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Title: Enquirer Author: William Godwin Date: 1797 Language: en Topics: education, literature, essays Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/godwin/enquirer.html
The true object of education, like that of every other moral process, is
the generation of happiness.
Happiness to the individual in the first place. If individuals were
universally happy, the species would be happy.
Man is a social being. In society the interests of individuals are
interwisted with each other, and cannot be separated. Men should be
taught to assist each other. The first object should be to train a man
to be happy; the second to train him to be useful, that is, to be
virtuous.
There is a further reason for this. Virtue is essential to individual
happiness. There is no transport equal to that of the performance of
virtue. All other happiness, which is not connected with
self-approbation and sympathy, is unsatisfactory and frigid.
To make a man virtuous we must make him wise. All virtue is a compromise
between opposite motives and inducements. The man of genuine virtue, is
a man of vigorous comprehension and long views. He who would be
imminently useful, must be eminently instructed. He must be endowed with
a fagacious judgment and ardent zeal.
The argument in favour of wisdom or a cultivated intellect, like the
argument in favour of virtue, when closely considered, shows itself to
be twofold. Wisdom is not only directly a means to virtue; it is also
directly a means to happiness. The man of enlightened understanding and
persevering ardour, has many sources of enjoyment which the ignorant man
cannot reach; and it may at least be suspected that these sources are
more exquisite, more solid, more durable and more constantly accessible,
than any which the wise man and the ignorant man possess in common.
Thus it appears that there are three leading objects of a just
education, happiness, virtue, wisdom, including under the term wisdom
both extent of information and energy of pursuit.
When a child is born, one of the earliest purposes of his institution
ought to be, to awaken his mind, to breathe a soul into the, as yet,
unformed mass.
What my be the precise degree of difference with respect to capacity
that children generally bring into the world with them, is a problem
that it is perhaps impossible completely to solve.
But, if education cannot do every thing, it can do much. To the
attainment of any accomplishment what is principally necessary, is that
the accomplishment should be ardently desired. How many instances is it
reasonable to suppose there are, where this ardent desire exists, and
the means of attainment are clearly and skillfully pointed out, where
yet the accomplishment remains finally unattained? Give but sufficient
motive, and you have given every thing. Whether the object be to shoot
at a mark, or to master a science, this observation is equally
applicable.
The means of exciting desire are obvious. Has the proposed object
desirably qualities? Exhibit them. Delineate them with perspicuity, and
delineate them with ardour. Show your object from time to time under
every point of view which is calculated to demonstrate its loveliness.
Criticise, commend, exemplify. Nothing is more common than for a master
to fail in infusing the passions into his pupil that he purposes to
infuse; but who is there that refuses to confess, that the failure is to
be ascribed to the indolence or unskillfulness of the master, to the
impossibility of success?
The more inexperienced and immature is the mind of the infant, the
greater is its pliability. It is not to be told how early, habits,
pernicious or otherwise, are acquired. Children bring some qualities,
favourable or adverse to cultivation, into the world with them. But they
speedily acquire other qualities in addition to these, and which are
probably of more moment than they. Thus a diseased state of body, and
still more an improper treatment, the rendering the child, in any
considerable degree, either the tyrant or the slave of those around him,
my in the first twelve months implant feeds of an ill temper, which in
some instances may accompany him through life.
Reasoning from the principles already delivered, it would be a gross
mistake to suppose, that the sole object to be attended in the first
part of education, is to provide for the present ease and happiness of
the individual. An awakened mind is one of the most important purposes
of education, and it is a purpose that cannot too soon enter into the
views of the preceptor.
It seems probable that early instruction is a thing, in itself
considered, of very inferior value. Many of those things which we learn
in our youth, it is necessary, if we would well understand, that we
should learn over again in our riper years. Many things that, in the
dark and unapprehensive period of youth, are attained with infinite
labour, may, by a ripe and judicious understanding, be acquired with an
effort inexpressibly inferior. He who should affirm, that the true
object of juvenile education was to teach no one thing in particular,
but to provide against the age of five and twenty a mind well regulated,
active, and prepared to learn, would certainly not obtrude upon us the
absurdest of paradoxes.
The purpose therefore of early instruction is not absolute. It is of
less importance, generally speaking, that a child should acquire this or
that species of knowledge, than that, through the medium of instruction,
he should acquire habits of intellectual activity. It is not so much for
the direct consideration of what he learns, that his mind must not be
suffered to lie idle. The preceptor in this respect is like the incloser
of uncultivated land; his first crops are not valued for their intrinsic
excellence; they are sown that the land may be brought to order. The
springs of the mind, like the joints of the body, are apt to grow stiff
for want of employment. They must be exercised in carious directions and
with unabating perseverance. In a word, the first lesson of a judicious
education is, Learn to think, to discriminate, to remember and to
enquire.
Doubts have sometimes been suggested as to the desirableness of talents.
âGive to a child,â it has been frequently said, âgood sense and a
virtuous propensity; I desire no more. Talents are often rather an
injury than a benefit to their possessor. They are a fort of ignis
fatuus leading us astray; a fever of the mind incompatible with the
sober dictates of prudence. They tempt a man to the perpetration of
bold, bad deeds; and qualify him rather to excite the admiration, than
promote the interests of society.â
This may be affirmed to be a popular doctrine; yet where almost is the
affectionate parent who would seriously say, âTake care that my child do
not turn out a lad of too much capacity?â
The capacity which it is in the power of education to bestow, must
consist principally in information. Is it to be feared that a man should
know too much for his happiness? Knowledge for the most part consists in
added means of pleasure or enjoyment, and added discernment to select
those means.
It ?????? be partial, not extensive, information, ?????? calculated to
lead us astray. The twilight of knowledge bewilders and infuses a false
confidence; ?????? and perfect day must exhibit things in their true
colours and dimensions. The proper cure of mistake, must be to afford me
more information; not to take away that which I have.
Talents in general, notwithstanding the exception mentioned in the
outset, hold a higher estimation among mankind, than virtues. There are
few men who had not rather you should say of them, that they are knaves,
than that they are fools. But folly and wisdom are to a great degree
relative terms. He who passes for the oracle of an obscure club, would
perhaps appear ignorant and confused and vapid and tedious in a circle
of men of genius. The only complete protection against the appellation
of fool, is to be the possessor of uncommon capacity. A self-satisfied,
half-witted fellow, is the most ridiculous of all things.
The decision of common fame, in favour of talents in preference to
virtues, is not so absurd as has sometimes been imagined. Talents are
the instruments of usefulness. He that has them, is capable of producing
uncommon benefit; he that has them not, is destitute even of the power.
A tool with a fine edge may do mischief; but a tool that neither has an
edge nor can receive it, is merely lumber. Again; the virtues of a weak
and ignorant man scarcely deserve the name. They possess it by way of
courtesy only. I call such a man good, somewhat in the same as I would
call my dog good. My dog seems attached to me; but change his condition,
and he would be as much attached to the stupidest dunce, or the most
cankered villain. His attachment has no discrimination in it; it is
merely the creature of habit. Just so human virtues without
discrimination, are no virtues. The weak man neither knows whom he ought
to approve nor whom to disapprove. Dazzled by the lustre of uncommon
excellence, he is frequently one of the first to defame it. He wishes me
well. But he does not know how to benefit me. He does not know what
benefit is. He does not understand the nature of happiness or good. He
cannot therefore be very zealous to promote it. He applies as much
ardour to the thought of giving me a trinket, as to the thought of
giving me liberty, magnanimity and independence.
The idea of withholding from me capacity, left I should abuse it, is
just as rational, as it would be to shut me up in prison, left by going
at large I should be led into mischief.
