Volume 6 · The Unfinished Syllabus · Essay 216

Reason-Respecting Tendency

You may not know the name Reason-Respecting Tendency, but you know the thing. This page only introduces the two of you formally.

It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Watch a master carpenter teach an apprentice. He does not lecture; he lets the boy hold the wrong end of the saw until the wood itself becomes the teacher.

Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. You will meet this idea again this week, wearing different clothes. Now you will recognise it.