But sometimes love doesn’t make sense. In fact, most of the time it doesn’t make sense, if you really lay out it on the operating table, rationally vivisecting it. But then again cutting a body apart tends to extinguish whatever life was in it. The magic of love — love of life, love of people, love of God, love of the earth and every good thing in it — defies reasoning. Like my friend E. said to me in an e-mail the other day: “Love over logic, 99% of the time.” Heart over head. All too often, logic opens the oven and flattens the bread before it has a chance to rise.

What an insidious thing is this culture amidst which we live. It permeates our environment, and we think we are being reasonable and logical when, all too often, we have been molded by the ethos, what the Germans call the zeitgeist, or the culture of our place and time.

The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge.