How does modern man get this exactly backward?
Here is a short insight from one of the best books you can read:
In his 1946 classic, The Intellectual Life, the French Dominican A.G. Sertillanges lays out the simple purpose of study:
“The order of the mind must correspond to the order of things.”
He is drawing from St. Thomas Aquinas, who teaches that truth is the conformity of the mind to reality.
This is the purpose of the liberal arts, of the great books, and of all study: the pursuit of truth.
We must labor to conform our minds to the contours of reality.
We aid one another in our pursuit of truth through our words, whether oral or written, for it is the purpose of our words to convey truth.
How rich we are then to have the writings of such masters as St. Augustine to help guide us in this vocation of the intellect.
As Sertillanges teaches, “books are signposts” on the movement of the mind toward truth.
We approach such authors as a student approaches a teacher—ready for a tutelage in what is real.
Whereas Catholics strive to conform their minds to reality, modern man strives to conform reality to his mind.