I like better to be a man than a brute; and my preference is just. A man
is capable of giving more and enjoying more. By parity of reason I had
rather be a man with talent than a man without. I shall be so much more
a man, and less a brute. If it lie in my own choice, I shall undoubtedly
say, Give me at least the chance of doing uncommon good, and enjoying
pleasures uncommonly various and exquisite. The affairs of man in
society are not of so simple a texture, that they require only common
talents to guide them. Tyranny grows up by a kind of necessity of
nature; oppression discovers itself; poverty, fraud, violence, murder,
and a thousand evils follow in the rear. These cannot be extirpated
without great discernment and great energies. Men of genius must rise
up, to show their brethren that these evils, though familiar, are not
therefore the less dreadful, to analyse the machine of human society, to
demonstrate how the parts are connected together, to explain the immense
chain of events and consequences, to point out the defects and the
remedy. It is thus only that important reforms can be produced. Without
talents, despotism would be endless, and public misery incessant. Hence
it follows, that he who is a friend to general happiness, will negelect
no chance of producing in his pupil or his child, one of the
long-looked-for faviours of the human race.
It is a question which has but lately entered into disquisition, whether
genius be born with a man or may be subsequently infused. Hitherto it
was considered as a proposition too obvious for controversy, that it was
born and could not be infused. This is however by no means obvious.
That some differences are born with children cannot be denied. But to
what do these differences amount? Look at a newborn infant. How unformed
and plastic is his body; how simple the features of his mind!
The features of the mind depend upon perceptions, sensations, pleasure
and pain. But the perceptions, the pleasures and pains of a child
previous to his birth must make a very insignificant catalogue. If his
habits at a subsequent period can be changed and corrected by opposite
impressions, it is not probable that the habits generated previous to
birth can be inaccessible to alteration.
If therefore there be any essential and decisive difference in children
at the period of birth, it must consist in the structure of their
bodies, not in the effects already produced upon their minds. The senses
or sensibility of one body my be radically more acute than those of
another. We do not find however that genius is inseparably connected
with any particular structure of the organse of sense. The man of genius
is not unfrequently deficient in one or more of the these organs; and a
very ordinary man may be perfect in them all. Genius however may be
connected with a certain state of nervous sensibility originally
existing in the frame. Yet the analogy from the external organs is
rather unfavourable to this supposition. Dissect a man of genius, and
you cannot point out those differences in his structure which constitute
him such; still less can you point out original and immutable
differences. The whole therefore seems to be a gratuitous assumption.
Genius appears to signify little more in the first instance than a
spirit of prying observation and incessant curiousity. But it is
reasonable to suppose that these qualities are capable of being
generated. Incidents of a certain sort in early infancy will produce
them; nay, may create them in a great degree even at a more advanced
period. If nothing occur to excite the mind, it will become torpid; if
it be frequently and strongly excited, unless in a manner that, while it
excites, engenders aversion to effort, it will become active, mobile and
turbulent. Hence it follows, that an adequate cause for the phenomenon
of genius may be found, in the incidents that occur to us subsequent to
birth. Genius, it should seem, may be produced after this method; have
we any sufficient reason to doubt of its being always thus produced?
All the events of the physical and intellectual world happen in a train,
take place in a certain order. The voluntary actions of men are as the
motives which instigate them. Give me all the motives that have excited
another man, and all the external advantages he has had to boast, and I
shall arriave at an excellence no inferior to his.
This view of the ntaure of the human mind, is of the utmost importance
in the science of education. According to the notions formerly received,
education was a lottery. The case would be parallel, if, when we went
into battle in defence of our liberties and posessions, ninety-nine in a
hundred of the enemy were musket-proof.
It would be instructive speculation to enquire, under what circumstances
genius is generated, and whether, and under what circumstanes, it may be
extinguished.
It should seem that the first indications of genius ordinarily disclose
themselves at least as early, as at the age of five years. As far
therefore as genius is susceptible of being produced by education, the
production of it requires a very early care.
In infancy the mind is peculiarly ductile. We bring into the world with
us nothing that deserves the name of habit; are neither virtuous nor
vicious, active nor idle, inattentive nor curious. The infant comes into
our hands a subject, capable of certain impressions and of being led on
to a certain degree of improvement. His mind is like his body. What at
first was cartilage, gradually becomes bone. Just so the mind acquires
it solidity; and what might originally have been bent in a thousand
directions, becomes stiff, unmanageable and unimpressible.
This change however takes place by degrees and probably is never
complete. The mind is probably never absolutely incapable of any
impressions and habits we might desire to produce. The production grows
more and more difficult, till the effecting it becomes a task too great
for human strength, and exceeds perhaps the powers and contrivance of
the wisest man that ever existed. These remarks may contribute to
explain the case of genius breaking out at a late period in an
unpromising subject. If genius be nothing more in the first instance
than a spirit of prying observation and incessant curiousity, there
seems to be no impossibility, though there may be a greatly increased
difficulty, in generating it after the period above assigned.
There seems to be a case, more frequent than that of the post-dated
genius, though not so much remarked; and not dissimilar to it in its
circumstances. This is the case of genius, manifesting itself, and
afterwards become extinct. There is one appearance of this kind that has
not escaped notice; the degradation of powers of mind sometimes produced
in a man for the remainder of his life, by severe indisposition.
But the case is probably an affair of very usual occurrence. Examine the
children of peasants. Nothing is more common than to find in them a
promise, of understanding, a quickness of observation, an ingenuousness
of character, and a delicacy of tact, at the age of seven years, the
very traces of which are obliterated at the age of fourteen. The cares
of the world fall upon them. They are enlisted at the crimping-house of
oppression. They are brutified by immoderate and unintermitted labour.
Their hearts are hardened, and their spirits broken, by all that they
see, all that they feel, and all that they look forward to. This is one
of the most interesting points of view in which we can consider the
present order of society. It is the greatest slaughter-house of genius
and of mind. It is the unrelenting murderer of hope and gaiety, of the
love of reflection and the love of life.
Genius requires great care in the training, and the most favourable
circumstances to bring it to perfection. Why should it not be supposed
that, where circumstances are eminently hostile, it will languish,
sicken, and die?
There is only one remark to be added here, to guard against
misapprehension. Genius, it seems to appear from the preceding
speculations, is not born with us, but generated subsequent to birth. It
by no means follows from hence, that it is the produce of education, or
ever was the work of the preceptor. Thousands of impressions are made
upon us, for one that is designedly produced. The child receives twenty
ideas per diem perhaps from the preceptor; it is not impossible that he
may have a million of perceptions in that period, with which the
preceptor has no concern. We learn, it may be, a routine of barren
lesson from our masters; a circumstance occurs perhaps, in the
intercourse of our companions, or in our commerce with nature, that
makes its way directly to the heart, and becomes a fruitful parent of a
thousand projects and contemplations.
True philosophy is probably the highest improvement and most defiable
condition of human understanding.
But there is an insanity among philosopher, that has brought philosophy
itself into discredit. There is nothing in which this insanity more
evidently displays itself, than in the rage of accounting for every
thing.
Nature well known, no prodigies remain,
Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.
It may be granted that there is much of system in the universe; or, in
other words, it must be admitted that a careful observer of nature will
be enabled by his experience in many cases, from an acquaintance with
the antecedent, to fortel the consequent.
The one billiard-ball strike another in a particular manner, we have a
great reason to suppose that the result will be similar to what we have
already observed in like instances. If fire be applied to gunpowder, we
have great reason to expect an explosion. If the gunpowerder be
compressed in a tube, and a ball of lead be placed over it nearer the
mouth of the tube, we have great reason to suppose that the explosion
will expel the ball, and cause it to move in the air in a certain curve.
If the event does not follow in the manner we expected, we have great
reason to suppose that, upon further examination, we shall find a
difference in the antecedents correspondent to the difference in the
consequents.
This uniformity of events and power of prediction constitute the entire
basis of human knowledge.
But there is a regularity and system in the speculations of
philosophers, exceeding any that is to be found in the operations of
nature. We are too confident in our own skill, and imagine our science
to be greater than it is.
We perceive that the succession of events, but we are never acquainted
with any secret virtue, by means of which two events are bound to each
other.
If any man were to tell me that, if I pull the trigger of my gun, a
swift and beautiful horse will immediately appear starting from the
mouth of the tube; I can only answer that I do not expect it, and that
it is contrary to the tenor of my former experience. But I can assign no
reason, why this is an event intrinsically more absurd, or less likely,
than the event I have been accustomed to witness.
