A. D. Sertillanges on the intellectual life I
You will only succeed if you remember your great limits
A member of the Dominican order, Father A. D. Sertillanges was a French philosopher and spiritual writer, writing books on a wide range of subjects, including political thinking, art, moral philosophy, and the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. These lessons are taken from his book The Intellectual Life, which addresses “the management of the mind” and was published in 1921, when Sertillanges was 58. This is the first of two sets of quotes from the book.
I.
[W]e are obliged at a given moment to accept necessary sacrifices. It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others.
Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to the things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of homage to the truth. . . .
II.
The half-informed man is not the man who knows only the half of things, but the man who only half knows things. Know what you have resolved to know; cast a glance at the rest. Leave to God, who will look after it, what does not belong to your proper vocation. Do not be a deserter from yourself, through wanting to substitute yourself for all others.
III.
Do not be ashamed to know what you could only know at the cost of scattering your attention. Be humble about it, yes, for it shows our limitations; but to accept our limitations is a part of virtue and gives us a great dignity, that of the man who lives according to his law and plays his part.
We are not much, but we are part of a whole and we have the honor of being a part. What we do not do, we do all the same; God does it, our brethren do it, and we are with them in the unity of love.
IV.
The athletes of the mind, like those of the playing field, must be prepared for privations, long training, a sometimes superhuman tenacity. We must give ourselves from the heart, if truth is to give itself to us. Truth serves only its slaves.