Her essay is titled “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of

God,” which is a fantastic title. In this essay Weil argues that study can be a preparation for
prayer, especially because study helps to develop our faculty of attention. Weil writes, “The key
to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the
orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. Of course, school
exercises only develop a lower kind of attention. Nevertheless, they are extremely effective at
increasing the power of attention that will be available at the time of prayer, on condition that
they are carried out with a view to this purpose and this purpose alone. Although people seem to
be unaware it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost
the sole interest of studies.”
So, we have the elements of our syllogism here, as it were: studies help to increase attention,
attention is the sum and substance of prayer, and therefore studies can assist us in prayer. Weil
observes that no effort of study is wasted, provided that it is attentive. Even a fruitless hour spent
trying to solve a problem can have spiritual benefits which will be felt later in prayer. In this way
even poor students, or Weil would say, *particularly* poor students can receive spiritual benefit
from the efforts they devote to study, regardless whether those efforts move them towards
successful learning.
Weil gives this advice to students; she says that you should study with no thought of grades or
advancement, but think only of forming your faculty of attention. She says there are two
conditions for the right use of school studies, and the first is to wish to do your work correctly.
But beneath this, aim solely at increasing your power of attention with an ultimate view towards
prayer, towards improving your relationship with God. The second condition is to examine your
errors, carefully and without making excuses. Weil notes that this is quite difficult, as most of us
wish to hide, and to hide from, our failures.
But studying our errors in detail with clear eyes teaches us humility and, even more valuable, it
makes us aware of our own mediocrity, of the second-rate-ness of our work. In many ways this
can be even more spiritually valuable than an awareness of our own sinfulness, because one can
take a kind of perverse pride in being sinful but nobody can take pride in being mediocre or
second-rate. So, the more deeply we impress upon ourselves the way in which we have fallen
short of the mark of excellence in study and in knowing truth, the more, the better prepared we
are for the life of prayer and approaching God.
If we follow both of these conditions, Weil says, study is as good a road to sanctity as any
activity. Now, how do we pay attention? Weil says it is not a matter of muscular effort: this leads
to exhaustion rather than to actually achieving work. Many people think it is. Many people think
muscular effort is the essence of study; they think that studying means sitting in a chair, in a
certain posture, wrinkling your brow, tightening up. She says these people are just clenching
their muscles, they are not actually studying or paying attention. Paying attention is also not a
matter of willpower, says Weil.
It is not a matter of the kind of willpower we would use in doing a physical task, finishing the
last mile of a marathon, for example. The reason for this is that the intellect is led only by desire.
So, we must take pleasure in our studies, we must acquire this joy of learning, we must cultivate
this over time. Paying attention is quite difficult, says Weil. She writes, “Something in our soul
has a far more violent repugnance for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue. This
something is much more closely connected with evil than is the flesh. That is why every time we
really concentrate our attention, we destroy some evil in ourselves.”
Now attention according to Weil involves a kind of passivity or openness of the mind, an
openness to the object and a willingness to receive it as it is in its reality. So, Weil defines
attention as consisting of “a suspension of thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be
penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought but on a
lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are
forced to make use of.” Weil compares this to holding something in your peripheral vision,
having at the corner of your eye, so to speak, all of your currently acquired knowledge which is
relevant to the matter at hand, but maintaining the main focus of your vision upon the object in
front of you, waiting for it to present itself to you. Both teachers and spiritual guides should be
teaching this method of attention to children with an effort of improving their academic and
spiritual lives, says Weil.
Now, attention can help us not only to love God but also to love our neighbor. Weil writes, “Not
only does the love of God have attention for its substance: the love of neighbor, which we know
to be the same love, is made of this same substance. Those who are unhappy have no need for
anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give
one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing. Nearly all of those who think they
have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, and pity are not enough.”
Weil continues, “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness is a recognition that the sufferer
exists not only as a unit in a collection or a specimen from the social category labeled
‘unfortunate,’ but as a man exactly like us who was one day stamped with a special mark by
affliction. For this reason, it is enough, it is indispensable to know how to look at him in a certain
way. And this way is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order
to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth. Only one who is
capable of attention can do this.”
Weil concludes her essay this way: “For an adolescent capable of grasping this truth and
generous enough to desire this fruit above all others, studies could have their fullest spiritual
effect quite apart from any particular religious belief. Academic work is one of those fields
containing a pearl so precious that it is worthwhile to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing
for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.” That's Simone Weil’s essay, “Reflections on the
Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.”