Just as Socrates maintained that no god was ill-disposed to mankind, so I maintained that those who love and pursue truth -- a divine gift which constitutes the glory of the human spirit not because the human spirit forms truth but because the truth informs it -- are the best disposed, indeed the only people well-disposed towards humankind and to the systems which others have thought out. They alone offer human nature the true good which stems from truth and is reduced to truth. Within their systems they willingly recognise, love and prize everything that is lovable and can be appreciated, that is, the immortal element of their systems, the truth on which the systems agree and unite. This is not the case with those who imagine that the human spirit itself deserves honour independently of any share in the truth. For them, the truth is honoured as a creation of the human spirit just as error is. And error, certainly, is an authentic creation of the human spirit.
Bl. Antonio Rosmini, About the Author's Studies (Introduction to Philosophy, Volume 1), Murphy, tr., Rosmini House (Durham: 2004) p. 91.
