In the Courthouse was the Word

“When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder,” wrote Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences, “we are affirming in effect that sentiment is anterior to reason.” Weaver meant by “sentiment” something far more profound and illuminating than a fleeting emotion: “Surmounting all is an intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality, and this is the sanction to which both ideas and beliefs are ultimately referred for verification.” To put it another way, “culture is originally a matter of yea-saying,” that is, of intuiting the natures of things about us, things that make a moral claim upon us. That intuition or seeing-into is what the author of Genesis suggests when Adam names the animals. It is not that he assigns to each individual creature an arbitrary name, but that he gives each kind of creature a name in accordance with its nature.

In the Courthouse was the Word