In different men the impulse to know bears different relationships to the
rest of life. It sometimes seems self-impelled, and again palpably
inspired by a motive beyond itself. In some form, however, it winds itself
into every action of our mental faculties, and no province of life appears
untouched by this craving of the mind. Nevertheless to know is not the
whole matter; for with knowledge comes appetition or aversion, admiration
or contempt, love or abhorrence; and other impulses--emotional,
desiderative, loving--impel the human creature to realize its nature in
states of heightened consciousness that are not palpable modes of knowing,
though they may be replete with all the knowledge that the man has gained.
These ultimate cravings which we recognize in ourselves, inspired
mediaeval thought. Its course, its progress, its various phases, its
contents and completed systems, all represent the operation of human
faculty pressing to expression and realization under the accidental or
“historical” conditions of the mediaeval period. We may be sure that many
kinds of human craving and corresponding faculty realized themselves in
mediaeval philosophy, theology, piety and mysticism--the last a word used
provisionally, until we succeed in resolving it into terms of clearer
significance. And we also note that in these provinces, realization is
expression. Every faculty, every energy, in man seeks to function, to
realize its power in act. The sheer body--if there be sheer body--acts
bodily, operates, and so makes actual its powers. But those human energies
which are informed with mind, realize themselves in ardent or rational
thought, or in uttered words, or in products of the artfully devising
hand. All this clearly is expression, and corresponds, if it is not one
and the same, with the passing of energy from potency to the actuality
which is its end and consummation. Thus love, seeking its end, thereby
seeks expression, through which it is enhanced, and in which it is
realized. Likewise, impelled by the desire to know, the faculties of
cognition and reason realize themselves in expression; and in expression
each part of rational knowledge is clarified, completed, rendered
accordant with the data of observation and the laws or necessities of the
mind.
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