We are publishing a fragment of the book "Letters about the Good and the Beautiful" by Academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, who would have turned 109 tomorrow.
A person must be intelligent! And if his profession does not require intelligence? And if he could not get an education: was this the case? What if the environment doesn't allow it? And if intelligence makes him a "black sheep" among his colleagues, friends, relatives, will it simply interfere with his rapprochement with other people?
No, no and NO! Intelligence is needed under all circumstances. It is needed both for others and for the person himself.
This is very, very important, and above all in order to live happily and for a long time - yes, long! For intelligence is equal to moral health, and health is necessary in order to live long - not only physically, but also mentally. One old book says: "Honor your father and your mother, and you will be long on earth." This applies to both the whole nation and the individual. This is wise.
But first of all, let us define what intelligence is, and then why it is associated with the commandment of longevity.
Many people think: an intelligent person is one who has read a lot, received a good education (and even mostly humanitarian), traveled a lot, knows several languages.
And meanwhile, you can have all this and be unintelligent, and you can not possess anything to a large extent, but still be an internally intelligent person.
Education should not be confused with intelligence. Education lives with the old content, intelligence - the creation of the new and the awareness of the old as new.
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Moreover … Deprive a truly intelligent person of all his knowledge, education, deprive him of his very memory. Let him forget everything in the world, he will not know the classics of literature, he will not remember the greatest works of art, he will forget the most important historical events, but if, with all this, he retains sensitivity to intellectual values, love of acquiring knowledge, interest in history, aesthetic flair, he will be able to distinguish a real work of art from a crude "contraption" made only to surprise if he can admire the beauty of nature, understand the character and personality of another person, enter his position, and, having understood another person, help him, will not show rudeness, indifference, gloating, envy, and will appreciate the other, if he shows respect for the culture of the past, the skills of a well-mannered person,responsibility in solving moral issues, the richness and accuracy of his language - spoken and written - this will be an intelligent person.
Intelligence is not only in knowledge, but in the ability to understand the other. It manifests itself in a thousand and a thousand little things: in the ability to respectfully argue, to behave modestly at the table, in the ability to imperceptibly (just imperceptibly) to help another, to protect nature, not to litter around you - not litter with cigarette butts or swearing, bad ideas (this is also garbage, and what another!).
I knew peasants in the Russian North who were truly intelligent. They observed amazing cleanliness in their homes, knew how to appreciate good songs, knew how to tell "the past" (that is, what happened to them or others), lived an orderly way of life, were hospitable and welcoming, were sympathetic to the grief of others, and to someone else's joy.
Intelligence is the ability to understand, to perceive, it is a tolerant attitude towards the world and towards people.
Intelligence must be developed in oneself, trained - to train mental strength, just as physical strength is trained. And training is possible and necessary in any conditions.
That physical strength training promotes longevity is understandable. Much less understands that for longevity it is also necessary to train spiritual and mental strength.
The fact is that a spiteful and angry reaction to the environment, rudeness and misunderstanding of others is a sign of mental and spiritual weakness, human inability to live … Pushing in a crowded bus is a weak and nervous person, exhausted, reacting incorrectly to everything. Quarreling with neighbors is also a person who cannot live, deaf mentally. The aesthetically unresponsive person is also an unhappy person. Not knowing how to understand another person, attributing only evil intentions to him, always taking offense at others - this is also a person who impoverishes his life and interferes with the life of others. Mental weakness leads to physical weakness. I am not a doctor, but I am convinced of this. Long experience has convinced me of this.
Friendliness and kindness make a person not only physically healthy, but also beautiful. Yes, exactly beautiful.
A person's face, distorted by anger, becomes ugly, and the movements of an evil person are devoid of grace - not deliberate grace, but natural, which is much more expensive.
The social duty of a person is to be intelligent. It is a duty to oneself. This is a guarantee of his personal happiness and an "aura of benevolence" around him and towards him (that is, addressed to him).
Everything that I talk about with young readers in this book is a call to intelligence, to physical and moral health, to the beauty of health. We will be long as people and as people! And reverence for the father and mother should be understood broadly - as reverence for all our best in the past, in the past, which is the father and mother of our modernity, great modernity, to which it is great happiness.
DMITRY LIKHACHEV