Part 16 (2/2)
It is one of the marvelous pheno, without deter li being has its ”form” and ”stature,”
unlike the minerals, which are indefinite in form and dimensions, is repeated in the psychical life Its develop but a deterressive ”concentration”; it is thus that froradually shaped and chiselled
The capacity for for, has always this foundation When, after having noted the usual qualities of a colueneral truth that the column is a support, this synthetic idea is based upon a selected quality Thus in the judgment we may pronounce: colu the many others we could have adduced, as, columns are cold, they are hard, they are a composition of carbonate of lime, etc It is only the capacity for such a selection whichpossible When, for exaoras, children handle the various pieces of the metal insets, they should start frole is equal to the rhomb, and a square is equal to the same rhomb It is the perception of this truth which : therefore the square and the rectangle are equal to each other If it had not been possible to determine this attribute, the mind could not have arrived at any conclusion Thean attribute coures; and it is this discovery which may lead to a series of conclusions by oras will be finally demonstrated
Now, as in the case of will, decision presupposes a methodical exercise of the impulsive and inhibitory forces, only to be performed by the individual himself, until habits have been established, so in case of the intelligence, the individual must exercise hiuided and aided by external means, until he has developed, by the definitive elimination of certain ideas and the choice of others, ”mental habits” characteristic of the individual, characteristic of the ”type” Because, underlying all the internal activities the mind can construct, there is, as the phenomena of attention show us, the individual tendency, the ”nature”
There is, undoubtedly, a funda the reasoning of others, and being able ”to reason,”
between learning how an artistinterest in color, har the external world about a fulcrum which sustains one's own aesthetical creation In the s of others” weover the shoulders of a hawker, solutions of the problees of Raphael's works, ideas of history and geography, and rules of style, huddled together with a like indifference and a like sensation of ”weight” While, on the other hand, he who uses all these things for his own life, is like the person who is assisted in attaining his oelfare, his own relief, his own comfort by those same objects which are merely burdens when in the sack of the hawker
Such objects are, however, no longer huddled together without order and without purpose in a closed bag, but set out in the spacious rooms of a well-ordered house The reat deal e are heaped up as in the bag; and in that mind, as in the house, the objects are clearly divided one froed, and distinctive in their uses
Between ”understanding” because another person seeks to i by speech, and ”understanding” the thing of ourselves, there is an immeasurable distance; the two are comparable to the impression made in soft hich will subsequently be effaced and replaced by other impressions, and the form chiselled in the marble by an artist, as his creation He who understands of himself has an unforeseen impression; he feels that his consciousness has been liberated, and so lu, then, is not a _; so of a life which renews itself within us Perhaps no emotion is more fruitful for man than the intellectual emotion He who reatest of huets a lofty enjoyment which will rise superior to and overco Indeed, he who is oppressed by a ht to differentiate his own case from that of another, or to see a reason for his affliction, experiences relief, and a ”sense of salvation” Aed, a consoling ray of intellectual light has reached him The difficult matter, indeed, is to find the way of escape in the hour of darkness When we reflect that a dog rave of his rave of her only son, we see at once that it is the light of _reason_ which_cannot reason on the ht can penetrate the darkness of its intelligence to overcoht of a universal justice, the living memory of the lost one which reetfulness, which alone can save the anience establishes with the universe, restores cal soul Such comfort could never be derived fro the theory of a savant who is not in syive ourselves a reason,” ”to derive strength froence should be left at liberty to perform its work of reconstruction and salvation
Now if intelligence in ”coer of death, what a source of enjoyment it should prove toof the mind,” we mean a creative phenomenon, which is not the weak result of an i of the reat emotions, and which is therefore felt as a spiritual event
I once knew a irl, as soof her school, that she had beco the things which were taught her Her life of solitude, lacking in natural affection, was a further aggravation of her ue Her father decided that she should live for a year or two in the open country like a little savage; he then brought her back to town, and placed her under the private direction of a nuirl studied and learned, but remained passive and weary Every now and then her father would say: ”Is your irl always replied: ”I do not know What do you irl was confided to my sole care; and it was thus that I, when I was still a ic experih it would be worthy of interest One day ere together and when she was at work on organic che eyes, said: ”Here it is now! I _do_ understand!” She then got up and went away, calling out aloud: ”Father, father! My irl's history, was astonished and agitated She had taken her father's hand, and was saying: ”Now I can tell you, yes, yes; I did not knohat it hter and their union at that s of life which we destroy by enslaving the intelligence
Indeed, every intellectual conquest is a wellspring of joy to our free children This is the ”pleasure” to which they are now most susceptible, and whichtasted of this that; our little ones despise sweetmeats, toys, and vanities
It is this which makes them sublime to the eyes of those who contemplate theuish man frorief and darkness
When it is made a reproach to our method that it seeks to promote the ”pleasure” of the child, and that this is immoral, it is the child and not the method which is insulted For the essence of this reproach is the caluainst the child, who is considered by all as on a level with the beasts, and whose ”pleasure” is supposed to lie solely in gluttony and idleness, and worse But none of these could keep the child's ”pleasure” alive for hours and days and years It is only when he has laid hold on ”humane pleasure” that he persists in it, and lives with a joy which is coirl who ran to her father to proclaiuished for years
May it not perhaps be that those ”crises,” which are to-day but the intellectual illuenius when it discovers a truth, represent a natural phenoenius be but the orous life,” saved from perils by its exceptional individuality, and therefore itself alone capable of revealing the true nature of man?
His type would then be the coree, would seem to be of the same ”species” The paths the child follows in the active ”construction” of his individuality are indeed identical with those followed by the genius His characteristics are absorbed attention, a profound concentration which isolates him from all the stimuli of his environment, and corresponds in intensity and duration to the developenius, this concentration is not without results, but is the source of intellectual crises, of rapid internal developments, and, above all, of an ”external activity” which expresses itself in work
We enius is the man who has burst his bonds asunder, who has maintained his liberty, and who has upheld before the eyes of the multitude the standard of the humanity conquered by him
Nearly all the manifestations of those e of their times are to be noted in our children Such, for instance, is that sublime ”spiritual obedience,”
at present still unknown to the majority of mankind, with the exception of nize it only in theory, and conteain are thoseinternal life which form part of the preparation for the cloistered life in the methodical ”meditations” of those about to enter upon it
No persons, with the exception of uish ”
intellectually We know, for exareat number of books consecutively, dissipates our powers and our capacity for thought; and that to learn a piece of poetry by heart raven on our minds: and that all this is not ”meditation”
He who commits a verse of Dante to ospel, performs a totally different task The canto will ”adorn” the mind on which it is i trace upon it The verse which has been the subject ofeffect He who meditates clears his e, and tries to concentrate upon the subject of meditation in such a manner that all the internal activities will be polarised thereby: or, as the monks say, ”all the powers of the mind”