On a more mundane level, if I neglect my other non-intellectual duties for the sake of study, I am not a real intellectual. But it works both ways: everything in my life, all my experience of the world and of other people, can be made to serve thought, even if indirectly. Every person, object or place we encounter proclaims some truth; nothing must be wasted, and it is possible to train the mind to use everything, without strain or obsession. LOVE is the guide. Literally - do what you love. Surrender to what you love and let it carry you. "Float downstream" in life. Lost in Thought [is] a persuasive defense of learning and intellectual life . . . Hitz’s breadth of knowledge is on display."—Aurelian Craiutu, Los Angeles Review of Books Being a McLuhan-fan, I was astounded by what seemed like direct quotes from McLuhan (of course, it would have been the other way around) in this book. Sertillanges says that “God is a radiant center from which all points on the circumference of time are at an equal distance.” Did McLuhan see Acoustic space as GOD?…is that why he converted to Catholicism, devout Catholicism? More study will have to be done! At least I have a good plan to do that now...

Christian women are accustomed, even now, to being made to feel small by those who assert that the vocation of a woman must look one specific way. Feeling victimized by those who would try brashly to narrow our understanding of feminine vocation, many women proceed defensively to wield the choices that they have made for themselves and their families against their fellow women. Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges, O.P. ( French: [sɛʁtijɑ̃ʒ]; 16 November 1863, Clermont-Ferrand - 26 July 1948, Sallanches), also known as Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, was a French Catholic philosopher and spiritual writer. In Lost in Thought, Hitz seeks to revive an appreciation for intellectual pursuit as inherently good and fundamental to human happiness. - Rachel K. Alexander, Tablet Magazine" Of course, most of us have no choice but to dwell in the vengeful, worldly, and wordy halls of academia, where much thought is “wandering,” and where bureaucratic “useless comings and goings” are endless. What Sertillanges counsels is not a flight from the world but, simply, balance. For example, the intellectual desperately needs the support of a robust and authentic community of fellow intellectuals, but sometimes it is enough, he says, just to know there are others laboring at the same task, whether or not there is face-to-face or close proximity to such a community. Perhaps blog communities fulfill this purpose in our community-starved day! ZENA HITZ: We're kind of enchanted by a mystique, a sort of Hollywood picture of an intellectual. That film "A Beautiful Mind" is a perfect example. You have this mathematician, he's a genius. He sees things no one else can see. He's in a class apart. He's not like you and me. And I think that that's a distortion of what an intellectual really is. Whereas the real thing is something more extraordinary but also more available to us.John Paul II, in his Letter to Women, goes through various categories of women and thanks them for their contributions to the world and to the Church: wives, mothers, educators, working women, consecrated women. He considers the women who have demonstrated heroic virtue and brilliant intellect, women like Saints Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena. But he closes with praise for ordinary women, those who “reveal the gift of their womanhood by placing themselves at the service of others in their everyday lives.” BeCos many canonic writers are not Simply bourgeois. All are human. There are plenty of working-class fans of Billy Bunter. etc.

I highly recommend this work to college students; for graduate students and anyone already pursuing the life of thought, The Intellectual Life is mandatory reading. As I have indicated, artists will also find much of value here. A.G. Sertillanges sees the intellectual life as essentially a vocation, and in the most spiritual sense of the word. It is, as he says, “a sacred call.”

Given what a high and demanding vision of the intellectual vocation Sertillanges sets before us, we may be thankful that from the outset, he makes clear that it is not so much a matter of how much time we spent on intellectual work as how we use that time. To those who have other duties, such as spouses and children, it is a great comfort to hear that one can be faithful to an intellectual vocation with only one or two hours every day, if those hours are spent well. Of course, that condition is also one of the great challenges of the intellectual life. In chapters 4-7, he offers an analogy of how studying is the prayer of truth, since there must be a desire in studying, and prayer requires a desire in things as well. He warns his readers of avoiding half-work. By this, he means that it is better to shorten one’s time to use it intensely rather than spending long hours at a desk while letting the mind wander. He notes the absolute importance of holding onto the teachings of Thomas Aquinas for real truth. Next, he then offers some advices on the spirit of work, which requires a person to be like a child in knowing how to always ask, “Why?” The biggest enemy is indolence, where a person stunts their intellectual growth by stopping to learn. He offers then certain tips on how to read, and study.

We may assert without any paradox that every branch of science pursued home would lead to the other sciences, science to poetry, poetry and science to ethics, and then to politics and even to religion on its human side. Everything is in everything, and partitions are only possible by abstraction…. When one knows something thoroughly, provided one has some inkling of the rest, this rest in its full extent gains by the probing of its depths. All abysses resemble one another, and all foundations have communicating passages (102, 120). I lived in a religious community for a while whose founder was a woman named Catherine Doherty, and one of her sayings was, “If you feel lonely, go and talk to the loneliest person in the room.” You can always imagine someone lonelier; think about the widower, the person in the nursing home. This is part of why leaving the computer out of the office works; on campus, there’s a constant demand for serving others. People want to talk to me all the time. I give myself over to whatever their demands are, and that is what health looks like: service. That’s very countercultural, and it’s very difficult for us to break out of our old habits.As for the critical evaluation of the book, there are some positive advantages this book contains. First, it includes great, practical advice. For instance, when he speaks of guarding your valuable study time, and not letting anything interfere with it, it reminds a person to guard one’s study time, and think of it as precious. Second, he has great metaphors/analogies to explain his points. One example I can think of is how he calls studying the “prayer for truth.” Lastly, an advantage this book contains is that it is easy to read. The words are comprehensible, his sentences are well-written, and the vocabulary is not too difficult to comprehend.