IDEALS OF THE MIND
a Wisdom of Thought

Our fourth conversation is with Thought. We believe in the ideal of the “American Scholar” in whom a knowledge of books is balanced by experience of nature and practical activity in the world.

Innermost House explores this ideal of whole thought, where Truth, Beauty, and Goodness come together in one Unity of conversation. We believe in the ideals of the mind, the whole mind, the mind made whole with the entirety of life. We seek the living forms of a higher learning in the deepest foundations of experience.
 

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.
                              Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

We are dedicated to thinking ideas back to their origins in the elemental forms of thought. We invite thinkers and practitioners of the classical liberal and aesthetical arts to join with us in a worldwide circle of shared conversation, seeking the meaning of our self-evident truths in the abiding ideals of the mind. Our purpose is to regain to the individual an original and universal relation to knowledge.

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The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. . . For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar"