§ XXVI. Therefore, with respect to knowledge, we are to reason and act
exactly as with respect to food. We no more live to know, than we live
to eat. We live to contemplate, enjoy, act, adore; and we may know all
that is to be known in this world, and what Satan knows in the other,
without being able to do any of these. We are to ask, therefore, first,
is the knowledge we would have fit food for us, good and simple, not
artificial and decorated? and secondly, how much of it will enable us
best for our work; and will leave our hearts light, and our eyes clear?
For no more than that is to be eaten without the old Eve-sin.
§ XXVII. Observe, also, the difference between tasting knowledge, and
hoarding it. In this respect it is also like food; since, in some
measure, the knowledge of all men is laid up in granaries, for future
use; much of it is at any given moment dormant, not fed upon or enjoyed,
but in store. And by all it is to be remembered, that knowledge in this
form may be kept without air till it rots, or in such unthreshed
disorder that it is of no use; and that, however good or orderly, it is
still only in being tasted that it becomes of use; and that men may
easily starve in their own granaries, men of science, perhaps, most of
all, for they are likely to seek accumulation of their store, rather
than nourishment from it. Yet let it not be thought that I would
undervalue them. The good and great among them are like Joseph, to whom
all nations sought to buy corn; or like the sower going forth to sow
beside all waters, sending forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass:
only let us remember that this is not all men's work. We are not
intended to be all keepers of granaries, nor all to be measured by the
filling of a storehouse; but many, nay, most of us, are to receive day
by day our daily bread, and shall be as well nourished and as fit for
our labor, and often, also, fit for nobler and more divine labor, in
feeding from the barrel of meal that does not waste, and from the cruse
of oil that does not fail, than if our barns were filled with plenty,
and our presses bursting out with new wine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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