The Gift of Fire | Page 7

schools,
and pass off as an "education" that would have startled Socrates, there
is nothing less than a great, pervading spirit of dullness and tedium, of
irksome but necessary labors directed completely toward the
consolidation of the mundane through the accumulation of the trivial.
In school, there is no solemnity, no reverence, no awe, no wonder. We
not only fail to claim, but refuse to claim, and would be ashamed to
claim that our proper business was with the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful, and that this business can be conducted not through arousing
pleasant feelings, but through working the mind. Thus it is that
education is exceedingly rare in schooling, and when it breaks out, it is
as the result of some happy accident, an accident that might have
befallen a prepared mind, or maybe any mind at all, just as readily in
the streets as in the schools.
Education makes music out of the noise that fills life. And from the
random and incessant background noise of what we suppose the
"mind," meaning really the appetites and sentiments, education weighs
and considers, draws forth and arranges, unites the distant with the near,
the familiar with the strange, and makes, by Reason, the harmonious
music that is Reason. If we can know anything at all about How to Live,
it is in Reason that we must seek it, for the only other possibility is to
seek it outside of Reason, in the disorder of noise. I am convinced that

Socrates is right, that anyone can make that search and decide, not what
the Meaning and Purpose of Life is, but what the meaning and purpose
of the searcher's life should be, and thus to live better.

The Square of the Hypotenuse
Who first called Reason sweet, I don't know. I suspect that he was a
man with very few responsibilities, no children to rear, and no payroll
to meet. An anchorite with heretical tendencies, maybe, or the idle
youngest son of a wealthy Athenian. The dictates of Reason are often
difficult to figure out, rarely to my liking, and profitable only by what
seems a happy but remarkably unusual accident. Mostly, Reason brings
bad news, and bad news of the worst sort, for, if it is truly the word of
Reason, there is no denying it or weaseling out of its demands without
simply deciding to be irrational. Thus it is that I have discovered, and
many others, I notice, have also discovered, all sorts of clever ways to
convince myself that Reason is "mere" Reason, powerful and right, of
course, but infinitely outnumbered by reasons, my reasons.
Let me give an example. Socrates often considered with his friends a
familiar but still vexing question: Which is better, to suffer an injustice
or to commit one? He brought them - and me too - to consider the
question in some new ways. Which, for instance, is uglier, the person
who suffers or the person who commits? Which person has surrendered
himself to the rule of injustice, and which person might still be able to
avoid it? Which might still be free to choose between the better and the
worse, and which not? Out of the consideration of such questions, and
countless others that flow from them, I know that it is better to suffer
an injustice than to commit one just as purely and absolutely as I know
about the square of the hypotenuse. If there were some acts possible to
me, some ways of living and doing, that could be based in principle on
my knowledge of the square of the hypotenuse, what a splendid fellow
I would be. In all my dealing with you, and with everybody, I would be
strictly on the square. I would no more cut a corner than a right angle
would decide, well, just for this once, to enlarge itself by just a little
degree or two, which the other angles could surely do without, and

which, after all, they might not even notice. Nevertheless, as certain as
I am by Reason that suffering injustice is better than doing it, my first
reaction to what I consider an injustice done to me is probably just the
same as yours. I hate it. I just can't wait to get even. And sometimes,
much to my satisfaction, I do. When I do, I call it Justice, not omitting
the capital.
So, for some reason with a small "r," I actually find it possible to hate
the conclusions of Reason, which would show me that I am all the
better off, as well as all the better, for keeping strictly on the receiving
end of injustice. From the point of view of Socrates, I guess, I might
just as wisely and sanely decide not to