A living, loving order

It was Socrates who said that "The unexamined life is not fit for human living." A truth by which the cultured man lives, for the cultured man is an artist, an artist in humanity. His art consists, in part, in the ability and the skill with which he wields the tools of knowledge and experience in the desire to improve himself, in relation to himself, in relation to others, and in relation to the mysteries and the world in which he lives. He contemplates with continuous interest the mysteries of Nature, of Life, Death, Love, Beauty, Mind, Genius, Creation, Time, Destiny, Character, the Sexes, Religion, God, Immortality, and the like. Each of these mysteries is an exciting one, and the cultured man feels that he is indebted to these mysteries for the interest they add to his life. they are worthy of the thought he is ever ready to devote to them. He neither forgets nor ignores them. Nor does he assert that since he can do nothing about them, the best thing is to put them into "the suspense account." there is much that he canm do about them. He can thinkm about them. And think he does.

He knows that human beings are still learning, by trial and error, how to be human, and that many fail by the way. He knows that compassionate understanding and sympathy is the approach of the humane, while blame and censoriousness is the approach of the insufficiently humane. He is a person who, having had loving order made in himself, makes loving order in the world. Such is the cultured man.