Sterling W. Still (1903-1994) wrote the following in praise of the importance of intellectual pursuit:
Infinity number one is TO KNOW. Lord Bacon said, “Knowledge is power.” What a thrilling experience to find someone who knows where he is going, and how he is going to get there! Jan Smuts, the late South African Prime Minister said: “The greatest disease of the world is fragmentation. Too often we just partly know things.” Just a little smattering of understanding and we close our minds and allow our knowledge to begin the traditional levelling-off process. Mur Smuts said, “The cure of fragmentation is wholeism.” We need to make our knowledge more complete. We need to know more about God and more about people and more about our own success procedures, and a lot more about our own souls. For who can tell why we do as we do when we believe as we believe?
Twenty-four hundred years ago Socrates said, “Know thyself.” That is still about the best idea that there is in our world. And to make a good start in mastering ourselves is a very good place to begin getting acquainted with our three infinities. The first question that Adam and Eve were asked to decide when they were placed in the Garden of Eden was whether or not they would eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And after they had eaten, God said, “The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” (Gen. 3:22.) And I would just like to point out in passing that the right kind of knowledge still tends to have that effect upon people. It still tends to make men and women become as God. Isn’t it wonderful that we may know as much as we desire about the most important things in the universe!
A flaming sword was placed in the Garden of Eden to guard the tree of life. But fortunately for us there is no flaming sword guarding the tree of knowledge, and each of us may eat of its fruit to his heart’s content. We may know more about ourselves, more about people, more about the work that life has given us to do and more about the procedures for getting it done, and more about God. Jesus said, “. . . This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent.” (John 17:3.) Many men and women have raised themselves to great heights of accomplishment by setting aside just a few minutes each day to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Someone was recently praising a prominent United States Senator. It was pointed out that he always did his “homework.” He accepted his problems and then thought them through until he arrived at the correct answers. But life gives all of us a lot of important homework to do that success requires must be done. (Sterling W. Still, The Three Infinites: To Know, To Do, To Be [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Inc., 1969], 3-4)
