I will ask you to project the look on a child’s face when he grasps the answer
to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of
joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself-conscious, yet
self-assertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as
an illumination of the world—inward, as the first spark of what is to become
the fire of an earned pride. If you have seen this look, or experienced it, you
know that if there is such a concept as “sacred”—meaning: the best, the
highest possible to man—this look is the sacred, the not-to-be-betrayed, the
not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone.
[I use] the word “sanctity” not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of “supreme value.”