Wisdom

Our age we say, is inferior in Wisdom to any other, because it professes, more visibly every day, contempt for truth and justice, without which there can be no wisdom

Because our civilisation, built up of shams and appearances, is at best like a beautiful green morass, a bog, spread over a deadly quagmire

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This was written two hundred years ago before spin and lies in public life had really got going

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There are no prizes today for morality while there are prizes on any game or reality show for any amount of base behavior

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Our age while giving lip service to ideas of freedom is in truth an age of ferocious moral and mental slavery, the like of which has not been seen before

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A slavery to things and self, to one's own vices, social customs and ways

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A slavish dependence on things inanimate, to use and to serve

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This was also written two hundred years ago

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Where then is the Wisdom of our modern age?

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First though what is meant by the word wisdom

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The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false, and the second, to know that which is true

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So strong is human selfishness, that wherever there is the smallest personal interest at stake, there men become deaf and blind to the truth, as often consciously as not.

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Nor are many people capable of recognising the difference between men who are wise and those who only seem wise, the latter being chiefly regarded as such because they are very clever at blowing their own trumpet.

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Then we come to the problem that the truly wise today, as in days gone by, will conceal their wisdom

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Old philosophers such as Socrates and Rosecroix would proclaim that all they knew was that they knew nothing

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The two words wisdom and truth are synonymous terms, and that which is false or pernicious

cannot be wise

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This gives us the clue to wisdom and it is not something to be found very often on our modern world because so little is proven to be true

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Nature gives up her innermost secrets and imparts true wisdom only to him, who seeks truth for its own sake,, and who craves for knowledge in order to confer benefits on others, not on his own unimportant personality

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Few are those who consent to learn at such a heavy price and so small a benefit for themselves in prospect

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So the wise become rarer and rarer every century

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Wisdom becomes likewise rarer and rarer

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Like the melting snows and disappearing fish in the sea our world is changing in so many more ways than most realise, and the disappearance of wisdom is one such

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Without wisdom we are unlikely to survive our current and growing challenges

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And conversely without extreme challenges we are unlikely to listen to wisdom

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So maybe because of our current problems we will have the wit to search for wisdom

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Let us see how we behave as things get tougher.