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Is the mind divided - what 'parts' should I exercise more? Am I unaware of factors that influence my thinking? How is intellect growing? I need spontaneity more than reasoning? What kind and how hard is the task of thinking? Only the Genius is creative? Should I specialize, or rather strive after wholeness? Whose judgement of my work should I care about?
Emerson: The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art
From: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, XI: Intellect
We have little control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. By-and-by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have been, what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as we can, what we have beheld. As far as we can recall these ecstasies, we carry away in the ineffaceable memory, the result, and all men and all the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But the moment we cease to report, and attempt to correct and contrive, it is not truth... Read Complete
Cf. Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom | Emerson, Art and History | Joyce, Portrait of the Artist
