How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education

“While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.”

It bears repeating that what makes life livable is our ability — our willingness — to move through the world wonder-smitten by reality. The most wonderful thing about wonder is that it knows no scale, no class, no category — it can be found in a geranium or in a galaxy, in the burble of a brook or in the Goldberg Variations. “A leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the s...