The Love of Light and Learning…

Since reason and all the awareness within us, all tell us that men are immortal, the question comes: how should we use our time, what should we most try to acquire?

The answer calls for another question: What can we take with us when we leave this life; what can we take into eternity? – the record of our works; the love of loved ones; memory; knowledge; intelligence; our own indestructible identity – and the power to progress.

Since this is so, what men learn, what they think, how they live, what they are inside themselves, is of everlasting importance. And this places a premium on the pursuit of knowledge, on the love of learning, on storing true and timeless thoughts inside ourselves. This places less of a premium on mere things, and more on what we could carry with us – anywhere—wherever we went – even if we had to flee for our lives – even if we lost our lives.

This places a premium on learning, not as narrowly defined, not merely as academic credits and credentials, but learning in the largest, most sincere sense.

This places an obligation upon us to improve our minds, to seek truth, to live honestly, to keep well-balanced, and never to starve the spirit, never to pursue the search along too narrow lines, and never to be smugly satisfied, — but to feed each side of ourselves and acquire acquaintance with great truths, great books, great minds, great men; with things of mind and spirit, as well as the tangible physical factors – in short to seek out everything “…virtuous, lovely, or of good report of praiseworthy…” – to seek knowledge, and understanding for the present and for the everlastingness of life.

All this makes the love of learning and the love of life, not only an opportunity but and obligation.