God’s interior presence and providence is the only evidence of life. We do not have to be perfect today. We do not have to be better than someone else. All we have to do is to be the very best we can as a way of discharging an intellectual debt for our generation and to religious seekers of every age. Every person is faced with practical decisions and moral choices that require personal assessment of the circumstances and particular means and end in view. There is a point at which even a great military leader cannot rely solely upon the rules of strategy and one’s formal conception of warfare; one must place all these abilities at the service of his or her personal estimate of a particular military situation in order to make a responsible decision. One is directly engaged in concrete reasoning in the natural mode of inference. We all are going through different life experiences. While some are filled with joy today, others feel as though their hearts could burst with sorrow. Some feel as though the World is their side show; others feel as though they are the star of a romantic film, plucked from their twinkling fairy tale, and the swooning waltz, and placed in devastation and confusion and robbed of all that is precious to them. No matter one’s situation, no matter one’s emotional or spiritual state of mind, regardless of where one is in this sojourn through mortal life, being our true selves is the real challenge in life. It is all about honesty, making our yearnings known, and expressing our feelings openly and without reservation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

The concrete uses of intelligence are not thematized and critically controlled. The reasoning is informal insofar as it deals with questions that cannot be settled by appealing simply to the formal logical rules, but still it is a quite deliberate and reflective way of reasoning. Informal reasoning is required by our World of particulars, but this World does not prevent us from reflecting upon the way in which we explore and interpret it. Illative sense is only a grand name for designating a very ordinary way of using the mind. Life, just like a romance, is an adventure. It is fraught with conflict and fluctuations, but if we let go of the myth of the fairytale, we get to the real heart of the story. Certainly, we have much to be grateful for. And if we will consider the blessings we have, we will forget some of our worries. Of course, serenity and joy will come to us if we realize the blessings we have, and it will help us a great deal. The illative sense refers to the type of operation of the human mind as it engages in concrete reasoning, reaches a conclusion of inference, and determines whether to give its certitudinal assent to the inferred proposition about a concrete reality. Certitude consists in an active response of the mind to the weight and tenor of the argument, a living recognition of the meaning and the truth of the proposition that states some findings. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

Furthermore, this certitduinal apprehension of the truth of the proposition is an inalienably individual act. We come to grasp the important argument; see the bearing of the evidence; give our assent to the proposition as true. An ancient proverb states that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The sole and final judgment on the validity of an inference in concrete matters is committed to the personal action of the ratiocinative faculty, the perfection or virtue of the illative sense. Sometimes we make the process more complicated than we need to. We will never make a journey of a thousand miles by fretting about how long it will take or how hard it will be. It is the mind that reasons, and that controls its own reasonings, not any technical apparatus of words and propositions. This power of judging and concluding, when in its perfection, is called the illative sense. We make the journey by taking each day step by step and then repeating it again and again until we reach our destination. The same principle applies to how we can climb to higher spirituality. The illative use of the mind is observable not only in the concluding act of an inference in concrete issues, but also at the outset and along the way of reasoning. The need for personal use of intelligence—especially in creative work suggest the governing hypothesis, to gauge strength of some particular stage in the inquiry, and to discern the bearings of many outlying investigations upon the main problem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

Our Heavenly Fathers know that we must begin our climb from where we are. When we climb up the ladder, we must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until we arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the gospel—we must begin with the first, and go on until we learn all the principles of exaltation. However, it will be a great while after we have passed through the veil before we will have learned them. We seek to conduct ourselves responsibly in all these operations, and illative sense refers to the intellectual mastery or perfection that an individual develops for inquires in some concrete field. It comes close to the Aristotelian habit of prudence or practical wisdom, except that it can reach into the speculative order and attain certitude there. However, despite a similar pattern of concrete logic for different fields, the personal mastery cannot simply be transferred from one area to another. A person may give us good grounds for trusting his or her judgment in military affairs or biological questions, whereas one may be utterly lacking in sagacity in respect to political legislation. Our Heavenly Father loves each one of us and understands that this process of climbing higher takes preparation, time, and commitment. God understands that we will make mistakes at times, that we will stumble, that we will become discouraged and perhaps even wish to give up and say to ourselves it is not worth the struggle. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