This is well known to those who are acquainted with the latest
speculations and discoveries of philosophers. It may be familiarly
illustrated to the unlearned reader by remarking, that the process of
generatino, in consequence of which men and horses are born, has
obviously no more perceivable correspondence with that event, than it
would have, for me to pull the trigger of a gun.
It was probably this false confidence and presumption among
philosophers, that led them indiscriminately to reject the doctrine of
instinct among the animal tribes. There is a uniformity in some of the
spontaneous actions of animals, and a promptitude in others, which
nothing that has yet been observed in the preceding circumstances would
have taught us to expect. In this proposition, that the term instinct,
accurately considered, is calculated to express. Instinct is a general
name for the species of actions in the animal world, that does not fall
under any series of intellectual processes with which we are acquainted.
Inumerable events are in like manner daily taking place in the universe,
that do not fall under any of those rules of succession that human
science has yet delineated.
The world, instead of being, as the vanity of some men has taught them
to assert, a labyrinth of which they hold the clue, is in reality full
enigmas which no penetration of man has hitherto been able to solve.
The principles mentioned, which affirms that we are never acquainted
with any secret virtue by means of which two events are bound to each
other, is calculated to empress upon us a becoming humility in this
respect.
It teaches us that we ought not to be surprised, when we see one event
regularly succeeding another, where we suspected least of what is
apprehended by the vulgar as a link of connection between them. If our
eyes were open, and our prejudices dismissed, we should perpetually
advert to an experience of this sort.
That the accidents of body and mind should regularly descend from father
to son, is a thing that daily occurs, yet is little in correspondence
with the systems of our philosophers.
How small a share, accurately speaking, has the father in the productino
of the son? How many particles is it possible should proceed from him,
and constitute a part of the body of the child descended from him? Yet
how many circumstances they possess in common?
It has sometimes been supposed that the resemblance is produced by the
intercourse which takes place between them after their birth. But this
is an opinion which the facts by no means authorise us to entertain.
The first thing which may be mentioned as descending from father to son
in his complextion; fair, if a European; swarthy or black, if a negro.
Next, the son frequently inherits a strong resemblance to his fatherâs
distinguishgin features. He inherits diseases.
He often resembles him in stature. Persons of the same family are
frequently found to live to about the same age. Lastly, there is often a
striking similarity in their temper and disposition.
It is easy to perceive how these observations will apply to the question
of genius. If so many other things be heritable, why may not talents so
also? They have a connection with many of the particulars above
enumerated; and especially there is a very intimate relation between a
man disposition and his portion of understanding. Again; whatever is
heritable, a man must bring into the world with him, either actually, or
in the seminal germ from which it is afterwards to be unfolded. Putting
therefore the notion of inheritance out of the question, it should seem
that complexion, features, diseases, stature, age, and temper, may be,
and frequently are, born with a man. Why may not then his talents in the
same sense be born with him?
Is this argument decisive against the generability of talents in the
human subject, after the period of birth?
It is the madness of philosophy only, that would undertake to account
for every thing, and to trace out the process by which every event in
the world is generated. But let us beware of falling into the opposite
extreme. It will often happen that events, which at first sight appear
least to associate with that regularity and that precise system to which
we are accustomed, will be found upon a minuter and more patient
inspection really to belong to it. It is the madness of philosophy to
circumscribe the universe within the bounds of our narrow system; it is
the madness of ignorance to suppose that ever thing is new, and of a
species totally dissimilar from what we have already observed.
That a man brings a certain character into the world with him, is a
point that must readily be conceded. The mistake is to suppose that he
braings an immutable character.
Genius is wisdom; the possessing a great store of ideas, together with a
facility in calling them up, and a peculiar discernment in their
selection or rejection. In what sense can a new born child be esteemed
wise?
He may have a certain predisposition for wisdom. But it can scarcely be
doubted that every child, not peculiarly defective in his make, is
susceptible of the communication of wisdom, and consequently, if the
above definition be just, of genius.
The character of a man is incessantly changing.
One of the principal reasons why we are so apt to impute the
intellectual differences of men to some cause operating prior to their
birth, is that we are so little acquainted with the history of the early
years of mean of talents. Slight circumstances at first determined their
propensities to this or that pursuit. These circumstances are
irrevocably forgotten, and we reason upon a supposition as if they never
existed.
When the early life of a man of talents can be accurately traced, these
circumstances generally present themselves to our observation.
The private memoirs of Gibbaon the historian have just been published.
In them we are able to trace the considerable accuracy the progress of
his mind. While he was at college, he became reconciled to the Roman
Catholic faith. By this circumstance he incurred his fatherâs
displeasure, who banished him to an obscure situation in Switzerland,
where he was obliged to live upon a scanty provision, and was far
removed from all the customary amusements of men of birth and fortune.
If this train of circumstances had not taken place, would he ever have
been the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? Yet how
unusual were his attainments in consequence of these events, in
learning, in acuteness of research, and intuition of genius!
Circumstances decide the pursuits in which we shall engage. These
pursuits again generate the talents that discover themselves in our
progress.
We are accustomed to suppose something mysterious and supernatural in
the case of men of genius.
But, if we will dismiss the first astonishment of ignorance, and descend
to the patience of investigation, we shall probably find that it falls
within the ordinary established course of human events.
If a man produce a work of uncommon talents, it is immediately supposed
that he has been through life an extraordinary creature, that the stamp
of divinity was upon him, that a circle of glory, invisible to profaner
eyes, surrounded his head, and that every accent he breathed contained
an indication of his elevated destiny.
It is no such thing.
When a man writes a book of methodical investigation, he does not write
because he understands the subject, but he understands the subject
because he has written. He was an uninstructed tyro, exposed to a
thousand foolish and miserable mistakes, when he began his work,
compared with the degree of proficiency to which he has attained, when
he has finished it.
He who is now an eminent philosopher or a sublime poet, was formerly
neither the one nor the other. Many a man has been overtaken by a
premature death, and left nothing behind him but compositions worthy of
ridicule and contempt, who, if he had lived, would perhaps have risen to
the highest literary eminence. If we could examine the school-exercises
of men who have afterwards done honour to mankind, we should often find
them inferior to those of their ordinary competitors. If we could dive
into the portfolios of their early youth, we should meet with abundant
matter for laughter at their senseless incongruities, and for
contemptuous astonishment.
There is no âdivinity that hedgesâ the man of genius. There is no
guardian spirit that accompanies him through life. If you tell me that
you are one of those who are qualified to instruct and guide mankind, it
may be that I admit it; but I may reasonable ask, When did you become
so, and how long has this been your character?
There is no man knows better than the man of talents, that he was a fool
for there is no man that finds in the records of his memory such
astonishing disparities to contract with each other. He can recollect up
to what period he was jejune, and, and up to what period he was dull. He
can call to mind the innumerable errors of speculation he has committed,
that would almost disgrace an idiot. His life divides itself in his
conception into distinct periods, and he has said to himself ten times
in his course, From such a time I began to live ; the mass of what went
before, was too poor to be recollected with complacence. In reality each
of these stages was an improvement upon that which went before; and it
is perhaps only at the last of them that he became, what the ignorant
vulgar supposed he was from the moment of big birth.
The first indications of genius disclose themselves at a very early
period. A sagacious observer of the varieties of intellect, will
frequently be able to pronounce with some confidence upon a child of
tender years, thiat he exhibits marks of future eminence in eloquence,
invention or judgment.
The embryon seed that contains in it the promise of talent, if not born
with a man, ordinarily takes its station in him at no great distance
from the period of birth. The mind is then, but rarely afterwards, in a
state to receive and to foster it.
The talents of the mind, like the herbs of the ground, seem to
distribute themselves at random. The winds disperse from one spot to
another the invisible germs; they take root in many cases without a
planter; and grow up without care or observation.
It would be truly worthy of regret, if chance, so to speak, could do
that, which all the sagacity of man was unable to effect * ; if the
distribution of the noblest ornament of our nature, could be subjected
to no rules, and reduced to no system.
He that would extend in this respect the province of education, must
proceed, like the improvers of other sciences, by experiment and
observation. He must watch the progress of the dawning mind, and
discover what it is that gives it its first determination.
