BORROWING FOR KNOWLEGE
BORROWING FOR KNOWLEGE
By Dr. Dimitri Karalis.
If we carefully observe the
parasitic insects and other microscopic beetles in nature, we realise
that all borrow food from bigger creatures for their nourishment and
growth. Fleas, lice, mosquitoes, ticks, leeches and many others, suck blood
where and whenever it is given occasion. The same phenomenon continues also in
the vegetable kingdom; Convolvulus, Ivy, beans, tomato and lots of other
creepers, need external support for their growth and survival.
In bookshops and libraries we observe
humans doing similar things. All search patiently among old
and new pages to abstract new ideas for their intellectual growth. Every free intellectual thinker becomes a
torchbearer in the stride for spiritual freedom. We all borrow something from
somewhere to re-synthesize it afterwards to our likeness. Like the honey bee
that sucks only flower water and synthesises it into sweetest nectar in their
hive later.
“This is our supreme aim, said the
writer Nikos Kazantzakis, to shoulder our ancestor’s heritage renewable and
better forwards forever”. It is not enough to reproduce our race forward like
in lower animals, but also to progress it intellectually and spiritually forwards.
“He who borrows from a similar
thinker, said Burke, he doubles his own and he who borrows from his superior,
rise intellectually to level with his lender”. Knowledge is free for everyone,
only it requires an awakened perception and a ceaseless yearning to be harvested. Nothing is completely new, but they are rekindled
coals from the forgotten past. Every new idea is a renewable old copy of continuation.
Like the primitive wooden plough that developed slowly into mechanical tractor
today. All of us carry some ancestral
idea and it is our sacred duty to pass it, updated to future generations.
When we read Plato, we discover
the thoughts of previous philosophers, Heraclitos, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and
Socrates, much riper for better digestion. When we read the Christian bible, we see the
platonic theory reformatted into religious dogma. When we read thinkers like
Rabelais and Montainge, we discover the charming thoughts of the biographer
Plutarch. The strong borrow bravely and dress it with their personal colour for
future consumption. Progress, means, to re-synthesize the past with the present
and to forward it bettered for the future generations that follow. Every judicious thinker carries with him a private
library, and when we read their chiselled thoughts, we ask ourselves with
admiration, “I wonder which worthy books ripened their mental cells so profoundly?”
Like when we look at the temple Parthenon and wish to meet its architects, Kallikratis,
Ictinos and Phidias.
“Libra thesaurus anima” said the
Romans, “books are treasures of the soul”. Without books today, mankind would
be undeveloped almost in a primitive state. Books are the mental archives for
every human to learn and add something new of his own. If Heaven has no books
at all, not every thinker wishes happily to inhabit there. What business has the bee in the deadly
dessert? When the sterile sand doesn’t
offer a drop of flower-water to convert into delicious honey?
Reading offers mental wealth, writing, literal precision
and speech expressive readiness.
We read to learn, we write to
precise and we talk to express.
We are valuated how we think; we
appreciated what good we have written and loved how eloquently we speak. When we open our mouth we reveal at the same time
our intellectual level.
Once a senseless flatterer
talking to Aristotle, stopped suddenly when he observed the apathy into
philosopher’s face, sorry; master, he said, it seems that my longish speech has
tired you a little, by no means, answered Aristotle, I wasn’t listening to your
speech.
Isn’t our mental ripeness a
dignified virtue and best intellectual nourishment to better humanity?
-
Hermanus-South
Africa
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