Chapter 13            Part C

      And now we come to a subtler insight. The value which society instills or programs into its young to make them seek out, meet, and conquer adversity must be balanced or tempered with a second value which will cause the energies put into the challenge-seeking exercises to be focused, so that those energies will deal with challenges efficiently. There is nothing to be gained by teaching young people blind aggression; it will only run amok in the society which instilled that value to begin with. Driven, but directionless, young people end up damaging themselves and each other in car crashes, daredevil stunts, and street fights, while accomplishing little to nothing for their society in useful, material terms. 

               

        The courage-tempering value in the West is usually called “wisdom”, but “intelligence" and “judgement” are also terms for this same values cluster, and there are many more. In all of its forms, wisdom has the effect of directing humans to identify, and then achieve, useful objectives by behavior patterns which will efficiently employ the energies being expended.



The Education of Achilles by the Centaur, Chiron (Regnault) 

               

       Not surprisingly, there are echoes of this balancing of courage and wisdom in mythology. Jason, Achilles, Perseus, Theseus, and Aeneas needed Chiron, the wise, kind, moderate teacher of them all.  The ancient Greeks embedded in their myths the deepest of their moral insights. Arthur needed Merlin, Luke Skywalker needed Yoda, etc..

               



     Thomas Carlyle 

        The most familiar value that is a hybrid of courage and wisdom is the one that is known as "work". “Diligence” and “conscientiousness” are two of its other names, as we are all wearily aware. But the dreary, tedious, shopworn cliché feel of this values cluster should not discourage us. Reiterate: clichés, like the one about the nobleness of work, get to be clichés because they express something that is true. Courage is good. Intelligence is good. Added together, they produce the synthesis called "work".  Thomas Carlyle, with his complex and subtle style of both thought and expression, distilled the idea well:

              

               

"For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth." (3.)

    Notes 

   3.http://www.online-literature.com/thomas-carlyle/past-and-       present/34/