Sympathy With Intelligence

Miles Davis / John Coltrane: Walkin' 1958

Miles Davis Quintet: Walkin' 1965

My desire for knowledge
is intermittent;
but my desire
to bathe my head
in atmospheres unknown
to my feet
is perennial and constant.
The highest that
we can attain to
is not Knowledge,
but Sympathy with Intelligence.
I do not know
that this higher knowledge
amounts to anything
more definite than
a novel and grand surprise
on a sudden revelation
of the insufficiency
of all that we
called Knowledge before,
--a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
--Henry David Thoreau
Walking 1862