Wisdom
THE DISTRIBUTION OF WISDOM
Experience, in all ages, and in all countries, has demonstrated
that it is impossible to control Nature in her distribution of mental
powers. She gives them as she pleases. Whatever is the rule by which
she, apparently to us, scatters them among mankind, that rule remains
a secret to man. It would be as ridiculous to attempt to fix the
hereditaryship of human beauty, as of wisdom.
Whatever wisdom constituently is, it is like a seedless plant; it
may be reared when it appears, but it cannot be voluntarily
produced. There is always a sufficiency somewhere in the general mass
of society for all purposes; but with respect to the parts of
society, it is continually changing its place. It rises in one to-day,
in another to-morrow, and has most probably visited in rotation every
family of the earth, and again withdrawn.
As this is the order of nature, the order of government must
necessarily follow it, or government will, as we see it does,
degenerate into ignorance.
THOMAS PAINE
THE LIGHT OF WISDOM
The submission of the soul to the Light of its being is imaged in
Hindu mythology in the figure of Radha as she awaits the coming of
her lover, Krishna, even as Mary received the angel of the
Annunciation. For the Light loves the soul that is open to it, and
our human love, even for the Master most dear to us, is partial and
possessive until it is wholly infused with this Light of Wisdom. A
Divinity which did not evoke love from us, and not merely as a
spiritual hunger for some formless universal, but by Its adorable
presence in the minute and concrete particulars of our daily life,
would, indeed, be unreal. But equally unreal is the love which seizes
on the particular and in whatever degree, wrests it out of the
keeping of the universal to cherish and cage it in its own private
hands.
Down the ages the Great Masters have revealed to men what it is
to be a Son of God, a being who radiates the Light of wisdom and the
power of love with a redeeming intensity. Each of them reveals to
mankind a new dimension of human experience, a new possibility of
integrating being and awareness.
HUGH I'ANSON FAUSSET
