“We can …pursue knowledge as such, and beauty as
such, in the sure confidence that be so doing we are either advancing to the
vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping others to do so. Humility, no
less than the appetite, encourages us to concentrate simply on the knowledge or
the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to
the vision of God. That relevance may not be intended for us but for our
betters– for men who came after and find the spiritual significance of what we
dug out in blind and humble obedience to our vocation. The intellectual life is
not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it
may be the appointed road for us. Of course it will be so only so long as we
keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty.”—
Christian apologist and novelist C.
S. Lewis (1898-1963), “Learning in War-Time,”
preached at St. Mary the Virgin Church, Oxford, Oct. 22, 1939
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