““The search for knowledge demands foregoing the pleasures of companionship, but this is usually understood to mean frivolous and unprofi table human relations. Knowledge is rather something to be shared. It is restricted to an elite, since the ignorant are not only proverbially hostile to knowledge and those who possess knowledge, but they also greatly outnumber the learned and always will. This makes scholars always gravitate toward each other. Learned men never fi nd themselves strangers anywhere. They alone recognize each other, since the ignorant are unable to perceive the worth of learning, never having possessed any learning before. And they enjoy only the company of their peers. There is nothing to be pitied more than men of knowledge who have to put up with ignoramuses. This often expressed view appears also in the form of a witty anecdote told of one of the Persian kings. He imprisoned a scholar who had angered him together with an ignorant man in the same room, as the worst punishment he could think of. Thus, in defense against the world as well as on account of the intrinsic nature of knowledge, scholars must band together, in order to insure the persistence of knowledge in the world by communicating with each other and, above all, by transmitting their knowledge to others, if they are deserving. Nothing is more sterile than uncommunicated knowledge. Nothing is more signifi cant for society at large than the small groupings of teachers and students. Nothing, in short, has greater basic value for society than knowledge.””
