“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.”

Last update Nov. 26, 2023. History

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Baltasar Gracián photo
Baltasar Gracián 31
Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher 1601–1658

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Context: Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. Therefore one with love, courage, and wisdom is one in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi.

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“A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.”
A: Quod est enim maius argumentum nihil eam prodesse quam quosdam perfectos philosophos turpiter vivere? M: Nullum vero id quidem argumentum est. Nam ut agri non omnes frugiferi sunt qui coluntur [...] sic animi non omnes culti fructum ferunt. Atque, ut in eodem simili verser, ut ager quamvis fertilis sine cultura fructuosus esse non potest, sic sine doctrina animus; ita est utraque res sine altera debilis. Cultura autem animi philosophia est; haec extrahit vitia radicitus et praeparat animos ad satus accipiendos eaque mandat eis et, ut ita dicam, serit, quae adulta fructus uberrimos ferant.

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Context: A: For what stronger proof can there be of its [philosophy's] uselessness than that some accomplished philosophers lead disgraceful lives?
M: It is no proof at all; for as all cultivated fields are not harvest-yielding [... ] so all cultivated minds do not bear fruit. To continue the figure – as a field, though fertile, cannot yield a harvest without cultivation, no more can the mind without learning; thus each is feeble without the other. But philosophy is the cultivation of the soul. It draws out vices by the root, prepares the mind to receive seed, and commits to it, and, so to speak, sows in it what, when grown, may bear the most abundant fruit.

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Variant: The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.

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