What You Need Is Not Knowledge Above All, but a Capacity for Understanding

What you needed was not knowledge above all, which is what the enlightenment as praised. It wasn't a knowledge of facts. That is not near what's needed with a political understanding. What you need is some capacity for entering into the purposes, the motives, the outlook which the painter, the writer, the architect may be attempting to convey. The picture of the world which he is trying to embalm in his work, gives some kind of concrete embodiment toit and capacity for understanding. In fields like mathematics or physics we really demand the edication of some sort. We demand some kind of argument for supposing things to be as we say they are.