Knowledge and Wisdom
Most people would agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages
in knowledge, there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. But agreement
ceases as soon as we attempt to define `wisdom' and consider means of promoting
it. I want to ask first what wisdom is, and then what can be done to teach it.
There are, I think, several factors that
contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first a sense of proportion: the
capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to attach
to each its due weight. This has become more difficult than it used to be owing
to the extent and complexity fo the specialized knowledge required of various
kinds of technicians. Suppose, for example, that you are engaged in research
in scientific medicine. The work is difficult and is likely to absorb the whole
of your intellectual energy. You have not time to consider the effect which
your discoveries or inventions may have outside the field of medicine. You succeed
(let us say), as modern medicine has succeeded, in enormously lowering the infant
death-rate, not only in Europe and America, but also in Asia and Africa. This
has the entirely unintended result of making the food supply inadequate and
lowering the standard of life in the most populous parts of the world. To take
an even more spectacular example, which is in everybody's mind at the present
time: You study the composistion of the atom from a disinterested desire for
knowledge, and incidentally place in the hands of powerful lunatics the means
of destroying the human race. In such ways the pursuit of knowledge may becorem
harmful unless it is combined with wisdom; and wisdom in the sense of comprehensive
vision is not necessarily present in specialists in the pursuit of knowledge.
Comprehensiveness alone, however, is not
enough to constitute wisdom. There must be, also, a certain awareness of the
ends of human life. This may be illustrated by the study of history. Many eminent
historians have done more harm than good because they viewed facts through the
distorting medium of their own passions. Hegel had a philosophy of history which
did not suffer from any lack of comprehensiveness, since it started from the
earliest times and continued into an indefinite future. But the chief lesson
of history which he sought to unculcate was that from the year 400AD down to
his own time Germany had been the most important nation and the standard-bearer
of progress in the world. Perhaps one could stretch the comprehensiveness that
contitutes wisdom to include not only intellect but also feeling. It is by no
means uncommon to find men whose knowledge is wide but whose feelings are narrow.
Such men lack what I call wisdom.
It is not only in public ways, but in
private life equally, that wisdom is needed. It is needed in the choice of ends
to be pursued and in emancipation from personal prejudice. Even an end which
it would be noble to pursue if it were attainable may be pursued unwisely if
it is inherently impossible of achievement. Many men in past ages devoted their
lives to a search for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. No doubt,
if they could have found them, they would have conferred great benefits upon
mankind, but as it was their lives were wasted. To descend to less heroic matters,
consider the case of two men, Mr A and Mr B, who hate each other and, through
mutual hatred, bring each other to destruction. Suppose you dgo the Mr A and
say, 'Why do you hate Mr B?' He will no doubt give you an appalling list of
Mr B's vices, partly true, partly false. And now suppose you go to Mr B. He
will give you an exactly similar list of Mr A's vices with an equal admixture
of truth and falsehood. Suppose you now come back to Mr A and say, 'You will
be surprised too learn that Mr B says the same things about you as you say about
him', and you go to Mr B and make a similar speech. The first effect, no doubt,
will be to increase their mutual hatred, since each will be so horrified by
the other's injustice. But perhaps, if you have sufficient patience and sufficient
persuasiveness, you may succeed in convincing each that the other has only the
normal share of human wickedness, and that their enmity is harmful to both.
If you can do this, you will have instilled some fragment of wisdom.
I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation,
as fat as possible, from the tyranny of the here and now. We cannot help the
egoism of our senses. Sight and sound and touch are bound up with our own bodies
and cannot be impersonal. Our emotions start similarly from ourselves. An infant
feels hunger or discomfort, and is unaffected except by his own physical condition.
Gradually with the years, his horizon widens, and, in proportion as his thoughts
and feelings become less personal and less concerned with his own physical states,
he achieves growing wisdom. This is of course a matter of degree. No one can
view the world with complete impartiality; and if anyone could, he would hardly
be able to remain alive. But it is possible to make a continual approach towards
impartiality, on the one hand, by knowing things somewhat remote in time or
space, and on the other hand, by giving to such things their due weight in our
feelings. It is this approach towards impartiality that constitutes growth in
wisdom.
Can wisdom in this sense be taught? And,
if it can, should the teaching of it be one of the aims of education? I should
answer both these questions in the affirmative. We are told on Sundays that
we should love our neighbors as ourselves. On the other six days of the week,
we are exhorted to hate. But you will remember that the precept was exemplified
by saying that the Samaritan was our neighbour. We no longer have any wish to
hate Samaritans and so we are apt to miss the point of the parable. If you wnat
to get its point, you should substitute Communist or anti-Communist, as the
case may be, for Samaritan. It might be objected that it is right to hate those
who do harm. I do not think so. If you hate them, it is only too likely that
you will become equally harmful; and it is very unlikely that you will induce
them to abandon their evil ways. Hatred of evil is itself a kind of bondage
to evil. The way out is through understanding, not through hate. I am not advocating
non-resistance. But I am saying that resistance, if it is to be effective in
preventing the spread of evil, should be combined with the greatest degree of
understanding and the smallest degree of force that is compatible with the survival
of the good things that we wish to preserve.
It is commonly urged that a point of view
such as I have been advocating is incompatible with vigour in action. I do not
think history bears out this view. Queen Elizabeth I in England and Henry IV
in France lived in a world where almost everybody was fanatical, either on the
Protestant or on the Catholic side. Both remained free from the errors of their
time and both, by remaining free, were beneficent and certainly not ineffective.
Abraham Lincoln conducted a great war without ever departing from what I have
called wisdom.
I have said that in some degree wisdom
can be taught. I think that this teaching should have a larger intellectual
element than has been customary in what has been thought of as moral instruction.
I think that the disastrous results of hatred and narrow-mindedness to those
who feel them can be pointed out incidentally in the course of giving knowledge.
I do not think that knowledge and morals ought to be too much separated. It
is true that the kind of specialized knowledge which is required for various
kinds of skill has very little to do with wisdom. But it should be supplemented
in education by wider surveys calculated to put it in its place in the total
of human activities. Even the best technicians should also be good citizens;
and when I say 'citizens', I mean citizens of the world and not of this or that
sect or nation. With every increase of knowledge and skill, wisdom becomes more
necessary, for every such increase augments our capacity of realizing our purposes,
and therefore augments our capacity for evil, if our purposes are unwise. The
world needs wisdom as it has never needed it before; and if knowledge continues
to increase, the world will need wisdom in the future even more than it does
now.
On
Denoting (1905)
Vagueness (1923)
Icarus
or The Future of Science (1924)
What is an Agnostic
Knowledge and
Wisdom
Why I am
not a Christian (06.03.1927)
In
Praise of Idleness (1932)
Of Co-Operation
(18.05.1932)
On Sales Resistance
(22.06.1932)
On Modern
Uncertainty (20.07.1932)
What is the Soul?
(28.09.1932)
On youthful
Cynism (1930)
Philosophical
Consequences of Relativity (1626)
On Astrologers
How
to become a Man of Genius
Education
and Disciple
What
Desires are politically important? (Speech at the Nobel Award, 11.12.1950)
Prolog to his Autobiography: What
I have lived for