The sower of seed cannot foretell which seed shall fall useless to the
ground, destined to wither and to perish, and which shall take root, and
display the most exuberant fertility. As among the
seeds of the earth, so among the perceptions of the human mind, some are
reserved, as it were, for instant and entire oblivion, and some, undying
and immortal, assume an importance never to be superseded. For the first
we ought not to torment ourselves with an irrational anxiety; the last
cannot obtain from us an attention superior to their worth.
There is perhaps nothing that has a greater tendency to decide
favourably or unfavourably respecting a manâs future intellect, than the
question whether or not he be impressed with an early taste for reading.
Books are the depositary of every thing that is most honourable to man.
Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of
demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms. He that loves
reading, has every thing within his reach. He has but to desire ; and he
may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge, and power to
perform.
The chief point of difference between the man of talent and the man
without, consists in the different ways in which their minds are
employed during the same interval. They are obliged, let us suppose, to
walk from Temple-Bar to Hyde-Park-Corner. The dull man goes straight
forward ; he has so many furlongs to traverse. He observes if he meets
any of his acquaintance; he enquires respecting their health and their
family. He glances perhaps the shops as he passes; he admires the
fashion of a buckle, and the metal of a tea-urn. If he experience any
flights of fancy, they are of a short extent; of the same nature as the
flights of a forest-bird, clipped of his wings, and condemned to pass
the rest of his life in a farm-yard. On the other hand the man of talent
gives full scope to his imagination. He laughs and cries. Unindebted to
the suggestions of surrounding objects, his whole soul is employed. He
enters into nice calculations; he digests sagacious reasonings. In
imagination he declaims or describes, impressed with the deepest
sympathy, or elevated to the loftiest rapture. He makes a thousand new
and admirable combinations. He passes through a thousand imaginary
scenes, tries his courage, tasks his ingenuity, and thus becomes
gradually prepared to meet almost any of the many-coloured events of
human life. He consults by the aid of memory the books he has read, and
projects others for the future instruction and delight of mankind. If he
observe the passengers, he reads their countenances:, conjecture their
past history, and forms a superficial notion of their wisdom or folly,
their virtue or vice, their satisfaction or misery. If he observe the
scenes that occur, it is with the eye of a connoisseur or an artist.
Every object is capable of suggesting to him a volume of reflections.
The time of these two persons in one respect resembles; it has brought
them both to Hyde-Park-Corner. In almost ever)â other respect it is
dissimilar.
What is it that tends to generate these very opposite habits of mind?
Probably nothing has contributed more than an early taste for reading.
Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force
us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point. They present direct
ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. In a
well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the
happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible
that we can be much accustomed to such companions, without attaining
some resemblance of them. When I read Thomson, I become Thomson; when I
read Milton, I become Milton. I find myself a sort of intellectual
camelion, assuming the colour of the substances on which I rest. He that
revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of
admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute, as easily to
distinguish the nicest shades of difference. His mind becomes ductile,
susceptible to every impression, and gaining new refinement from them
all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers,
whether of reason or fancy, become eminently vigorous.
Much seems to depend in this case upon the period at which the taste for
reading has commenced. If it be late, the mind seems frequently to have
acquired a previous obstinacy and untractableness. The late reader makes
a superficial acquaintance with his author, but is never admitted into
the familiarity of a friend. Stiffness and formality are always visible
between them. He does not become the creature of his author; neither
bends with all his caprices, nor sympathises with all his sensations.
This mode of reading, upon which we depend for the consummation of our
improvement, can scarcely be acquired, unless we begin to read with
pleasure at a period too early for memory to record, lisp the numbers of
the poet, and in our unpractised imagination adhere to the letter of the
moralising allegorist. In that case we shall soon be induced ourselves
to âbuildâ the unpolished â rhyme*,â and shall act over in fond
imitation the scenes we have reviewed.
An early taste for reading, though a most promising indication, must not
be exclusively depended on. It must be aided by favourable
circumstances, or the early reader may degenerate into an unproductive
pedant, or a literary idler. It seemed to appear in a preceding essay,
that genius, when ripened to the birth, may yet be extinguished. Much
more may the materials of genius suffer an untimely blight and terminate
in an abortion. But what is most to be feared, is that some adverse gale
should hurry the adventurer a thousand miles athwart into the chaos of
laborious slavery, removing him from the genial influence of a tranquil
leisure, or transporting him to a dreary climate where the half-formed
blossoms of hope shall be irremediably destroyed *. That the mind may
expatiate in its true element, it is necessary that it should become
neither the victim of labour, nor the slave of terror, discouragement,
and disgust. This is the true danger ; as to pedantry, it may be
questioned whether it is the offspring of early reading, or not rather
of a taste for reading taken up at a late and inauspicious period.
A Question which has of late given rise to considerable discussion, is,
whether the study of the classics ought to form a part of the education
of youth? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the very proposal
of such a question would have been regarded as a sort of blasphemy;
classical learning was regarded as the first of all literary
accomplishments. But in the present day inquisitive and active spirits
are little inclined to take any thing upon trust; prescription is not
admitted as giving any sanction in matters of opinion ; no practice,
that is not fastened upon us by decrees and penalties, can hope to
maintain its full measure of influence in civil society, except so far
as it can be supported by irrefragable arguments.
An obvious ground of presumption in favour of classical learning will
suggest itself in tracing its history. The study of the Latin and Greek
authors will scarcely be thought to deserve this appellation, so long as
their language was the vernacular tongue of those who studied them.
Classical learning then may be said to have taken its rise in the
fifteenth century, at which time the human mind awoke from a slumber
that threatened to be little less than eternal. The principal cause of
this auspicious event was the study of the classics. Suddenly men were
seized with the desire of rescuing them from the oblivion into which
they had fallen. It seemed as if this desire had arisen just in time to
render its gratification not impracticable. Some of the most valuable
remains of antiquity now in our possession, were upon the point of being
utterly lost. Kings and princes considered their recovery as the most
important task in which they could be engaged; scholars travelled
without intermission, drawn from country to country by the faintest hope
of encountering a classical manuscript; and the success of their search
afforded a more guiltless, but not a less envied triumph, than the
defeat of armies and the plunder of millions. The most honoured task of
the literati of that day, was the illustration of an ancient author;
commentator rose upon commentator ; obscurities were removed; precision
acquired ; the Greek and Roman writers were understood and relished in a
degree scarcely inferior to the improvement and pleasure derived from
them by their contemporaries; nor were they only perused with avidity,
their purity and their beauties were almost rivalled at the distance of
almost fifteen hundred years.
Such is the history of one of the most interesting areas in the annals
of mankind. We are indebted to the zeal, perhaps a little extravagant
and enthusiastic, of the revivers of letters, for more than we can
express. If there be in the present age any wisdom, any powers of
reasoning, any acquaintance with the secrets of nature, any refinement
of language, any elegance of composition, any love of all that can adorn
and benefit the human race, this is the source from which they
ultimately flowed. From the Greek and Roman authors the moderns learned
to thin. While they investigated with unconquerable perseverance the
ideas and sentiments of antiquity, the seculence of their own
understanding subsided. The shackles of superstition loosened. Men were
no longer shut up in so narrow boundaries; nor benumbed in their
faculties by the sound of one eternal monotony. They saw; they examined;
they compared. Intellect assumed new courage, shook its daring wings,
and essayed a bolder flight. Patience of investigation was acquired. The
love of truth displayed itself, and the love of liberty.
Shall we then discard that, to which our ancestors owed every thing they
possessed? Do we not fear lest, by removing the foundations of
intellect, we should sacrifice intellect itself? Do we not fear lest, by
imperceptible degrees, we should bring back the dark ages, and once
again plunge our species in eternal night?
This however, though a plausible, is not a strict and logical argument
in favour of classical learning; and if unsupported by direct reasoning,
ought not probably to be considered as deciding the controversy. The
strongest direct arguments are probably as follow.
They will be found to apply with the most force to the study of Latin.
