The experiment has
been made in many forms, but no one has yet been nourished by the fruit
of the tree of knowledge who has eaten of that fruit alone. In the art
of living, as in all the arts which illustrate and enrich living, the
amateur and the dilettante have no real position; they never attain
to that mastery of knowledge or of execution which alone give reality
to a man's life or work. Mastery in any art comes to those only who
give themselves without reservation or stint to their task; mastery
in the supreme art of living is within reach of those only who live
completely in every faculty and relation.
To stand in the closest and most vital relation to one's time is,
therefore, the first condition of comprehending one's age and getting
from it what it has to give. But while a man must be in and with his
time in the most vital sense, he must not be wholly of it. To get the
vital enrichment which flows from identification with one's age, and
at the same time to get the detachment which enables one to see his
time in true relation to all time, is one of the problems which
requires the highest wisdom for its solution.
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