Doors in the Wall 5 May, 2008

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the Only Wise. This they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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Literary or scientific, liberal or specialist, all our education is predominantly verbal and therefore
fails to accomplish what it is supposed to do. Instead of transforming children into fully developed
adults, it turns out students of the natural sciences who are completely unaware of Nature as the primary fact of experience, it inflicts upon the world students of the humanities who know nothing of humanity,
their own or anyone else’s.

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The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception