Of Discretion

It is said that discretion is the better part of valour, but it may be asserted as well that valour is the better part of discretion, for discretion is a means to an end, and without action it becomes too much ado for nothing. Well begun is half done; it is too often the case that the spirit is as willing as to reach the end, while the flesh is too weak or more often too lazy, to take a single step. Discretion reveals the traps and miners; but the solution comes not from thoughts, but from the truth revealed by inquiry. Therefore the tragedy serves them right that most people dare not move on without solutions in mind, while truth never dawns on them as long as they themselves bind their hands and shackle their feet.

Plato claimed that a man should first control his appetite to exercise temperance, and then allow his will to aspire courage, and eventually use his reason to acquire wisdom. A thinking mind is God’s endowment to mankind, and the waste of this faculty humbles men. Blind boldness brings problems, which is then to be remedied by prudence. In usual affairs, the person’s character should be of first concern, as it sets the general direction. Yet this is far from enough; certain decision and action also vary with his knowledge, his mood, and his position in the panorama, therein any slight change may result in great deviation. Meanwhile the erroneous or excessive use of reason pushes truth aside and leads the mind astray. False discretion often breeds fear and suspicion: tangled thoughts of a world of possibilities haunt and cloud and exhaust his mind within, and deplete and destroy his enterprise without. The soul is as if left alone in a labyrinth, and only by climbing on all fours to the commanding peak of truth, can he see the whole landscape and find the way out. Therefore an adequately informed mind rarely suffers from doubts and hesitation, and glitters with wisdom and virtues.

Now turn from discretion, to speak, in a larger sense, of the state of mind. The way toward the blessed land is always without, while the retreat into one’s own heart is but an ostrich’s art. However big it can be, one heart can never be of the dimensions of the universe; for one universe cannot paradoxically contain more than one self. The boasted big heart, where an egoistic spirit or a contented mind is ensconced, is but an inflated soap bubble, which reflects the sunlight now and will burst itself then. Surely the one in it can still have a coloured but distorted sight of the outside world; but when it bursts, the colours fade, and the sight becomes bleak. Hence the courage to join the society and face constant changes, is superior to the fortitude to suffer the slings and arrows all alone, as if he himself is the match of the whole world; while the discretion in social affairs, is the fruit of reason, which makes a man a man, rather than a bull in a china shop.

2/17/2011