poem or the discovery exists

in two moments of vision: the moment of appreciation as much as that of creation; for the

appreciator must see the movement, wake to the echo which was started in the creation of the

work. In the moment of appreciation we live again the moment when the creator saw and held the

hidden likeness. When a simile takes us aback and persuades us together, when we find a

juxtaposition in a picture both odd and intriguing, when a theory is at once fresh and convincing,

we do not merely nod over someone else‘s work. We re-enact the creative act, and we ourselves

make the discovery again. At bottom, there is no unifying likeness there until we too have seized

it, we too have made it for ourselves.

How slipshod by comparison is the notion that either art or science sets out to copy nature.

If the task of the painter were to copy for men what they see, the critic could make only a single

judgment: either that the copy is right or that it is wrong. And if science were a copy of fact, then

every theory would be either right or wrong, and would be so for ever. There would be nothing

left for us to say but this is so, or is not so. No one who has read a page by a good critic or a

speculative scientist can ever again think that this barren choice of yes or no is all that the mind

offers.

Reality is not an exhibit for man‘s inspection, labeled ‗Do not touch.‘ There are no

appearances to be photographed, no experiences to be copied, in which we do not take part.

Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her. We re-make nature by the act of

discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to

every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself re-creates them. They are the

mark of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science,

the heart misses a beat.

Notes

1. This has now been admirably documented by Thomas S. Kuhn in The Copernican Revolution

(Harvard, 1957). As he shows, from the Neoplatonist elements in the new humanism ‗some

Renaissance scientists, like Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, seem to have drawn two

decidedly un-Aristotelian ideas: a new belief in the possibility and importance of discovering

simple arithmetic and geometric regularities in nature, and a new view of the sun as the

source of all vital principles and forces in the universe.‘ Kuhn draws particular attention to

the influence of the ‗symbolic identification of the sun and God‘ in the Liber de Sole of

Marsilia Ficino, a central figure (with Pico della Mirandola, who wrote the famous De

Hominis Dignitate) in the humanist and Neoplatonist academy of Florence in the fifteenth

century. This has been elaborated by A. Koyré in La revolution astronomique (Paris, 1961).

In 1960 Robert McNulty discovered an eyewitness account of Giordano Bruno‘s lectures on

Copernicus at Osford in 1583 which shows that Bruno drew heavily on Ficino‘s De vita


coelitus comparanto; this is discussed by Frances A. Yates in Giordano Bruno and the

Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964). The general subject has also been attractively discussed

recently by Arthur Koestler in The Sleepwalkers (London, 1959), and earlier in Pauli‘s essay

on the mystic images in Kepler‘s science in Naturerklärung und Psyche by C. G. Jung and

W. Pauli (Zurich, 1952).

2. The derivation of Blake‘s drawing from the Renaissance studies, by Leonardo and others, of

the Vitruvian proportions and mathematical harmonies of the human figure is also discussed

by Sir Kenneth Clark in The Nude (London, 1956). It was first remarked by Sir Anthony

Blunt in the Journal of the Warburg Institute in 1938.

3. The music of the spheres was itself a mathematical conception, which had been invented by

Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C. Pythagoras taught that the distances between the

heavenly bodies match the lengths of the strings that sound the different musical notes. It was

deduced that the spheres that carry the heavenly bodies make music as they turn.

4. In one of the places in which Coleridge put forward this definition, the essays On Principles

of Genial Criticism (which Coleridge thought ‗the best things he had ever written‘), he traced

it back to Pythagoras: ‗The safest definition, then, of Beauty, as well as the oldest, is that of

Pythagoras: THE REDUCTION OF MANY TO ONE.‘

5. Pope was near the end of his career, and his friends Gay and Arbuthnot were already dead,

when he published these lines in 1737. (They expand a thought from Horace, and his

surviving friend Swift was particularly moved by them.) Twenty-five years earlier, as a

young man in The Rape of the Lock, Pope had pictured the mill as a happy symbol in the

ritual of the coffee-table.

For lo! the Board with Cups and Spoons is crown‘d,

The Berries crackle, and the Mill turns round.

As the eighteenth century moved on, the image of the mill become more menacing the minds

of poets, until Blake in 1804 wrote of ‗dark Satanic Mills.‘ In part the change kept step with

the progress of the Industrial Revolution, which Blake, for example, felt very sensitively. But

in the main what the romantic poets feared was the new vision of nature as a machine, which

Newton‘s great reputation had imposed. Blake meant by the Satanic Mills not a factor but the

imperturbable cosmic mechanism which was now imagined to drive the planets round their

orbits. Blake used the words abstract, Newtonian and Satanic with the same meaning, to

describe a machinery that seemed to him opposed to organic life. (so John Constable said of a

painting which he despised, ‗Such things are marvelous and so is watchmaking.‘) Goethe,

who did original work in biology, also disliked Newton‘s view of science; like other poets of

the time, he felt that it turned the world into a clockwork. Yet at the same time religious

apologists like William Paley in his Evidences of Christianity were using the same analogy to

prove that the world, like a clock, must have an intelligent designer. Thus the symbol of the

clockwork, and as T. S. Ashton has pointed out) a new sense of time in general, were critical

in the thought of those who lived through the Industrial Revoltion.

6. A literal translation is:

If ever I say to the present moment:

―Please stay! You are so beautiful!‖

Then you may cast me in fetters,


Then I will gladly perish!

Then let the death bell toll,

Then you are released from your service.

Let the clock stop, let the hand fall,

Let time be at an end for me!

The greatest satire of the First World War, Karl Kraus‘s Die Letaten Tage der Menschheit,

contains a moving echo of these lines, which bears on what I have written in the preceding

note. In one poem Kraus describes the machine-made murders of modern war as observed by

a man Mit der Uhr in der Hand—that is, watch in hand. I quote two verses.

Dort ist ein Mörser. Ihm entrinnt der arme Mann,

der ihn erfand. Er schützt sich in dem Graben.

Weil Zwerge Risesn überwältigt haben,

seht her die Uhr die Zeit zum Stehem bringen kann!

Wie viel war‘s an der Zeit, also jenes jetzt geschah?

Schlecht sieht das Aug, das giftige Fase beizen.

Doch hört das Ohr, die Uhr schlug eben dreizehn.

Unsichtig Wetter kommt, der Untergang ist nah.

A literal translation is:

There is a mortar, From it escapes the writeched man

who invented it. He takes refuge in the trench.

Because dwarfs have overpowered giants,

behold, the clock can bring time to a stop!

What time was it when this was happening now?

The eye sees poorly that is etched by poison gases.

But the ear hears, the clock just struck thirteen.

Misty weather is coming, destruction is near.

The same image of the ticking clockwork haunted me when I visited refugee camps after

another war, in 1947; and I wrote,

The voice of God that spoke and struck

Was the cuckoo in the clock.

The exiles in the garden heard

The engine tremble in the bid,

Sobbing throat and iron bill:

Time on his springy wheel stood still.

Time began and time runs down.

The voices in the garden drown.

No God from his machine unhands

The exile with a mouth of sand.

The clockwork cuckoo on the hill,

Abrupt and wheeling, stoops to kill.

7. This verse comes from the poem ‗Vacillation,‘ and I have quoted it as Yeats first printed it,

for example in The Winding Stair and other poems. In his Collected Poems soon after, Yeats

left out the word or in the second line. No doubt the change improves the meter; but since I


am here concerned with the contrast between the two images in Yeats‘s mind, I have given

his original text.

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