The Latin authors are possessed of uncommon excellence. One kind of
excellence they possess, which is not to be found in an equal degree in
the writers of any other country: an exquisite skill in the use of
language; a happy selection of words; a beautiful structure of phrase; a
transparency of style; a precision by which they communicate the
strongest sentiments in the directest form in a word, every thing that
relates to the most admirable polish of manner. Other writers have taken
more licentious flights, and produced greater astonishment in their
readers. Other writers have ventured more fearlessly into unexplored
regions, and cropped those beauties which hang over the brink of the
precipice of deformity. But it is the appropriate praise of the best
Roman authors, that they scarcely present us with one idle and
excrescent clause, that they continually convey their meaning in the
choicest words. Their lines dwell upon our memory; their sentences have
the force of maxims, every part vigorous, and seldom any thing that can
be changed but for the worse. We wander in a scene where every thing is
luxuriant, yet every thing vivid, graceful and correct.
It is commonly said, that you may read the works of foreign authors in
translations. But the excellencies above enumerated are incapable of
being transfused. A diffuse and voluminous author, whose merit consists
chiefly in his thoughts, and little in the manner of attiring them, may
be translated. But who can translate Horace? who endure to read the
translation? Who is there, acquainted with him only through this medium,
but listens with astonishment and incredulity to the encomiums he has
received from the hour his poems were produced?
The Roman historians are the best that ever existed. The dramatic merit
and the eloquence of Livy; the profound philosophy of Sallust; the rich
and solemn pencil of Tacitus, all ages of the world will admire; but no
historian of any other country has ever been able to rival.
Add to this, that the best ages of Rome afford the purest models of
virtue that are any where to be met with. Mankind are too apt to lose
sight of all that is heroic, magnanimous and public-spirited. Modern
ages have formed to themselves a virtue, rather polished, than sublime,
that consists in petty courtesies, rather than in the tranquil grandeur
of an elevated mind. It is by turning to Fabricius, and men like
Fabricius, that we are brought to recollect what human nature is, and of
what we are capable. Left to ourselves, we are apt to sink into
effeminacy and apathy.
But, if such are the men with whose actions it is most our interest to
familiarise ourselves, we cannot do this so successfully as by studying
them in the works of their countrymen. To know them truly, we must not
content ourselves with viewing them from a distance, and reading them in
abridgment. We must watch their minutest actions, we must dwell upon
their every word. We must gain admission among their confidents, and
penetrate into their secret souls. Nothing is so wretched a waste of
time as the study of abridgments.
If it be allowable to elucidate the insufficiency of the modern writers
of ancient history by instances, it might be remarked, that Rollin takes
care repeatedly to remind his render that the virtues of the heathens
were only so many specious vices, and interlards his history with an
exposition of the prophecies of Daniel; that Hooke calumniates all the
greatest characters of Rome to exalt the reputation of Caesar; and that
Mitford and Gillies are at all times ready to suspend their narrative
for a panegyric upon modern despotism. No persons seem to have been more
utter strangers to that republican spirit which is the source of our
noblest virtues, than those moderns who have assumed to be the
historiographers of the ancient republics.
A second argument in favour of the study of the Latin classics may be
thus stated. Language is the great medium of communication among
mankind. He that desires to instruct others, or to gain personal
reputation, must be able to express himself with perspicuity and
propriety. Most of the misunderstandings which have existed, in
sentiment or in science, may be traced to some obscurity or looseness of
expression as their source. Add to this, that the taste of mankind is so
far refined, that they will not accept an uncouth and disgustful lesson,
but require elegance and ornament. One of the arts that tend most to the
improvement of human intellect, is the art of language; and he is no
true friend to his species, who would suffer them from neglect to fall
back, from their present state of advancement in this respect, into a
barbarous and undisciplined jargon.
But it is perhaps impossible to understand one language, unless we are
acquainted with more than one. It is by comparison only that we can
enter into the philosophy of language. It is by comparison only that we
separate ideas, and the words by which those ideas are ordinarily
conveyed. It is by collating one language with another, that we detect
all the shades of meaning through the various inflections of words, and
all the minuter degradations of sense which the same word suffers, as it
shall happen to be connected with different topics. He that is
acquainted with only one language, will probably always remain in some
degree the slave of language. From the imperfectness of his knowledge,
he will feel himself at one time seduced to say the thing he did not
mean, and at another time will fall into errors of this sort without
being aware of it. It is impossible he should understand the full force
of words. He will sometimes produce ridicule, where he intended to
produce passion. He will search in vain for the hidden treasures of his
native tongue. He will never be able to employ it in the most
advantageous manner. He cannot be well acquainted with its strength and
its weakness. He is uninformed respecting its true genius and
discriminating characteristics. But the man who is competent to and
exercised in the comparison of languages, has attained to his proper
elevation. Language is not his master, but he is the master of language.
Things hold their just order in his mind, ideas first, and then words.
Words therefore are used by him as the means of communicating or giving
permanence to his sentiments; and the whole magazine of his native
tongue is subjected at his feet.
The science of etymology has been earnestly recommended, as the only
adequate instrument for effecting the purpose here described; and
undoubtedly it is of high importance for the purpose of enabling us more
accurately to judge of the value of the words we have occasion to
employ. But the necessity and the use of etymology have perhaps been
exaggerated. However extensive are own researches, we must stop
somewhere; and he that has traced a word halfway to its source, is
subject to a portion of the same imperfection, as he that knows nothing
of it beyond the language in which he has occasion to use it. It is here
perhaps as in many other intellectual acquisitions; the habit of
investigating, distinguishing and subtilising, is of more importance
than any individual portions of knowledge we may chance to have
accumulated. Add to which, that the immediate concern of the speaker or
writer, is not with the meaning his words bore at some distant period or
the materials of which they are compounded, but with the meaning that
properly belongs to them according to the purest standard of the
language he uses. Words are perpetually fluctuating in this respect. The
gradations by which they change their sense are ordinarily
imperceptible; but from age to age their variations are often the most
memorable and surprising. The true mode therefore of becoming acquainted
with their exact force, is to listen to them in the best speakers, and
consider them as they occur in the best writers that have yet appeared.
Latin is indeed a language that will furnish you with the etymology of
many of our own words; but it has perhaps peculiar recommendations as
praxis in the habits of investigation and analysis. Its words undergo an
uncommon number of variations and inflections. Those inflections are
more philosophically appropriated, and more distinct in their meaning,
than the inflections of any language of a more ancient date. As the
words in Latin composition are not arranged in a philosophical or
natural order, the mind is obliged to exert itself to disentangle the
chaos, and is compelled to yield an unintermitted attention to the
inflections. It is therefore probable that the philosophy of language is
best acquired by studying this language. Practice is superior to
theory., and this science will perhaps be more successfully learned, and
more deeply imprinted, by the perusal of Virgil and Horace, than by
reading a thousand treatises on universal grammar.
Example seems to correspond to what is here stated. Few men have written
English with force and propriety, who have been wholly unacquainted with
the learned languages. Our finest writers and speakers have been men who
amused themselves during the whole of their lives with the perusal of
the classics. Nothing is generally more easy than to discover by his
style, whether a man has been deprived of the advantages of a literary
education.
A further argument in favour of the study of the Latin language, may be
deduced from the nature of logic, or the art of thinking. Words are of
the utmost importance to human understanding. Almost all the ideas
employed by us in matters of reasoning have been acquired by words. In
our most retired contemplations we think for the most part in words; and
upon recollection can in most cases easily tell in what language we have
been thinking. Without words, uttered, or thought upon, we could not
probably carry on any long train of deduction. The science of thinking
therefore is little else than the science of words. He that has not been
accustomed to refine upon words, and discriminate their shades of
meaning, will think and reason after a very inaccurate and slovenly
manner. He that is not able to call his idea by various names, borrowed
from various languages, will scarcely be able to conceive his idea in a
way precise, clear and unconfused. If therefore a man were confined in a
desert island, and would never again have occasion so much as to hear
the sound of his own voice, yet if at the same time he would
successfully cultivate his understanding, he must apply himself to a
minute and persevering study of words and language.
Lastly, there is reason to believe that the study of Latin would
constitute a valuable part of education, though it were applied to no
practical use, and were to be regarded as an affair of intellectual
discipline only.
There are two qualities especially necessary to any considerable
improvement of human understanding; an ardent temper, and a habit of
thinking with precision and order. The study of the Latin language is
particularly conducive to the production of the last of these qualities.
