A vast ques­tion: which came first, know­ledge or love? The con­flict between emo­tion­al and ration­al con­vic­tions may per­haps have no answer at all, and yet it is worth pon­der­ing.

If you look at your own life, love came first, for the unfold­ing of your reas­on, your birth and even your con­cep­tion were all pre­ceded by love, by your par­ents' love. And love some­times brings a loss of con­scious­ness, a heady, self-for­get­ful daze… To speak of know­ledge to a lover…? A futile attempt. Per­haps just as futile as speak­ing of love to a dry schol­ar – neither under­stands the other's lan­guage, nor wishes to speak it. To dis­course on hap­pi­ness and rap­ture from the stand­point of the­ory, of philo­soph­ising, is an exceed­ingly dry affair, but to exam­ine philo­sophy from the stand­point of joy – that is far more sat­is­fy­ing. Per­haps this hints at what may have come first, or, bet­ter still, at which is the more import­ant?

Some claim that one can love only what one knows, while oth­ers, quite the reverse, come to know things through love. Undoubtedly, if some­thing is to be loved, some prior acquaint­ance with it is needed, and at the very least we must be aware of the thing's exist­ence.

Know­ing, how­ever, often has strange con­sequences. There are some who, hav­ing come to know the nature of anim­als, find the beha­viour of people ever harder to tol­er­ate…

When we speak of know­ledge not as inform­a­tion but as a prin­ciple, we may say that know­ledge pur­i­fies and leads to love. Let us leave aside for now that know­ledge can at times be a dead end and a neg­a­tion. Know­ledge reaches its per­fec­tion when one has no expect­a­tions and no attach­ments, when one's striv­ings are guided no longer by mater­i­al interest, by selfish motive, or even by a sense of duty, but by the spon­tan­eous love that wells up from the heart.

Exper­i­en­cing shows itself in the body as sen­sa­tions, in con­scious­ness as thoughts, and in the soul as love. (Merezhkovsky)

When love is no longer a feel­ing but a way of approach­ing the world, it is easi­er to grant any­thing and any­one the trust, given in advance, that may become the source of know­ing and of love.

If we exam­ine the ques­tion onto­lo­gic­ally: which came first, know­ledge or love? then we answer accord­ing to the lean­ings of our world­view. The mater­i­al­ist sci­ent­ist will prob­ably assert the primacy of know­ledge, the fer­vent believ­er the primacy of love, and the mys­tic who has reached a high level of philo­sophy will per­haps speak of the two as each pre­sup­pos­ing the other's exist­ence. And each of them is right. Everything depends on the premise, on the stand­points of the inquiry, on the yard­stick and on the observ­er.

Let us sup­pose that the source of the uni­verse is the supreme intel­lect, which brings forth everything else: the worlds, time, beings, man and love. Then, in order of time, know­ledge came first. But if we look at which is the more import­ant, the more ele­ment­al, then love is upper­most. It is said that theo­logy and philo­sophy are the pas­sion of man, and of only a few men at that, where­as even a dove pays homage to love when it raises its young. Thus love is more uni­ver­sal than know­ledge.

Know­ing based on love is thor­ough, but it can dis­tort. A lov­ing moth­er may call her sight­less child star-eyed – which is wrong in fact, yet in love is true. Com­pared with this, fac­tu­al know­ing, know­ledge, falls short. Undoubtedly, know­ing based on hatred is intense as well, but it too dis­torts. In the per­son we hate we think we see even traits no one ever sus­pec­ted, but if we had to choose between the two dis­tort­ing ways of see­ing, know­ing based on love and know­ing based on hatred, it would be bet­ter to choose the former.

Man is called at once a ration­al being and an emo­tion­al being. If you could choose wheth­er to know or to love – which would you choose? And the ques­tion is not even which came first, but which of them is the more last­ing.