Knowledge and love are both indefinitely extensible; therefore, however
good a life may be, a better life can be imagined. Neither love without
knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life. In the
Middle Ages, when pestilence appeared in a country, holy men advised
the population to assemble in churches and pray for deliverance; the
result was that the infection spread with extraordinary rapidity among
the crowded masses of supplicants. This was an example of love without
knowledge. The late War afforded an example of knowledge without love.
In each case, the result was death on a large scale.
Although both love and knowledge are necessary, love is in a sense more
fundamental, since it will lead intelligent people to seek knowledge,
in order to find out how to benefit those whom they love. But if people
are not intelligent, they will be content to believe what they have
been told, and may do harm in spite of the most genuine benevolence.
Medicine affords, perhaps, the best example of what I mean. An able
physician is more useful to a patient than the most devoted friend,
and progress in medical knowledge does more for the health of the
community than ill-informed philanthropy. Nevertheless, an element of
benevolence is essential even here, if any but the rich are to profit
by scientific discoveries.
Love is a word which covers a variety of feelings; I have used it
purposely, as I wish to include them all. Love as an emotion――which
is what I am speaking about, for love “on principle” does not seem to
me genuine――moves between two poles: on the one side, pure delight in
contemplation; on the other, pure benevolence. Where inanimate objects
are concerned, delight alone enters in: we cannot feel benevolence
towards a landscape or a sonata. This type of enjoyment is presumably
the source of art. It is stronger, as a rule, in very young children
than in adults, who are apt to view objects in a utilitarian spirit. It
plays a large part in our feelings towards human beings, some of whom
have charm and some the reverse, when considered simply as objects of
aesthetic contemplation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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