A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 210

Now bear with me, Gentlemen, if what I have to say has at first sight a fanciful appearance. Philosophy, then, or science, is related to knowledge in this way: knowledge is called by the name of science or philosophy when it is acted upon, informed, or if I may use a strong figure, impregnated by reason. Reason is the principle of the intrinsic fecundity of knowledge, which, to those who possess it, is its especial value, and which dispenses with the necessity of their looking abroad for any end to rest upon external to itself. Knowledge, indeed, when thus exalted into a scientific form, is also power; not only is it excellent in itself, but whatever such excellence may be, it is something more, it has a result beyond itself.

– from the chapter “Knowledge Its Own End” in The Idea of a University by John Henry Cardinal Newman

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