In this respect the study of Latin and of geometry might perhaps be
recommended for a similar reason. Geometry it should seem would always
form a part of a liberal course of studies* It has its direct uses and
its indirect. It is of great importance for the improvement of mechanics
and the arts of life. It is essential to the just mastery of astronomy
and various other eminent sciences. But its indirect uses are perhaps of
more worth than its direct. It cultivates the powers of the mind, and
generates the most excellent habits. It eminently conduces to the making
man a rational being, and accustoms him to a closeness of deduction,
that is not easily made the dupe of ambiguity, and carries on an eternal
war against prejudice and imposition.
A similar benefit seems to result from the study of language and its
inflections. All here is in order. Every thing is subjected to the most
inflexible laws. The mind therefore which is accustomed to it, acquires
habits of order, and of regarding things in a state of clearness,
discrimination and arrangement.
The discipline of mind here described is of inestimable value. He that
is not initiated in the practice of close investigation, is constantly
exposed to the danger of being deceived. His opinions have no standard;
but are entirely at the mercy of his age, his country, the books he
chances to rend, or the company he happens to frequent. His mind is a
wilderness.
It may contain excellent materials, but they are of no use. They oppress
and choak one another. He is subject to a partial madness. He is unable
to regulate his mind, and sails at the mercy of every breath of accident
or caprice. Such a person is ordinarily found incapable of application
or perseverance. He may form brilliant projects; but be has neither the
resolution nor the power to carry any of them to its completion.
All talent may perhaps be affirmed to consist in analysis and
dissection, the turning a thing on all sides, and examining it in all
its variety of views. An ordinary man sees an object just as it happens
to be presented to him, and sees no more. But a man of genius takes it
to pieces, enquires into its cause and effects, remarks its internal
structure, and considers what would have been the result, if its members
had been combined in a different way, or subjected to different
influences. The man of genius gains a whole magazine of thought, where
the ordinary man has received only one idea; and his powers are
multiplied in proportion to the number of ideas upon which they are to
be employed. Now there is perhaps nothing that contributes more
eminently to this subtilising and multiplication of mind, than an
attention to the structure of language.
In matters of science and the cultivation of the human mind it is not
always sufficiently attended to, that men are often essentially
benefited by processes, through which they have themselves never
actually passed, but which have been performed by their companions and
contemporaries. The literary world is an immense community, the
intercourse of whose members is incessant; and it is very common for a
man to derive eminent advantage from studies in which he was himself
never engaged. Those inhabitants of any of the enlightened countries of
Europe, who are accustomed to intellectual action, if they are not
themselves scholars, frequent the society of scholars, and thus become
familiar with ideas, the primary source of which is only to be found in
an acquaintance with the learned languages. If therefore we would make a
just estimate of the loss that would be incurred by the abolition of
classical learning, we must not build our estimate upon persons of
talent among ourselves who have been deprived of that benefit. We âmust
suppose the indirect, as well as the direct improvement that arises from
this species of study, wholly banished from the face of the earth.
Let it be taken for granted that the above arguments sufficiently
establish the utility of classical learning; it remains to be determined
whether it is necessary that it should form a part of the education of
youth. It may be alleged, that, if it be a desirable acquisition, it may
with more propriety be made when a man is arrived at years of
discretion, that it will then be made with less expence of labour and
time, that the period of youth ought not to be burdened with so
vexatious a task, and that our early years may be more advantageously
spent in acquiring the knowledge of things, than of words.
In answer to these objections it may however be remarked, that it is not
certain that, if the acquisition of the rudiments of classical learning
be deferred to our riper years, it will ever be made. It will require
strong inclination and considerable leisure. A few active and determined
spirits will surmount the difficulty; but many who would derive great
benefit from the acquisition, will certainly never arrive at it.
Our early years, it is said, may be more advantageously spent in
acquiring the knowledge of things, than of words. But this is by no
means so certain as at first sight it may appear. If you attempt to
teach children science, commonly so called, it will perhaps be found in
the sequel that you have taught them nothing. You may teach them, like
parrots, to repeat, but you can scarcely make them able to weigh the
respective merits of contending hypotheses. Many things that we go over
in our youth, we find ourselves compelled to recommence in our riper
years under peculiar disadvantages. The grace of novelty they have for
ever lost. We are encumbered with prejudices with respect to them; and,
before we begin to learn, we must set ourselves with a determined mind
to unlearn the crude mass of opinions concerning them that were once
laboriously inculcated on us. But in the rudiments of language, it can
scarcely be supposed that we shall have any thing that we shall see
reason to wish obliterated from our minds.
The period of youth seems particularly adapted to the learning of words.
The judgment is then small; but the memory is retentive. In our riper
years we remember passions, facts and arguments; but it is for the most
part in youth only that we retain the very words in which they are
conveyed. Youth easily contents itself with this species of employment,
especially where it is not inforced with particular severity.
Acquisitions, that are insupportably disgustful in riper years, are
often found to afford to young persons no contemptible amusement.
It is not perhaps true that, in teaching languages to youth, we are
imposing on them an unnecessary burthen. If we would produce right
habits in the mind, it must be employed. Our early years must not be
spent in lethargic indolence. An active maturity must be preceded by a
busy childhood. Let us not from a mistaken compassion to infant years,
suffer the mind to grow up in habits of inattention and irresolution.
If the study of the classics have the effect above ascribed to it, of
refining and multiplying the intellectual powers, it will have this
effect in a greater degree, the earlier it is introduced, and the more
pliable and ductile is the mind that is employed on it. After a certain
time the mind that was neglected in the beginning, grows awkward and
unwieldy. Its attempts at alertness and grace are abortive. There is a
certain slowness and stupidity that grow upon it. He therefore that
would enlarge the mind and add to its quantity of existence, must enter
upon his task at an early period.
The benefits of classical learning would perhaps never have been
controverted, if they had not been accompanied with unnecessary rigours.
Children learn to dance and to fence, they learn French and Italian and
music, without its being found necessary to beat them for that purpose.
A reasonable man will not easily be persuaded that there is some
mysterious quality in classical learning that should make it an
exception to all other instances.
There is one observation arising from the view here taken on the
subject, that probably deserves to be stated. It has often been said
that classical learning is an excellent accomplishment in men devoted to
letters, but that it is ridiculous, in parents whose children are
destined to more ordinary occupations, to desire to give them a
superficial acquaintance with Latin, which in the sequel will infallibly
fall into neglect. A conclusion opposite to this, is dictated by the
preceding reflections. We can never certainly foresee the future
destination and propensities of our children. But let them be taken for
granted in the present argument, yet, if there be any truth in the above
reasonings, no portion of classical instruction, however small, need be
wholly lost. Some refinement of mind and some clearness of thinking will
almost infallibly result from grammatical studies. Though the language
itself should ever after be neglected, some portion of a general science
has thus been acquired, which can scarcely be forgotten. Though our
children should be destined to the humblest occupation, that does not
seem to
be a sufficient reason for our denying them the acquisition of some of
the most fundamental documents of human understanding.
Innumerable are the discussions that have originated in the comparative
advantages of public and private education. The chief benefit attendant
on private instruction seems to be the following.
There is no motive more powerful in its operations upon the human mind,
than that which originates in sympathy. A child must labour under
peculiar disadvantages, who is turned loose among a multitude of other
children, and left to make his way as he can, with no one strongly to
interest himself about his joys or his sorrows, and no one eminently
concerned as to whether he makes any improvement or not. In this
unanimating situation, alone in the midst of a crowd, there is great
danger that he should become sullen and selfish. Knowing nothing of his
species, but from the austerity of discipline or the shock of
contention, he must be expected to acquire a desperate sort of firmness
and inflexibility. The social affections are the chief awakeners of man.
