[If nothing else, my father was a disciplined man, as evidenced by his journal writing itself, as well as by the prodigious reading, writing and scholarship practices that his journal entries reveal. In this brief entry, he contemplates “discipline” in two senses of the word — as a field or philosophy to which one dedicates himself, as well as the efforts and practices that one expends in pursuit of that cause. He ends with an interesting take on the role of the artist, working in the space between the disciplines of religion and science. (My father wrote this entry at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where he had been transferred for additional infantry training.)]
January 23, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)
The compelling need in every man’s life is for a discipline. The best-integrated and most productive lives are those which are built around the sternest disciplines. I thought of this tonight while watching Jose Iturbi play the piano in “Music For Millions.” “There’s a man,” I said to myself, “who’s[sic] life means something to himself and to many other people. That’s because it’s a disciplined life concentrated towards a well-defined end. It doesn’t waste itself.”
In religion, it isn’t this particular creed or that certain dogma which really matters, and those who see nothing but the creed and dogma have not grasped the essence of their religion. That essence is discipline, as it is also the essence of art, and the essence of scholarship.
Every life observes some discipline, but in most lives these are disciplines of a low order, the animal regimen of feeding and sleeping and sex release. These can almost be called reflexes, the biological habits by which life has maintained itself since its mysterious appearance on earth.
The higher disciplines are those which employ the human mind, or call for a conscious refinement and orientation of the emotions. At a middle stage are such disciplines as those of the military man, or the skilled technological worker. Minds which can no longer respect religion for its truth must still admire its discipline in the many great men and women who are still among its adherents. The scientist, after all, is basically at one with the profoundly religious man in his devotion to a system of laws. There is something in certain areas of science, however, which excludes certain religious experience, and in religion, likewise, something which will not admit all of science. The great artist, it seems to me, stands between science and religion, and is capable of using experience from both in his own greatest discipline, the discipline of creation.
Paul Davis Journals Blog 