The chief limitation of the human intellect is not sheer shortage of brainpower, but defect of character. The weakness of our minds is not that we are not smart enough, but that we are not good enough.
Consider how faulty our thinking is about other people because we are too interested in ourselves;
How readily we devise reasons to disbelieve truths which are stated by our enemies;
How easily the disorders of our hearts and affairs make us lose intellectual focus;
How insidiously the desire for pre-eminence and the fear of losing status impair intellectual honesty;
How dreadfully we tire ourselves with the effort of trying not to think of things that we cannot face;
How obsessively we raise pinnacles of plausible reasoning to excuse and monumentalize what we know to be wrong;
How eagerly we substitute cleverness for wisdom, curiosity for wonder, passion for zeal;
And how easily we are dissuaded from the happy travail of thought by sheer failure to love truth enough.
Were it not for these and all the many other drags and weights of sin, we would spring from insight to insight as easily as a robin capers from branch to branch. Our minds would be the tinder that our passions are now, ready at a spark to burst into flame. It is said to be thus with the blessed.
Tomorrow: Curious Differences