part 24

230 In every sentence you write, the feed-back from the letters of any word you are writing, together with your knowledge of the spelling of the word, tells you which letter to write next. But feed-back can do this only because you fed forward that word and no other as the word you would write. And in writing any sentence, feed-back from the words you have written can tell you what to write next only because you fed forward that sentence. And you fed forward that sentence only because of a more general feed-forward, the purpose of the paragraph in which the sentence is to take part. And the paragraph too depends upon the chapter and the chapter on the book. "General"? What does this word mean? Each of these circles as they go out from YOU represents a more general idea than all that is within.

231 Every breath we take is controlled by feed-forward and feed-back. If you want to be heard at the back of the room you take a deeper breath as you speak. And why do you want to be heard? What part does what you have to say take in your larger purposes, and in the larger purposes still in which you take part? Before life came up out of the sea, it seems probable that there was no free oxygen or carbon dioxide in what is now the air. The gases necessary for life on land were put into the air, scientists think, little by little by living things themselves. What over-all purpose is there of which all our purposes are parts? Here is a rough copy of one of the greatest works of William Blake (1757–1827). It represents Design at work beginning to give order to the world.

232 John Amos Comenius (1592–1670) was, so far as we know, the first man to use pictures in books written for beginning readers and for beginners in a second language. (It was Latin.) He was to have been the first head of Harvard College, where this book is being written, but could not come. Comenius began his reader, Orbis Pictus (Nürnberg, 1657), with this picture. The teacher is saying: "Come, Boy, learn to be wise." And the boy asks: "What does this mean, to be wise?" The teacher answers: "To understand rightly, to do rightly and to speak out rightly all that is necessary."

233 The teacher gives the boy an answer though he knows that no one can become wise all in a minute. All our lives through, we go on learning how to understand rightly, to do what is right, and to speak out at the right time. See the size of the question the boy is asking! In this book we have not tried to give any answers, but only to bring together some of the more important ideas and facts needed if we are to ask ourselves what we should know and think and feel and desire and do. To have been wise is to have known, thought, felt, desired and done as was best. But there are many different ways of knowing, thinking, feeling, desiring and doing. Which are the best? That is the question. Our lives are our attempts to find an answer, and language is the most important of all our instruments for this purpose.