Inasmuch as the heart liberates the mind and the mind liberates the heart, Jesuit education is committed to the concurrent liberation of both. Thus, we cannot be singularly focused on the mind; we must probe the depths of the heart, understand its influence on the mind, and the mind's influence on it.

In an educational culture where "heart" is generally identified with "The chambered muscular organ in vertebrates that pumps blood . . .," it is difficult to assign reality to the nonphysical meanings of "heart." Most people today view the emotional connotations of "heart" as merely metaphorical because the physical definition seems to exhaust the full range of reality.

I would submit, however, that the term "heart" also can signify a very real set of desires, intuitions, and related emotions that have been connected to soul or spirit throughout intellectual history. Though this "spiritual heart" can make the physical heart go faster or slower or even feel as if it is "warm" or "aching," it is quite distinct from the physical heart, and should be viewed as having a reality of its own (whether one associates this reality with brain physiology alone or with a soul or spirit).

Blaise Pascal, the famous 17^th century mathematician, exclaimed, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being . . . ." St. Ignatius Loyola wrote about the centrality of the heart, making its conversion the point of his Spiritual Exercises. He even called the final stage of Jesuit formation "the school of the affect." Since that time, the mutual liberation of reason's reasons and the heart's reasons has been the raison d'etre of Jesuit education.

The notion of "spiritual heart" has its origins in antiquity and was well known to Old and New Testament authors. In the Old Testament, the heart is associated with the source of psychic activity in general (thoughts, desires and deeds-- Deuteronomy 15:9). Old Testament authors did not therefore make a distinction between reason's reasons and the heart's reasons. Though the New Testament holds to the Old Testament's general characterization of psychic activity, it frequently refines the meaning of "heart" to the place where God acts, transforms, and dwells (e.g., "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Sprit..." Romans 5:5, see also Galatians 4:6 and Ephesians 3:17). St. Paul specifies it even further by associating the "spiritual heart" with conscience, freedom, choice, and the unwritten Law-- Romans 2:15. For this reason, the heart was associated with the five transcendentals in the Neoplatonic tradition: Truth, Love, Goodness/Justice/Fairness, Beauty, and Being/the One.

If this Neoplatonic contention is correct, than we possess a power or faculty that has the desire for and awareness of perfect and unconditional Truth, Love, Goodness, Beauty, and Being. The "spiritual heart" would therefore be the most transcendent and extensive of all human powers. Indeed, Plato thought that it was the proof of human immortality.

For this reason, the Jesuit educational tradition has placed not only the "spiritual heart," but also the five transcendentals, at its center. Thus, we are interested in truth in literature, history, the social sciences and the natural sciences, as well as Truth Itself in philosophy and theology. We are interested in logic, evidence, rigorous methodology, careful research, and articulation in areas ranging from the smallest fields of human endeavor to the ultimate grounds and causes of metaphysics.

We are concomitantly interested in love and empathy as found in human relationships as well as a relationship with Unconditional Love Itself. We are interested in the good as it manifests itself in human conscience, the pursuit of virtue, the understanding of principles in practical applications of ethics, and even in the "unwritten law" of the heart (what St. Thomas Aquinas called the natural law).

We are interested in the beautiful, in the visual, musical, and performing arts, in the appreciation of harmony and form, the study of aesthetics, and even in the awe-inspiring majesty of Unconditional Beauty Itself. Above all, we are interested in Unconditional Being Itself (what the ancients termed "the One" ) as the unity of truth, love, goodness, and beauty, as the source of all finite being, and as the perfect, ultimate, spiritual Home for which we yearn as our completion and peace.

I will devote the next few issues of GONZAGA to a discussion of the five transcendentals, their interrelationship, and their unity in God-- the heart of Jesuit education.