In addition to leisure—or perhaps as one of the ultimate expressions of it—travel is often one of the great joys of summer.  Are you going somewhere over break?  Somewhere you’ve never been?  Or perhaps somewhere you’ve been many times before and always long to return?

In a quote sometimes attributed to Saint Augustine, though of uncertain origin, it is suggested that “[t]he world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”  It is a call to go and see the world, to visit foreign lands, to experience other cultures, to take in new vistas, new cuisine, new languages.

But a quick logic lesson for you: Even if Augustine is right, that doesn’t mean that those who do travel, ipso facto, have read the whole book.  That’s a fallacy, known as denying the antecedent.

For as Chesterton observed, “”They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.”  I knew someone who once took a trip to Greece and Italy…but had never studied ancient Athens or Rome or the Renaissance.  She knew little of Aristotle or Caesar of DaVinci or Machiavelli.  And, so, her travel was little more than a change of location—she had, in Augustine’s thinking, traveled and yet still only read a page.

That is in part why the things you learn here in school matter—they will equip you to travel the world in a manner that actually broadens your mind…because you will possess a mind that is ready to be broadened.

And for those who will not or cannot travel this summer, just remember, as Emily Dickinson tells us—“There is no Frigate like a Book to take us Lands away….”  It is a “frugal Chariot.”  And it is why Proust can say that “[t]he real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

I wish you grand travels this summer…whether on a boat or in a book.

Have a wonderful day.