Tillyard on learning as a “religious matter”
Man’s understanding, though allied to the angelical, operates differently. The angels understand intuitively, man by the painful use of the discursive reason. Again, the angels have perfected their understanding and are replete with all the knowledge they are able to hold. Man, even though he may in the end rival the angels in knowledge, begins in ignorance. What marks man from angel and beast is his capacity for learning: both his “erected wit” in perceiving perfection and his aptitude for “nurture” or education in his raising himself toward it. Hence it was that the learning of a Sidney, a Donne, or a Milton was an ethical and religious matter. To learn was to exercise one of the great human prerogatives. But what is it that man should especially learn? The lowest form of understanding concerns our own immediate acts. Though inanimate things are quite shut out from this, fire for instance not knowing that it burns, the animals have got some understanding of seeking perfection through their acts. Man is conspicuous, according to Hooker, by seeking perfection through knowledge of things external to himself. Or, as we might put it, one of man’s highest faculties is his gift for disinterested knowledge. It was through that gift that he might learn something of God.
- Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, ch. 5; my emphasis
