From what I can tell, 'do not pry into things too lofty for you' refers to attempts to philosophically understand the nature of God. The thought that arises is that when you make a seal (as when a signet ring is pressed in wax) you get an image of the seal, which may be very clear and identifiable, but as far as the ring is concerned, you do not know the nature of the ring without seeing the ring itself. And so it is with God.

This will probably make you snooze, but I found it curious nonetheless:

The first of Boethius's four subdivisions was similitude, used of the case of the noun ‘animal’ said of both real human beings and pictured human beings. Medieval logicians seem to have been totally unaware of the fact that the Greek word used by Aristotle was genuinely polysemous, meaning both animal and image, and they explained the extended use of ‘animal’ in terms of a likeness between the two referents — a likeness which had nothing to do with the significate of the term ‘animal’, which picks out a certain kind of nature, but which was nonetheless more than metaphorical in that the external shape of the pictured object does correspond to that of the living object. ... [bold mine. -ed]

What it looks like happened is that in Aristotle's time a person and an image of that person may have been thought to be in some strong sense the same. As if things containing one's image were a part of one's body. By the time of the medieval logicians, the original sense - that is to say, not the definition itself but the way in which the definition is meant - was lost. Maybe unable to process the complications of this view, (recall superstitions about paintings and photographs) it was in some way discarded. The notion of similitude in analogy seems to have lost a lot of power inadvertently - perhaps not entirely in this fashion, but being ignorant of no more than their teachers and their interpretations of the often difficult Aristotle and the other Philosophers, it may have taken hold.

To wit, the analogic method became a process of identifying similarities between external shapes - and while the deeper sense of shared identity through form still persisted, it seems like for most Westerners who are not superstitious it became implicit and unconscious.

The superstitious aspect of this idea probably relates to a misunderstanding of soul, how it is the 'anima' of someone can be present in images of them, but yet this would pose no threat to them. It is in the same way that a projector of light can come to no real harm by attacks on its projection.

Socrates once said, 'Know thyself'. This is the goal of metaphysics, to think about the thinker. To do so requires thinking about other things such as, 'What is a thought? What is being? What is man? What is nature? What is God?' To some, the self is nothing more than a conglomeration of parts - to 'know thyself' would amount to no more than mapping each part of their body, what it does, and how it acts. But the self is quite obviously not a matter of a particular combination of parts - as Dr. Frankenstein discovers.

Enter the Bard, who places on the tongue of the image-conscious, worldly-wise Polonius:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

We could talk about what Polonius is meant by William to mean by this, and we can also talk about what the platitude he utters actually means, given its proper context. However, this same concept rears its head in various other places, also perhaps taking on the quality of a platitude. What can we make of the phrase, 'Believe in yourself'? (Is this to mean we ought to have faith that we exist?)

On the face, it just appears to be a platitude expressing a vanilla sentiment of self-esteem or self-confidence, i.e, 'cheer up, you can do it!' However, I've begun to suspect that this is not the only thing this statement means, In the animated feature, 'The Cat Returns', the heroine is repeatedly told by the Baron, an animate statue of a baron, to 'believe in yourself'. In the context of the film she has little need for self-confidence; she is not really a failure - other than at not getting up in time or having much direction in life - and the end of the story does not find her getting up the confidence to ask out the guy that she has a crush on.

I was thinking about how if we misapprehend the totality of Truth - i.e. it's complete scope - to create consistency we will end up losing truth altogether. (This was inspired also by further reading of Roger Kimball's recent essay here.)

I recall something that Chesterton said, when speaking of mental maladies. That often people who are neurotic are not irrational, but hyper-rational. (But they still are irrational, I think. Anyway... ) They come to a point of requiring consistency (of the logical sort) in their world, and so cut off the mysterious to create it. Thus they dwell in a completely consistent but limited view of the world. Since this view is consistent only to itself and either adds or subtracts from reality to create this logical cohesion, it is insane. (So perhaps he is saying that hyper-rationality ends in irrationality.)

Some time in the enlightenment, Kant established a kind of motto: "Dare to Know!" It encompasses the sentiment nicely: By will and intellect we will know all that can be known! (Wiser sons of the enlightenment - such as Kurt Godel - acknowledged the unknowable and thus saved themselves the path of the madman.)

The problem, like I said yesterday, is that not all that is knowable may be known simply by seizing it by will or comprehending it with reason. The interior of things - such as a person's mind - can only be known if the interior will reveal itself somehow. This doesn't even touch on what is beyond knowing and what is in its essence unknowable, but simply on the things which must be known through experience. But this experience does not happen to those who seek it (for who knows what form it may take) but happens to those who seek what is true.

I honestly have little desire to write on this, or anything, but I'm certain there is something that needs to be said.

John Derbyshire, who is one of my favorite NRO authors, writes in "Lost Eden":

Eschewing any religious or metaphysical affirmations, Heinlein laid out his social credo: “I believe in my neighbors... in my townspeople... in my fellow citizens.” He went on to write about his local priest, whose “goodness and charity and loving kindness shine in his daily actions. ... If I’m in trouble, I’ll go to him.” (Heinlein was an atheist, by the way.) Heinlein’s next-door neighbor, he tells us, was a veterinarian: “Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat — no fee, no prospect of a fee.”

Heinlein lived and wrote this in the fifties; which is probably (culturally speaking) our golden age. Other problems nonwithstanding, it appeared to be the peak of our social capital.

Nowadays it is taught to us, or more often than not, that the credo which Heinlein honestly believed is or was false. We're led to believe it was at least in part a result of propaganda or a sort of cruel and vapid veneer smeared on the face of a deep and hidden evil.

But Heinlein honestly believed it, it seems.

Derbyshire goes on to make some reservations:

Thoughtful, well-read conservatives (is there any other kind?) will readily tick off some of the huge 1950s negatives: union power, 97-percent top income-tax rates, environmental despoliation, Jim Crow, female talent and energy stifled in housewifery, and so on. In the matter of social capital, though — the subject of Heinlein’s essay — the 1950s were indeed an Eden.