This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We must conclude that education is not what it is said to be by some, who profess to put into a soul knowledge that was not there before - rather as if they could but sight into blind eyes. On the contrary, our argument indicates that this is a capacity which is innate in each man’s soul, and that the faculty by which he learns is like an eye which cannot be turned from darkness to light unless the whole body is turned; in the same way the entire soul must be turned away from this world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and at the brightest of all realities which we have called the Good.
Argument | Body | Capacity | Change | Darkness | Education | Good | Knowledge | Light | Man | Reality | Soul | World |
[In the cave allegory] those whose who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.
Difficulty | Duty | Light | Man | Nothing | Philosophy | Regard | Time | Truth | Will |
My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.
Effort | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Lord | Opinion | Power | Public | Reason | Right | Truth | World | Parent |
Education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions. What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes… But our present argument indicates that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body.
Argument | Body | Darkness | Education | Knowledge | Light | People | Power | Present | Reality | Soul | Vision |
Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul.
Body | God | Light | Men | Perfection | Soul | Truth | God |
Knowledge is the knowing that we can not know. The dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers. How respectable is earnestness on every platform! but intellect kills it.
Earnestness | Knowing | Knowledge | Light | Intellect |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
To be loved means to be consumed. To love is to give light with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet, for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe.
Beauty | Cheerfulness | Grace | Joy | Light | Man | Obligation | Spirit | Universe | Virtue | Virtue | Woman | World | Beauty |
I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor or difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light and in large relations, whilst they must make painful corrections and keep vigilant eye on many sources of error.
The idiot, the Indian, the child, and the unschooled farmer's boy stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. From within or from behind a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
Is not prayer also a study of truth – a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought, shall at the same time kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation.
God | Learning | Light | Man | Object | Prayer | Science | Soul | Study | Thought | Time | Truth | Will | God |