"The only true masters in philosophy"

“OF all those who have learned philosophy only in school or from books written only for schools I am sorry to say that they have not the slightest idea of what the philosophical life really is. Not unlike the innumerable students who spend years in learning Latin and never use it to read Vergil, our students in philosophy are introduced to a philosophical life which very few of them will ever enter. I cannot help wondering, however, if a larger number among them would not enjoy living a genuinely philosophical life, if they were warned in due time that what we must teach them as philosophy is not yet philosophy, but a way to it, and that the only true masters in philosophy there are, are the great philosophers?”

~Etienne Gilson: History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education, (Aquinas Lecture 1947, Fall).