Dant\u00e8s: \u201cYou must teach me a small part of what you know\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Faria: \u201cAlas! my child, . . . human knowledge is confined within very narrow limits; and when I have taught you mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four modern languages with which I am acquainted, you will know as much as I do myself.\u00a0 Now, it will scarcely require two years for me to communicate to you the stock of learning I possess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dant\u00e8s: \u201cTwo years!…Do you really believe I can acquire all these things in so short a time?\u201d<\/p>\n
Faria: \u201cNot their application, certainly, but their principles you may; to learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dant\u00e8s:\u00a0 \u201cBut can I not learn philosophy as well as other things?\u201d<\/p>\n
Faria:\u00a0 \u201cMy son, philosophy, as I understand it, it reducible to no rules by which it can be learned; it is the amalgamation of all the sciences, the golden cloud which bears the soul to heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
(The Count of Monte Cristo<\/a>, page 195)<\/p>\n Interesting commentary on education.\u00a0 Faria believes that he can teach the principles of knowledge in two years, but that learning their application will take longer.\u00a0 Memory makes learners, and philosophy makes the learned.\u00a0 If he had expressed this in three stages instead of two, I would say he was expressing the medieval Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.\u00a0 Memory would certainly refer to the grammar stage, and philosophy might combine logic and rhetoric.<\/p>\n “To learn is not to know.”\u00a0 How easy it is to think we have “learned” something because we have been exposed to its principles.\u00a0 But Faria suggests\u2014rightly, I think\u2014that we do not truly know something until we have learned its application, until we have applied philosophy to it.\u00a0 I am not positive what precisely he means by philosophy here, but at least we could say that we do not truly know something until we have reflected on it deeply.<\/p>\n I’d love to hear other folks’ comments on this passage.<\/p>\n Mary Jo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dant\u00e8s: \u201cYou must teach me a small part of what you know\u2026.\u201d Faria: \u201cAlas! my child, . . . human knowledge is confined within very narrow limits; and when I have taught you mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four modern languages with which I am acquainted, you will know as much as I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}