Chapter 44 of 48 · Students of Liberty by Leonard E. Read
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Lacking these pre-conditions, and in the absence of the understanding they presage, there cannot be that requisite sense of discrimination essential to distinguishing between freedom and restraint, between the principle of love and the principle of violence, between educational methods which will work and those which will fail. Lacking this understanding a person has no way of even knowing where to turn for guidance. * He is lost in this field and might better seek refuge in silence and inaction, that not to-be-envied sanctuary where one's destiny is in the hands of others. Search Here In searching for students of liberty, the search must be within ourselves. In the world of persons it is only within *Evidence of this bewilderment is the oft-heard statement: "But I haven't time to read a fraction of the stuff that comes across my desk." Of course not. No discriminating person reads everything, any more than one eats a dinner at every restaurant. This same person would make no such remark concerning a subject with which he had famili arity. Imagine a successful manufacturer saying, with a note of despair: "But I can't possibly use all the inventions submitted to me." Only the uninitiated would say a thing like that.
54 each of us that the unexplored areas exist. The best ex plorer of one's self is one's self. It is not possible to impart to others that which we do not possess. The most we can do is to make known a willingness to share what we have discovered by our own thinking, or what we find edifying from recorded thinking. Whether or not what we offer is, in fact, shared, is beyond our power, and we should realize this. It is conceded that the student attitude, this search within ourselves, may at times appear unrewarding. But, if the understanding of liberty is to be advanced, the at tempt must be persisted in, regardless of its seeming ex travagance in time and effort. A statement ascribed to Christ is heartening if one will think of Him in the symbolic terms of ultimate truth and infinite goodness, and of our own weaknesses and inabilities as weeds and brambles, and of our own rare virtues and abilities as fertile ground: Presently the Master appeared on the steps of the Synagogue and began to speak. It was immediately obvious that he had been aware of the rudeness of the crowd - and deplored it. He had been appointed, he said, to offer a way of salvation to the world; and that meant everybody. In a task so great as this, no prudent thought could be taken about the cost of it or the waste of it. His mission, he said, was to sow the seed of good will among men in the hope of an eventual harvest of peace. Much of this seed would be squandered. Some of it would fall among weeds and brambles where it would have no chance at all to grow, but the sower could not pause or look back to lament this extravagance. Some of the seed would fall upon stony ground where there was very little soil to nourish it and the tender plants would soon wither and die; but 55 the sower must not be dismayed. Some of the life-giving grain would grow! Some of it would find friendly lodging in fertile ground! * On Savingthe World Another seemingly unrewarding, and to some a disap pointing aspect of the student approach is that it reduces the chance of "saving the world" to the saving of only one person - one's self. But it has its compensation: A person with this philosophy receives satisfaction from any increases in his own perception and, consequently, is not dismayed with the "faults" of others. Actually, there is no other way to "save the world."
Students of Liberty
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