It is difficult for me to feel much eagerness in the pursuit of that, by
which I expect to contribute to no manâs gratification or enjoyment. I
cannot entertain. a generous complacency in myself, unless I find that
there are others that set a value on me. I shall feel little temptation
to the cultivation of faculties in which no one appears to take an
interest. The first thing that gives spring and expansion to the infant
learner, is praise; not so much perhaps because it gratifies the
appetite of vanity, as from a liberal satisfaction in communicated and
reciprocal pleasure. To give pleasure to another produces in me the most
animated and unequivocal consciousness of existence. Not only the
passions of men, but their very judgments, are to a great degree the
creatures of sympathy. Who ever thought highly of his own talents, till
he found those talents obtaining the approbation of his neighbour? Who
ever was satisfied with his own exertions, till they had been sanctioned
by the suffrage of a bystander? And, if this skepticism occur in our
maturest years, how much more may it be expected to attend upon
inexperienced childhood? The greatest stimulus to ambition is for me to
conceive that I am fitted for extraordinary things ; and the only mode
perhaps to inspire me with self-value, is for me to perceive that I am
regarded as extraordinary by another. Those things which are censured in
a child, he learns to be ashamed of; those things for which he is
commended, he contemplates in himself with pleasure. If therefore you
would have him eagerly desirous of any attainment, you must thoroughly
convince him that it is regarded by you with delight.
This advantage however of private education it is by no means impossible
in a great degree to combine with public. Your child may be treated with
esteem and distinction in the intervals of his school education, though
perhaps these can scarcely follow him when he returns to the roof of
instruction. Praise, to produce its just effect, ought not to be
administered in too frequent doses.
On the other hand, there is an advantage in public education similar in
its tendency to that just described. Private education is almost
necessarily deficient in excitements. Society is the true awakener of
man ; and there can be little true society, where the disparity of
disposition is so great as between a boy and his preceptor. A kind of
lethargy and languor creeps upon this species of studies. Why should he
study? He has neither rival to surpass, nor companion with whom to
associate his progress. Praise loses its greatest charm when given in
solitude. It has not the pomp and enchantment, that under other
circumstances would accompany it. It has the appearance of a cold and
concerted stratagem, to entice him to industry by indirect
considerations. A boy, educated apart from boys, is a sort of unripened
hermit, with all the gloom and lazy-pacing blood incident to that
character.
A second advantage attendant upon public education, will be explained by
the observation, that a real scholar is seldom found to be produced in
any other way. This is principally owing to the circumstance that, in
private education, the rudiments are scarcely ever so much dwelt upon ;
the inglorious and unglittering foundations are seldom laid with
sufficient care. A private pupil is too much of a man. He dwells on
those things which can be made subjects of reasoning or sources of
amusement; and escapes from the task of endless repetition. But public
education is less attentive and complaisant to this species of
impatience. Society chears the rugged path, and beguiles the tediousness
of the way. It renders the mechanical part of literature supportable.
Thirdly, public education is best adapted for the generation of a robust
and healthful mind. All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible
for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the
tyranny of implicit obedience. Go there; do that; read ; write; rise ;
lie down ; will perhaps for ever be the language addressed to youth by
age. In private education there is danger that this superintendence
should extend to too many particulars. The anxiety of individual
affection watches the boy too narrowly, controls him too much, renders
him too poor a slave. In public education there is comparative liberty.
The boy knows how much of his time is subjected to his task-master, and
how much is sacredly his own. âSlavery, disguise it as we will, is a
bitter draught;â and will always excite a mutinous and indignant spirit.
But the most wretched of all slaveries is that which I endure alone; the
whole weight of which falls upon my own shoulders, and in which I have
no fellow-sufferer to share with me a particle of my burthen. Under this
slavery the mind pusillanimously shrinks. I am left alone with my
tyrant, and am utterly hopeless and forlorn. But, when I have companions
in the house of my labour, my mind begins to erect itself. I place some
glory in bearing my sufferings with an equal mind. I do not feel
annihilated by my condition, but find that I also am something. I adjust
the account in my own mind with my task-master, and say, Thus far you
may proceed; but there is a conquest that you cannot achieve. The
control exercised in private education is a contention of the passions;
and I feel all the bitterness of being obliged unmurmuring to submit the
turbulence of my own passions to the turbulence of the passions of my
preceptor. Anger glows in the breast of both the contending parties; my
heart pants with indignation against the injustice, real or imaginary,
that I endure; in the final triumph of my Brobdingnagian persecutor I
recognise the indulgence of hatred and revenge. But in the discipline of
a public school I submit to the inflexible laws of nature and necessity,
in the administration of which the passions have little share. The
master is an object placed in too distant a sphere for me to enter into
contention with him. I live in a little world of my own of which he is
no member; and I scarcely think more of quarrelling with him, than a
sailor does of bearing malice against a tempest.
The consequences of these two modes of education are usually eminently
conspicuous, when the scholar is grown up into a man. The pupil of
private education is commonly either awkward and silent, or pert,
presumptuous and pedantical. In either case he is out of his element,
embarrassed with himself, and chiefly anxious about how he shall appear.
On the contrary, the pupil of public education usually knows himself,
and rests upon. his proper centre. He is easy and frank, neither eager
to show himself, nor afraid of being observed. His spirits are gay and
uniform. His imagination is playful, and his limbs are active. Not
engrossed by a continual attention to himself, his generosity is ever
ready to break out; he is eager to fly to the assistance of others, and
intrepid and bold in the .face of danger. He has been used to contend
only upon a footing of equality; or to endure suffering with equanimity
and courage. His spirit therefore is unbroken; while the man, who has
been privately educated, too often continues for the remainder of his
life timid, incapable of a ready self-possession, and ever prone to
prognosticate ill of the contentions in which he may unavoidably be
engaged.
We shall perhaps perceive a still further advantage in public education,
if we reflect that the scene which is to prepare us for the world,
should have some resemblance to the world. It is desirable that we
should be brought in early life to experience human events, to suffer
human adversities, and to observe human passions. To practise upon a
smaller theatre the business of the world, must be one of the most
desirable sources of instruction and improvement. Morals cannot be
effectually taught, but where the topics and occasions of moral conduct
offer themselves.
A false tenderness for their children sometimes induces parents to wish
to keep them wholly unacquainted with the vices, the irregularities and
injustice of their species. But this mode of proceeding seems to have a
fatal effect. They are introduced to temptation unprepared, just in that
tumultuous season of human life when temptation has the greatest power.
They find men treacherous, deceitful and selfish; they find the most
destructive and hateful purposes every where pursued ; while their
minds, unwarned of the truth, expected universal honesty. They come into
the world, as ignorant of every thing it contains, as uninstructed in
the scenes they have to encounter, as if they had passed their early
years in a desert island. Surely the advantages we possess for a gradual
initiation of our youth in the economy of human life, ought not to be
neglected. Surely we ought to anticipate and break the shock, which
might otherwise persuade them that the lessons of education are an
antiquated legend, and the practices of the sensual and corrupt the only
practices proper to men.
The objections to both the modes of education here discussed are of
great magnitude. It is unavoidable to enquire, whether a middle way
might not be selected, neither entirely public, nor entirely private,
avoiding the mischiefs of each, and embracing the advantages of both.
This however is perhaps a subordinate question, and of an importance
purely temporary. We have here considered only the modes of education at
this time in practice. Perhaps an adventurous and undaunted philosophy
would lead to the rejecting them altogether, and pursuing the
investigation of a mode totally dissimilar. There is nothing so
fascinating in either, as should in reason check the further excursions
of our understanding*.
A Subject upon which the poets of all ages have delighted to expatiate,
is the happiness of youth.
This is a topic which has usually been handled by persons advanced in
life. I do not recollect that it has been selected as a theme for
description by the young themselves.
It is easy to perceive why the opinion upon which it proceeds, has been
so generally entertained.
The appearance of young persons is essentially gratifying to the eye.
Their countenances are usually smooth; unmarked âwith wrinkles,
unfurrowed by time. Their eye is sprightly and roving. Their limbs
elastic and active. Their temper kind, and easy of attachment. They are
frank and inartificial; and their frankness shows itself in their very
voice. Their gaiety is noisy and obtrusive. Their spirits are
inexhaustible; and their sorrows and their cares are speedily dismissed.
Such is frequently the appearance of youth. Are they happy? Probably
not.
A reasonable man will entertain a suspicion of that eulogium of a
condition, which is always made by persons at a distance from it, never
by the person himself.