However, we do not isolate religious inquiry from other concrete uses of intelligence, but it is required to conform to the common requirements of concrete inquiry. Religious people are not concerned solely with abstract and general issues but seek the truth about the reality of God, the person of the Savior, the complex life of the church, and the individual soul’s response to them all. These matters belong in the region of concrete existence and thus impose their own requirements upon the searcher’s mind. The interested individual cannot do justice to the issues if one confines oneself to what can be ascertained exclusively from the use of formal reasoning. Such a restriction is bound to lead a noncommittal attitude, not because of the religious issues as such but because of the failure to make use of the concrete reasoning requires by the situation. We know it is worth the effort, for the prize, which is eternal life, is the greatest of all the gifts of God. And to qualify, we must take one step after another and keep going to gain the spiritual heights we aspire to reach. A notional assent is on made to the truth of a proposition itself, whereas a real assent is one made to the reality itself intended by the proposition. Thus one may give a notional assent to God in terms of some abstract divine attributes and also give a real assent to God considered as a personal being who cares for one as an individual person. This is a matter of interpretation on the part of the mind that is considering the statement. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

In the case of purely ideal inquiries, a notional assent is sufficient. However, we live in a translinguistic World, and our questions reach out to the community of real existents, especially to other persons. Here, the mind’s notional assent must be integrated with, and further perfected by, a real assent to the very realities under investigation. An eternal principle is revealed in holy writ: “It is not requisite that a person should run faster than he or she has strength. And again, it is expedient the one should be diligent, that thereby one might win the prize. We do not have to be fast; we simply have to be steady and move in the right direction. We have to do the best we can, one step after another. The fully appropriate intellectual response to our human situation is unavoidably a complex one, involving both notional and real assents. Taken by itself, the way of real assent is intense but unclarified. We need to engage in both formal and informal inference, weighing the evidence carefully and arriving at a careful act of notional assent. Inference and notional assent are indispensable elements in human cognition; otherwise we could not weigh the pertinent evidence on an issue, do justice to the difficulties, or formulate the theoretical findings with cool precision of statement. Thus, we assign a large role to the modes of formal and informal inference and to notional assent in the total composition of human knowledge. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

However, we must also insist upon the need for directly relating the mind to individual existents. The act of real assent achieves our intellectual orientation toward the domain of concrete existents and their values. It does do by furnishing a concrete image of the individual being under consideration and by establishing the relevance of that imaged reality to the inquirer’s own personal life. Real assent does not necessarily ensure action, but it does furnish a necessary condition for our practical responses by directing our mind toward the real existent, grasped in an image that can appeal to our passions and will. Love is not easy—and it should not be. Love is beautiful because it nurtures us and forges us into who we can become. We have to work for it. We have to focus on things that encourage growth. Do not worry much about trying to be better than someone else. Learn from others, but do not just try to be better than they are. It is important to focus on thing we can control by trying, and trying very hard to be the best we can. Our relationship to God is not yet one of direct vision; hence we must engage in inference. A concrete personal mode of reasoning is also required in order to proportion our inquiry as fully as possible to the situation of our search after the truth about God. Our aim must be grounded propositions to which we can legitimately give our notional assent, and also of forming a concrete image of the personal, morally good, and providential God to whose reality we can then give our real assent and practical attachment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

There is an area where we personally can realize this synthesis of intellectual acts bearing on the being of God. There are many ways to God and many natural informants lead us to the Lord: the way of causality and purpose, the meaning of human existence and history, and the import of our moral life. We have scriptures that reveal the word of God to humankind through the ages. When we feast upon the word of God, we open our minds to eternal truths and our hearts to the gentle whisperings of the Holy Ghost. Truly God’s work, through scriptures and modern-day prophets, is a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path. To reach the transcendent, personal God, we must examine the witness of our moral life, for this is a person region where relations with other persons are best established. It is here that we have the experience of conscience, of being under command to do and not to do, of being responsible to a just and caring person who transcends our human reality but does so in a way that keeps the Lord personally concerned about our conduct. Conscience as a commanding act discloses the full human situation of our responsibility toward the good God. As we read about the great souls who have preceded us, we learn that they too had hard times of discouragement and sorrow. We learn that they persevered in spite of hardship, in spite of adversity, sometimes even in spite of their own weakness. We learn that they too continued to ascend one step after another. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

