The student is submerged in the dicta and data of his college education that reduces realness and beauty to mathematical figures and facts. The Oak Tree understood the Nightingale but the Student "could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the things that are written down in books."
The princess is even worse. Taken up by the mendacities of her court status and socialization, she is so distanced from her emotional self as to regard the Student as signifier of a lower rank and the rose as to be insubstantial compared to that of 'real jewels': "everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers." Ultimately, it is the organic species, such as the Nightingale, who 'understood the secret of the Student's sorrow' since they are intimate with 'the mystery of Love'. She dies in order to procure the Rose.
Conclusion
There are three areas of knowledge: scientific, phenomenological and spiritual. Wilde's story 'the Nightingale and the Rose', glorifies the phenomenological and intuitive practice of knowledge whist ridiculing reducibility of phenomena to scientific understanding. His story deals with two main aspects: the superiority of aesthetics and art to the detached and factual subjects such as...
The Nightingale, understanding what Love is, dies in order to procure the Rose for the Student. The princess spurns the rose for she ridicules the student's inferior status. The student tramples on the rose for "it is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true." Truth to him is the reverse of reality, and, in the end, he "returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read."
The lesson of this story? The less educated the creature, the more he or she seems to be attuned to that which really matters.
References
Artquotes.net. Oscar Wilde quotes www.artquotes.net/motivational-quotes/oscar-wilde.htm
Salmon, D. (n.d..) Three Ways of Knowing: Scientific, Phenomenological and Spiritual
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/i_es/i_es_salmo_knowing_frameset.htm
Wilde, O. The Nightingale and the Rose
http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/178/
