The Pearl of Learning

When I was a student at Cambridge ages and ages ago we were made aware that the Preamble to the 1359 Statutes of Clare College, where I was resident, bid us members of the College “to preserve the precious pearl of learning.” The sense was that there was something more precious than academic knowledge. A deeper wisdom was involved. As T.S. Eliot wrote in The Rock:

                “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
                Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”