But the man had to gain first a knowledge of Knowledge. He first had
to learn this: that a man might know all about a thing without ever
knowing the thing itself. He had to understand that Knowledge is not
knowing _about_ a thing but knowing the _thing_. When first
he had dreamed his manhood dreams, before he had found something to
do, the man, quite modestly, thought that he knew a great deal. In his
school days, he had exhausted many text books and had passed many
creditable examinations upon many subjects and so he had thought that
he knew a great deal. And he did. He knew a great deal _about_
things. But when he had found something to do, and had tried to do it,
he found also very quickly that, although he knew so much about the
thing he had to do, he knew very, very, little of the thing itself and
that only knowledge of the thing itself could ever help him to realize
his dreams.

From his Occupation, he learned this also: that Knowledge is not what
some other man knows and tells you but what the thing that you have
found to do makes known to you. Knowledge is not told, _cannot_
be told, to one by another, even though that other has it abundantly
for, to the one to whom it is told, it remains ever what someone else
knows. What the thing that a man finds to do makes known to him,
_that_ is Knowledge. So Knowledge is to be had not from books
alone but rather from Life. So idleness is a vicious ignorance and
those who do the most are wisest.

Before he had found something to do the man had called himself a
thinker. But when he tried to do the thing that he had found to do, he
quickly realized that he had only thought that he thought. He found
that he was not at all a thinker but a listener--a receiver--a