We can be like those righteous souls. Three features of the living command of conscience are also some of the best methods we have learned of achieving real as well as notional assent to God: its intentional character, its personal significance, and its practical ordination. The dictate of conscience by its very structure refers the conscientious person beyond oneself, pointing one toward the reality of the supreme lawgiver and judge of one’s moral actions. This is not purely abstract orienting of our mind but involves a concrete image of God as our concerned Father. Another advantage of this way of conscience is that the moral relationship in which it consists is personal in both poles of reference. Conscience engages us precisely as a personal self; hence it enables us to give a real assent to God as a morally concerned person. Finally, the acts of conscience relate to us the personal God in a concrete way that leas to moral and religious actions. Hence the approach to God from conscience encourages us to assent to the truth about God not only notionally but really, not only in respect to our propositions but also in respect to the personal, provident reality of God himself as the practical goal of our knowledge and love. In order to really love, we must have knowledge of what is really good. The good is essentially dependent upon and interiorly penetrated by knowledge. Knowledge stems from the relationship of the intellect to the thing know. The natural tendency of the intellect is to come to the knowledge of truth. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Real assent to God as the Lord of conscience furnishes a frame of reference for wrestling with evil and discerning the Lord’s providential presence. A mind that is carefully formed upon the true key of that maze to the vast complicated disorder; and this it gains a more and more consistent and luminous vision of God from the most unpromising materials. Thus, conscience is a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator. Whereas the naturalistic critic appeals to the vast disorder as an antecedent reason for withholding our assent from God, we must secure first of all the inward principle of interpretation provided by the personal and moral relation of people to the Lord of conscience. The work of this principle is not to soften or gloss over the concerning God and moral humans that will enable us to understand and work with hope against physical and moral evil in our World. We must also widen our horizon to include the social, developmental, and historical aspects of human experience so that can explore the logic of those social ideals that grip the minds of humans and account for developments in their beliefs and institutions. Interpretative activity of many minds as they are engaged in judging, relating, evaluating, and dealing practically with our complex World inextricably bound together in our very nature and if we live according to our nature, they will lead us straight to our Source and Ultimate end. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

This union is achieved through a life lived in the cultivation of virtue on our part, and by God’s perfect love for us that constantly pulls us toward him. If we do not follow this natural path of love and knowledge, we will only find emptiness and despair since our nature will never be fulfilled. There are some meanings that can be worked out only in this gradual social way. Historically important ideas are those that contain many facets and require the interpretative activity of many minds, testing and developing them over many years. Ordinarily an idea is not brought home to the intellect as objective except through this variety; like bodily substances, which are not apprehended except under the clothing of their properties and results, and which admit of being walked around, and surveyed on opposite dies, and in different perspectives, and in contrary lights, in evidence of their reality. We can grasp the intentional structure of basic human meanings only through studying their carious perspectives, forcing them to enter the battlefield of critical discussion, and sometimes embodying them in visible, powerful social institutions. Through counsel and prayers, we can reach into the Heavens and personally commune with the Infinite. Through faith, Heaven itself can be moved in our behalf. Doors will be opened and answers received. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

 There is a common pattern of development that has certain traits distinguishing a healthy growth from a sickly one. The seven criteria for genuine development are preservation of the type of principle that is socially influential, continuity of these principles, their capacity for assimilation of new data, their logical sequence in organizing a complex social process, their anticipation of their own future, conservation of their past achievements, and their chronic vigor. These criteria are illustrated in kingdoms, economic policies, religious convictions, scientific hypotheses, and philosophical theories. Crucial decisions affecting the course of cultural development is being made within the University. It is replacing the episcopal palace, the banking house, and the parliamentary floor as the real center for determining the long-range direction of human history. There is a fresh synthesis of tradition and originality in the University community. The task of such a community is to educate the men and women of the World by gradually introducing them to the full complexity of our humanistic, scientific, and religious interpretations. This the University should try to do by cultivating an understanding of the various methods and ways of knowing, along with an awareness of their differences, limitations, and possibilities for unification. Our most important goal, however, is to praise the Christian faith and its practical institutions, especially as they are brought into close relation with modern humanistic and scientific ideas. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

Our contributions to faith and its practical institutions that are also concerned with modern humanistic and scientific ideas might be considered as a sustained effort at education that draws its strength from both Christianity and the other components in the University. This will fill people with light and direction. Our beloved Heavenly Father and the amazing Son will appear to them. Their direction will sweep away the thick darkness that has seized them and threatened to destroy them. It will forever sweep away confusion. Our time here is precious and so short. All too soon, our time is finished. While we can—while we have the time to complete our work—let us walk in the right direction, taking one step after another. So look upward in joy and take hold of the Lord’s hand; God will lead you to heights that are new—a land holy and pure, where all trouble does end, and your life shall be free from all sin, where no tears shall be shed, for no sorrows remain. Take God’s hand and with him enter in. Our Heavenly Father lives and knows and loves each one of us. If you do your best in life, you will be happy and content. The actions of righteous people ripple on and on through time and space and even generations. “Be not weary in well-doing, for you are laying the foundation of great work. And out of small things proceeds that which is great,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 64.33. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13