A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system.
It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated.
The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it.
As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin—congestion of the brain, apoplexy, and strangulation.
—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Natural History of Intellect
IMAGE: Pietro Testa, The Symposium (1648)
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