part 23

220 Here are some of the greatest sayings of all time which, in one language or another, go on living in people's minds. For many centuries school children in China began to learn to read with this sentence: "Human nature is good." Mencius (4th century B.C.) From the Chung Yung (a later work of the school of Confucius): "What makes us is named our nature. What directs our nature is named the Way. What makes the Way possible is education."

221 From the Brihadaˉranyaka Upanishad (6th century B.C.): "Yaˉj.avalkya said, 'You cannot see the seer of seeing or hear the hearer of hearing or think the thinker of thought or know the knower. This is the Self. Your own Self lives in the hearts of all."' From the Apology of Socrates: "I do nothing, men of Athens, but go about telling you, young and old, not to care for your bodies or your property so much as for your souls." Socrates was speaking to the Athenians who were making up their minds to put him to death. Socrates (469–399 B.C.) was the first man to talk of the soul (psyche) in the sense in which we have used the word since then.

222 At first, writing seems to have been chiefly a way of keeping records. The first great poems, the Iliad, for example, were in the minds and mouths of poet after poet before they were written down. The teachings of Buddha and of Mencius, Confucius and the earlier Hebrews were given first by the spoken word and written down later by some who heard them. Socrates, though he used books, thought that teaching should be by word of mouth and by example. And Jesus taught only by what he said and did and was. Later, the written word was to become the chief instrument through which we could try to understand ourselves and our world.

223 It is chiefly through reading, and through thought about what we read, that we come to see how our ideas depend upon one another—very much as we are dependent upon others, or as organs in our bodies are interdependent. Through reading and reflection we can learn to know ourselves. Reflect for a while on these words of Shakespeare. Thinking, he says, "…turns not to itself Till it has traveled and is mirror'd there Where it may see itself." Some very good students of Shakespeare think that he wrote married, not mirror'd in line 110.

224 Every idea with which we reflect is what it is and can do what it can do only because our other organs of thought are what they are and do their own work. The parts of this bridge do what they do only because the other parts of it are there and are doing their work. And this is equally true of the words in a language. Every word is able to work as it does only because other words work with it. In every step we take, what any of our muscles can do depends on what our other muscles are doing, and all this is possible only because our nerve cells are in control. And nerve cells can work together well only if the blood is serving them well.

225 And the blood can serve them well only if the heart is in good order and if the lungs are taking in enough oxygen; and the heart and lungs in turn are dependent on the food the stomach can give the blood stream and on the control the nervous system can keep up over all the organs of the body.