ETHICS
knowledge of, or control over, himself, cannot achieve
enlightenment so long as he remains what he is. However,
if he so wishes, he can cease to be an intelligent fool and
become an intelligent wise man. An intelligent wise man
is capable not only of achieving personal enlightenment,
but also of helping whole societies to deal with their
major problems of belief and practice. Under the present
dispensation, the educational system is designed to pro-
duce the greatest possible number of intelligent fools. We
inspire children with the wish to be intelligent about the
phenomena of the external world and about abstract ideas
and logical relations; at the same time we teach them the
techniques by which this wish can be gratified. Meanwhile,
however, we make very little effort to inspire them with
the wish to be intelligent about themselves and, on the
rare occasions when we do make this effort, we provide
them with no devices for training the inward-turning
intelligence to perform its task efficiently.
One cannot deal intelligently with any matter about
which one is ignorant. If one is to deal intelligently with
oneself one must be aware of one's real motives, of the
secret sources of one's thoughts, feelings and actions, of
the nature of one's sentiments, impulses and sensations and
of the circumstances in which one is liable to behave well
or badly. In general, it may be said that, on the intellectual
plane, good is that which heightens awareness, especially
awareness of oneself. No self can go beyond the limits
'of selfhood, either morally (by the practice of the virtues
that break attachment) or mystically (by direct cognitive
union with ultimate reality), unless it is fully aware of
what it is, and why it is what it is. Self-transcendence is
through self-consciousness. A human being who spends
most of his waking life either day-dreaming, or in a state
of mental dissipation, or else identifying himself with
whatever he happens to be sensing, feeling, thinking or
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