Didascalicon, Book III: the art of study (discipline and method)
Chapter XIV. On humility
The beginning of discipline is humility, of which, though the lessons are many, these three especially pertain to the reader. First, that he hold no knowledge, no writing, in contempt; second, that he be not ashamed to learn from anyone; third, that when he has attained knowledge he not despise the rest. This has deceived many, that before the time they wish to seem wise. Hence they break out into a certain swelling of pride, so that they begin to pretend what they are not and to blush at what they are; and they recede the further from wisdom for this, that they wish not to be wise but to be thought so. I have known many of this sort, who, though they still lack the first elements, deign to be present only at the highest things, and think themselves made great from this alone, that they have read the writings, or heard the words, of great and wise men. We, they say, have seen them; we have read from them. They were wont often to speak to us. Those great ones, those famous ones, knew us. But would that no one knew me, and I knew everything! You boast of having seen Plato, not of having understood him; I think it unworthy of you henceforth to hear me. I am not Plato, nor have I deserved to see Plato; it suffices you, you have drunk from the very fountain of the philosophers, but would that you still thirsted! The king after golden cups drinks from an earthen vessel. Why do you blush? You have heard Plato; you will hear Chrysippus. It is said in the proverb: “What you do not know, perhaps the little ass knows.” There is no one to whom it is given to know all things, nor again anyone who has not happened to receive something special from nature. A prudent reader, therefore, gladly hears all, reads all, spurns no writing, no person, no doctrine. Without distinction he seeks from all what he sees he lacks; nor does he consider how much he knows, but how much he does not know. Hence they cite that saying of Plato: “I prefer to learn modestly what is another’s than to impudently thrust in what is mine.” Why are you ashamed to learn, and not ashamed to be ignorant? That shame is greater than this. Or why do you aim at the highest when you lie in the lowest? Consider rather what your strength can bear. He walks most fittingly who walks in order. Some, while they wish to make a great leap, fall into a precipice. Do not hasten too much, in this way you will reach wisdom sooner. Gladly learn from all what you do not know; for humility can make common to you what nature has made proper to each; you will be wiser than all if you are willing to learn from all. Those who receive from all are richer than all. Finally, hold no knowledge in contempt, for all knowledge is good. If there is leisure, despise no writing, or at least no law, for if you gain nothing you will lose nothing, especially since there is no writing, in my estimation, which does not set before us something to be desired, if it is treated in a fitting place and order; which has not also something special, which the diligent searcher of words may pluck, not found elsewhere, the more welcome the rarer. Nothing, however, is good that takes away something better. If you cannot read everything, read what is more useful; even if you could read everything, the same labor is not to be spent on all; but some things are to be read that they may not be unknown, some only that they may not be unheard of, because we sometimes believe that to be worth more which we have not heard, and a thing is more easily esteemed whose fruit is known. You can now see how necessary to you this humility is, that you despise no knowledge and gladly learn from all. Likewise it is expedient for you also, when you have begun to know something, not to despise the rest. This vice of swelling comes upon some from this, that they inspect their own knowledge too carefully, and when they have seemed to themselves to be something, they think that others whom they have not known are not and could not have become such. Hence also it boils up that certain triflers, boasting I know not whence, accuse the earlier fathers of simplicity and believe that wisdom was born with them and will die with them. In the divine utterances, they say, the manner of speaking is so simple that there is no need to hear masters in them; that each can by his own talent penetrate the secrets of truth. They wrinkle the nose and twist the mouth at the readers of divinity, and do not understand that they do injury to God, whose words they proclaim to be indeed beautifully simple in name, but insipid in a perverted sense. It is not my counsel to imitate such. For a good reader ought to be humble and meek, altogether alien from empty cares and the allurements of pleasures, diligent and sedulous, that he may gladly learn from all, never flee from a thing as though it were poison, learn to turn a matter over a long time before he judges, not seek to seem learned but to be so, and study always to hold the sayings of the wise, once understood, before his eyes, like the mirror of his face. And if by chance more obscure things do not admit his understanding, let him not at once break out in reproach, believing nothing good except what he himself has been able to understand. This is the humility of discipline in readers.