In the main, 'The New Man' is a meditation on the relationship between knowledge and being in humans. Nicoll follows Plato in saying that a person must possess a certain quality of being before they can helpfully handle knowledge. To give knowledge to those unready for it leads to its misuse; in the wrong hands, knowledge and truth become weapons of violence, pearls before swine. To this end, Nicoll tells the story of ancient schools of learning which placed students in menial positions to test whether or not they were ...
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In the main, 'The New Man' is a meditation on the relationship between knowledge and being in humans. Nicoll follows Plato in saying that a person must possess a certain quality of being before they can helpfully handle knowledge. To give knowledge to those unready for it leads to its misuse; in the wrong hands, knowledge and truth become weapons of violence, pearls before swine. To this end, Nicoll tells the story of ancient schools of learning which placed students in menial positions to test whether or not they were worthy to receive knowledge. If they pitied themselves, complained, were weak in their being, behaved maliciously, took advantage of others, were resentful or imagined themselves better than others, then they received no knowledge. 'The New Man' looks at incidents and stories in the Bible - and in particular the parables and the Sermon on the Mount - in the light of this relationship. It follows Jesus as he attempts to give people a new inward disposition of goodness, one that can helpfully handle knowledge. The teacher with great knowledge but inadequate being may impress with his complexity but he can take people nowhere. It is certainly a contemporary theme in our own information-obsessed society. For Nicoll, the aim of the Lord's Prayer, and all other prayer, is to reach a higher inward level. We are to seek first the Kingdom of God which is the highest possible level; a happy union between knowledge and goodness. But the journey must start with goodness. Concerning 'The New Man', Nicoll wrote: 'The intention is to indicate that all teaching such as that contained in the Gospels, and many teachings both old and new, in the short period of known history, is about transcending the violence which characterises mankind's present level of being. It affirms the possibility of a development of another level of being surmounting violence.'
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