The mind longs to roam. We try in vain to keep it running toward a fixed destination. The path across a meadow, a trail through the woods, the rocky descent down a steep ravine: these beckon and it yearns to follow. It wants to remember. To wonder. To wander.
 
When we speak of freedom of thought, we usually mean the freedom to think certain things, the freedom, say, to argue the claims of the weak against those of the powerful. But, there is another freedom of thought, scarce in a world of political liberties. That is the freedom to think at all.

The act of reflection has lost its rightful place. The stream of consciousness is no longer a stream. No law or program, no frantic pace of living or economic imperatives stopped its flow.

At bottom,  respect for ideas is not itself an idea. Nor does it spring from idea. At the crux of things intellectual is something profoundly different from idea. What is it?

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