Views from another world

Besides self-knowledge, there is another aspect of the search—self-development.

Let us see how things stand there.

It is clear that a man left to his own devices cannot wring out of his little finger the knowledge of how to develop and, still less, exactly what to develop in himself.

And it is here that a man’s flair is more important than anywhere else.

He chooses a guide for himself. It is of course an indispensable condition that he choose as a guide a man who knows, or else all meaning of choice is lost.

Who can tell where a guide who does not know may lead a man?

As a man gets to know himself, he continually finds new areas of his mechanicalness—let us call it automatism—domains where his will, his “I wish,” has no power, areas not subject to him, so confused and subtle that it impossible to find his way about in them without the help and the authoritative guidance of someone who knows.



This briefly is the state of things in the realm of self-knowledge: in order to do you must know; but to know you must find out how to know. We cannot find this out by ourselves.