Let's do such a fantastic experiment. Let's multiply the number of people on Earth by the number of thoughts that only come to a person's mind during his entire life. The work will turn out to be huge. Now let's figure out how people's thoughts are distributed according to the content, what people are thinking about.

If we are not too strict in our calculations, we can say that approximately out of every hundred thoughts

ninety — about the practical concerns of today, about yourself and the people around you;

nine about his whole life and the whole country;

One thought is about eternity and humanity.

People think about the day, about life, and about eternity. People think about themselves, about the country and about humanity. Thoughts that do not go beyond the boundaries of momentary concerns occupy almost all our time — it cannot be otherwise. It is impossible to think forever about the eternal: a person lives now, not in the future. But it is impossible, impossible not to think about the lofty – about people, about the country, about eternity and humanity.

Here is a circle on a plane. An innumerable number of points can be placed in it. But only one point out of this set is the central, the center. It is alone in an infinite number of other points, but it determines the place of the entire circle. In the same way, among our thoughts there are central thoughts; And what if we don't focus on them from morning to night, that they don't come to mind every day? They exist, these central thoughts, and it is they that determine the center of gravity of our soul, its stability, and make up the spiritual life of a person.

All other chapters of this book will be devoted to purely practical things, business problems of learning.

But a few minutes of life, the first few pages of the book will be devoted to the main, difficult, central thoughts.

2

Central thoughts have the property that they concern questions to which there is no simple, absolutely clear and identical answer for everyone. That is why they have occupied people for thousands of years. For example: "Why does a person live?" or the resulting question: "Why does a person study?"

It goes without saying that a book about learning should open with explanations of why a person should study. Perhaps the reader will be upset if the author does not convince him that learning is good, and not learning is bad. That studying well is better than studying badly. That learning is light, and ignorance is darkness.

To be honest, I started with this: I wrote not one, but several chapters in which I argued that learning is good, and not learning is bad. I have given direct proofs and proofs of the opposite, collected the opinions of many thinkers, selected examples from the lives of great people, proving that learning is light, light and light, and ignorance is darkness. The darkness is dark and impenetrable. Even the most ignorant person, the one for whom ignorance is not darkness, but the name day of the heart, even he, after reading these chapters, would tremble in his soul, think about his wrong life, and, without noticing it, would reach for a textbook of botany, realizing with all his being that learning (have you heard?) is light, and ignorance, whatever you say, is darkness.

But no one's soul will tremble. No one will read the beautiful chapters. I threw them away. Nobody needs them. Because any reader, if you ask him, will prove with amazing inspiration that learning is light, and ignorance... He will prove this: that ignorance is darkness!