Preparing for Truth

Of course the task was not then completed. He had merely discovered what seemed to him to be the right formula. The answer to the problem was a matter of infinite quest. Little did he yet know about the nature of man; about the differences between true charity and police grants—the degrading doles collected and distributed by the force of government. Even less did he know about life in accord with the principles of love whereby the potentialities of men—in spirit and in energy—can be released from authority, as contrasted with life in accord with the principles of violence whereby energy and spirit are inhibited and suppressed; about how responsibility and authority in all tasks find their proper relationships only among free men; about poverty and criminality having most of their origin in the misuse of organized force.

He had, for the first time, a realization that his weakness had been in his own mental stagnation. He began, now, to think of himself as a person having capacities for intellectual evolution. It was in this manner that he set himself at the feet of Truth and thus, self-humbled, knew what Goethe had meant when he said of nature: “The man incapable of appreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.” He had resigned himself in order that Truth might resign herself to him. In short, he had qualified as a student—as one ready to search for Truth.

Now, his course was clear. He was in search of ideas that were at once morally clean, intellectually honest, economically sound, and spiritually elevating. There must be, he reasoned, pre-conditions to this search, certain attitudes and values which, if lived by and attended to, would facilitate this quest. He began to list the ones he recognized, with the acknowledgment of his own limitations to do so and with an awareness that there would be revisions as his understanding advanced.