S
spockrates
Guest
Detales:
There’s a story of the American writer Mark Twain and his wife. His wife was often calm and lady-like, but one day she got so angry with him, she started cursing like a sailor. Mark Twain looked amused, which made her more angry, so she cursed more. Twain started chuckling, which made her angrier still, and she cursed louder. He then broke out into a roaring laughter.
“What do you think you’re laughing at?” she asked.
“Lady,” he said with a smile, “you’ve got the words right, but you just don’t know the tune!”
The story illustrates the picture Socrates was trying to paint for his friend–that there is a kind of an art, and even a science, to understanding the written word. If one is trying to learn something new, the way to do it is to just do it–to discuss it with those who know and apply it to one’s life. It’s not always enough to merely read, for if one does not understand what one reads, reading it over and over won’t help. Like the painting, it does not explain itself and cannot help you understand if you don’t. The melody of truth requires a lover of music who can appreciate it. As Jesus Christ often repeated:
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
(Mark 4:9)
And speaking of art–specifically the art of music–you’re playing my song! I believe your thoughts are actually harmonious with those of Socrates, at least as far as I understand them. And I suppose you would not disagree with Socrates when he said:
Would a sensible farmer, who cared about his seeds and wanted them to yield fruit, plant them in all seriousness in the Adonis in the middle of the summer and enjoy watching them bear fruit in seven days? … Wouldn’t he use his knowledge of farming to plant the seeds he cared for when it was appropriate and be content if they bore fruit seven months later? Now what about the man who knows what is just, noble, and good? Shall we say that he is less sensible with the seeds than the farmer is with his? Certainly not! … But it is much nobler to be serious about these matters, and use the art of dialect. The dialectician chooses a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge–discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it as happy as any human being can be.
(Phaedrus 276-277)
And what Socrates says sheds new light to me on Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seeds, where He (a few hundred years after Socrates) says this:
“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
(Matthew 13:18-23)
