The Use of Silence

by Geoffrey Hoyland

Overview

All man's knowledge of the world, with the exception of one item, comes to him through the gateway of his five senses, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching. The messages that enter through these gateways may provide the stimulus to thought or to emotion, according to their nature; the sight of mathematical symbols written on a page may stimulate the mathematician to an exercise in pure reason, the sight of a smile in the eye and on the lips of a certain face may stimulate the lover to an exercise in the profoundest emotion. The stimulus in each case comes through the gateway of sense.

Religious knowledge and religious experience, however deeply they may come to be rooted in the soul, must enter in the first place through these same five gateways. Our eyes see something, our ears hear the words spoken by a human voice, and our heart is changed. When the Psalmist sang "O taste and see that the Lord is good" he laid down the first principle of the classical method. That is the way we come to know whether a thing is good or not; we taste it or see it or hear it or touch it or smell it and our reason or our emotions make the decision on the strength of the sensory impressions received.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940157945510
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #83
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	199 KB

About the Author

Geoffrey Hoyland (1889-1965), a British Friend from Birmingham UK, spent much of his life studying and working at British private schools. He attended King Edwards School in Birmingham and then St. Johns College, Cambridge, and taught at several schools. After his marriage to Dorothea Cadbury, he became headmaster of the Downs School, a small preparatory school in Herefordshire where he served from 1920 to1940. His approach to educating young boys involved physical activity to encourage pupils who were “keen to learn.” He built new buildings, introduced student self-government, and established an innovative curriculum with an emphasis on science and the arts. Under his supervision, the pupils built and maintained a miniature railway. In the arts, he hired Maurice Field, who taught painting, and the poet W. H. Auden who taught English; Auden later dedicated a poem to him.

After leaving the Downs, he wrote books on religious and educational subjects, and remained a guiding voice among British Quakers, urging Friends to appreciate their Christian origins and not make an idol of science. He was a member of Painswick meeting, Gloucestershire, England.