The primary question, indeed the only question which we should bother to answer is of what metal we are made. Are we but bipedal beasts? Are we but flesh bags of pathetic pains and pleasures? Are we anything other than plundering, murdering thugs? What distinguishes the man who lives in the palace of his own design from the troglodyte who is doomed to grasp at his life from within a fortified cave? The difference between the two extremes is sapience. The great apes of Africa are said to be the archaic founders of the human race, but they lack that one essential quality which ennoble us -- Sapience. Many so called “people” if isolated from the more benign influences of society would return to the trees and their most primitive impulses. That would be a devolution, however. We cannot suffer ourselves to be subdued by our impish past. To do so would expose us to the fathomless oblivion of not realizing we even exist. Gorillas have no inkling of sapience, nor do the mammals, reptiles, nor dinosaurs; and the fish and protozoa are so near the void as not to be considered. In devolution lies the null, but the noble shall not ingest such a bitter future. Our destiny is divine. It is the ability to be wise which has the power to exalt mankind above the lower orders. Where the unthinking animals are the unwitting automata of nature, the sapients steer nature autonomously towards a conscious destination. Traditionally, only Providence has been recognized as the chief custodian of the cosmos, and, it is to be supposed that in the exercise of sapience, mankind can assume a janitorial role in our spiraling arm of the milky way. If God is the ultimate sapient in the universe, then we in practicing sapience pattern ourselves like the Father and become familiar to Him. As the wisdom of God is to man, so is the wisdom of man to the beasts. In all candor, a sapient man resembles more of the Divine where the ignorant man resembles more of the brute. It is our essential struggle -- whether we will play the ape or the angel. There is no other struggle.
The magnitude of our situation is self-evident, but allow me to elucidate. Our fate rests in our ability to be and to act wisely. Despite our objective knowledge of this fact, dubious thinking and deluded self-deception would desire to sell us counterfeit wisdom and we are tricked into believing that by wearing a lion’s skin we might actually be a lion when we are no more than a donkey. As Aesop said: “Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.”1 Never delight in sophistical learning, for diplomas and degrees are often the shirt and tie worn by the asinine to hide how ignorant and simian they really are. Time will always disclose who wears the wings and whom the tail. Continue in the knowledge that sometimes we have a tendency (for the sake of ease I imagine) to substitute silver for gold, and bronze for silver when it comes to education.
Compared to gold and silver, bronze is a cheep and vulgar metal made by alloying two-parts copper and one-part tin. Because of how difficult it is to mine, pan, and trade for a higher metal education, the mass of the people usually settle with bronze, which is easy to make, for the ingredients are abundantly available. The sapience level of a bronze-trained person is rich to a degree but they will never match the magnificent splendor needed to be like God. A person of bronze does acquire a few godlike traits; he accomplishes tasks which require higher order thinking, he can solve problems, he can (with proper instruction) do whatever he needs to. Unfortunately he can’t hardly help but be a sycophantic servant. If left teacher-less he would be like one of the unfortunates who slip from their humanity and becomes a barbarous baboon. In the absence of the trainer he would be helpless and revert. He may be of considerable intellect, but of an impoverished sapience for he has not the wisdom to govern and teach himself.
Consider what you yourself would be if you were skirting around the dawn of human history: you know farming and hunting, pottery and brick making. Trained in these arts you would be able to provide and survive at some basic level and you are sapient enough to be able to teach your offspring how to replicate the original Promeathean arts, thereby creating a sustainable human society. Having no conception of anything better, would you keep on mimicking the stone age pattern or would you put the weight of your reason into force and invent better ways of doing things? Would you trade iron for steel? Would you develop philosophy? Could you transform a one-family tribe into a functional empire of millions? How would you inspire and boost your tribesmen to new heights? One of the most dangerous fallacies in any debate over education is to assume that all things must be taught in order to be learned. If this fallacy is believed, than we will suffer (like the ancients) for thousands of years before we even get around to domesticating animals.
The grayish-white metal (silver) is in it’s native form, hidden “in copper or lead mineralization.”2 Separation of silver from other elements is a complicated ordeal requiring the smith to go through different chemical processes depending on what ores the silver is mingled with. The poetic term, “Refiner's fire” is the metallurgic idea of converting raw ore into silver, thus taking out the less desirable dross. In the analogy, a person capable of being silver, would be no better than bronze without further refinement. The student would then have to be smelted and fire roasted by a talented metallurgist to cure him of impurities. In other words, the student would have to be sent through school and be taught by very skilled teachers for a very long time so that he might be a very luxurious, moral, strong, and smart person. The “silver-ite” would be the man with the collage diploma and a good job. He has an understanding of sapience and he practices it daily, but he dose so as the agent of a better man. Silver is fair, but its not as enchanting as gold is. The silver-ite is smart, not genius. The silver-ite is polite, but not charming. The silver-ite has money, but he is not wealthy. You see, while the Silver-toned man lives a good life, he dies without attaining any grand or demigod-like status.
1 The Ass In The Lion’s Skin, Aesop. See http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?1&TheAssintheLionsSkin
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