I never was told, when a boy, of the superior felicity of youth, but my
heart revolted from the assertion. Give me at least to be a man!
Children, it is said, are free from the cares of the world. Are they
without their cares? Of all cares those that bring with them the
greatest consolation, are the cares of independence.
There is no more certain source of exultation, than the consciousness
that I am of some importance in the world. A child usually feels that he
is nobody. Parents, in the abundance of their providence, take good care
to administer to them the bitter recollection. How suddenly does a child
rise to an enviable degree of happiness, who feels that he has the
honour to be trusted and consulted by his superiors?
But of all the sources of unhappiness to a young person the greatest is
a sense of slavery. How grievous the insult, or how contemptible the
ignorance, that tells. a child that youth is the true season of
felicity, when he feels himself checked, controled, and tyrannised over
in a thousand ways? I am rebuked; and my heart is ready to burst with
indignation. A consciousness of the power assumed over me, and of the
unsparing manner in which it is used, is intolerable. There is no moment
free from the danger of harsh and dictatorial interruption ; the
periods, when my thoughtless heart began to lose the sense of its
dependence, seem of all others most exposed to it. There is no equality,
no reasoning, between me and my task-master. If I attempt it, it is
considered as mutiny. If it be seemingly conceded, it is only the more
cutting mockery. He is always in the right; right and power in these
trials are found to be inseparable companions. I despise myself for
having forgotten my misery, and suffered my heart to be deluded into a
transitory joy. Dearly indeed, by twenty years of bondage, do I purchase
the scanty portion of liberty, which the government of my country
happens to concede to its adult subjects !
The condition of a negro-slave in the West Indies, is in many respects
preferable to that of the youthful son of a free-born European. The
slave is purchased upon a view of mercantile speculation; and, when he
has finished his daily portion of labour, his master concerns himself no
further about him. But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The
youth is never free from the danger of its grating interference.
If he be treated with particular indulgence, and made what is called a
spoiled child, this serves in some respects to aggravate the misery of
occasional control. Deluded with the phantom of independence, he feels
with double bitterness that he is only bound in fetters of gold.
Pain is always more vividly remembered than pleasure, and constitutes
something more substantial in my recollections, when I come to cast up
the sum of my life.
But not only are the pains of youth more frequent and galling, their
pleasures also are comparatively slight and worthless. The greatest
pleasures of which the human mind is susceptible, are the pleasures of
consciousness and sympathy. Youth knows nothing of the delights of a
refined taste; the softest scenes of nature and art, are but lines and
angles to him. He rarely experiences either self-complacence or
self-approbation. His friendships have for the most part no ardour, and
are the mere shadows and mimicry of friendship. His pleasures are like
the frisking and frolic of a calf.
These pleasures however, which have so often been the subject of lying
exaggeration, deserve to be stated with simplicity and truth. The organs
of sense are probably in a state of the greatest sensibility in an early
period of life. Many of their perceptions are heightened at years of
maturity, by means of the association of ideas, and of the manner in
which ideas of sense and ideas of intellect are melted into a common
mass. But the simple pleasures of sense, that is, as many of them as are
within the reach of youth, are at that age most exquisitely felt. This
is particularly obvious in the pleasures of the palate. The case is the
same with simple sounds, light, colours, and every thing that agreeably
impresses the organs of sight.
Another circumstance conducive to the pleasures of youth, is the
pliability and variableness of their minds.
In the case of the adult, circumstances make a durable impression. The
incidents that happen in the morning, modify my temper through the whole
course of the evening. Grief does not easily yield its place to joy. If
I have suffered today from the influence of unjust control, my temper
becomes embittered. I sit down in thoughtful silence, and abhor to be
amused. What has once strongly seized the affections, either of
exultation or sorrow, does not easily loosen its grasp, but
pertinaciously retains its seat upon my heart.
In young persons it is otherwise. Theirs is the tear, in many instances
at least, â forgot as soon as shed.â Their minds are like a sheet of
white paper, which takes any impression that it is proposed to make upon
it. Their pleasures therefore are, to a great degree, pure and
unadulterated. This is a circumstance considerably enviable.
The drawbacks to which it is subject, are, first, that their pleasures
are superficial and worthless. They scarcely ever swell and elevate the
mind. Secondly, they are pleasures which cannot, to a child of any
sagacity, when reflected upon and summed together, constitute happiness.
He sees that he was pleased, only because he was seduced to forget
himself. ^When his thoughts return home, he is pleased no longer. He is
perhaps indignant against himself for having suffered so gross a
delusion. He abhors the slavery that constitutes his lot, and loaths the
nothingness of his condition.
Those persons have made a satire of life, but a satire impotent and
nugatory, who have represented youth as the proper season of joy. Though
the world is a scene full of mixture and alloy, it is yet not so
completely an abortion as this sentiment would represent it. If you ask
men in general, whether they regard life as a blessing, they will
perhaps hesitate: but they will recollect some feelings of exultation,
some moments in which they felt with internal pride what it was to
âexist, and many of them will hereby be induced to pronounce in favour
of life. But who can suppose himself a child, and look with exultation
upon that species of existence? The principal sources of manly pleasure
probably are, the feeling that we also are of some importance and
account, the conscious power of conforming our actions to the dictates
of our own understanding, an approving sense of the rectitude of our
determinations, and an affectionate and heroical sympathy in the welfare
of others. To every one of these young persons are almost uniformly
strangers.
This is probably a fair and impartial view of the pleasures and pains of
the young. It would be highly unjust to suppose that the adult who
inflict these pains, are generally actuated by malignity. In some
instances, where the miscarriage has been most complete, the kindness
and disinterested zeal of its author has been eminent. But kindness and
disinterested zeal must be in a great measure nugatory, where the
methods pursued are founded in error. If the condition of the young is
to be pitied, the condition of those who superintend them, is sometimes
equally worthy of compassion. The object of true philosophy will never
be to generate the hateful passions ; it enters impartially into the
miseries of the tyrant and the slave. The intention therefore of these
speculations, ought to be considered as that of relieving, at once, the
well-meaning, but misguided oppressor, and the unfortunate and helpless
oppressed.
Considerations, such as we are here discussing, may indeed terrify the
timid and cowardly parent or instructor; they will not have that effect
upon the generous and the wise. Such is the condition of terrestrial
existence. We cannot move a limb without the risk of destroying animal
life, and, which is worse, producing animal torture. We cannot exist
without generating evil. The more active and earnest we are, the more
mischief shall we effect. The wisest legislator, the most admirable and
exemplary author, has probably, by his errors, occasioned a greater sum
of private misery, than ever flowed from the agency of any supine and
torpid, however worthless, individual. We must therefore steel ourselves
against this inevitable circumstance of our lot; and exert our
understandings in sober deliberation, to discover how we may be made
authors of the greatest overbalance of good.
But, some will say, this depressing condition of human life, ought
carefully to be concealed from us, not obtruded upon our view.
The brave man will never shrink from a calm and rational responsibility.
Let us put him in the place of the instructor in question; he will say
to his pupil, I know I shall occasion you many calamities ; this with
all my diligence and good will I cannot avoid. But I will endeavour to
procure for you a greater sum of happiness than it is probable any other
person, who should be substituted in my place, would do; I will
endeavour ultimately to render you wise, and virtuous, and active, and
independent, and self-approving, and contented.
There is a very obvious reason why such discussions as that in which we
are engaged, if pursued with an adventurous and scrutinising spirit,
should have an appearance of partiality, and seem to espouse the cause
of the young against the adult. There are certain modes of education
established in society; these are open to our inspection ; we may
investigate them with accuracy and minuteness. The hypothetical modes
which appear in speculation to have some advantages over them, are for
the most part yet untried; we cannot follow them in their detail; we
have often but an imperfect view of their great outline. Defects
therefore we can point out with confidence, while it is only in an
obscure and ambiguous style that we can discourse of their remedies.
In treating on the subject of education, it must of course be against
the instructor, not his pupil, that we must direct our animadversions.
The pupil is the clay in the hands of the artificer; I must expostulate
with him, not with his materials. Books of education are not written to
instruct the young how they are to form their seniors, but to assist the
adult in discovering how to fashion the youthful mind.
It would be peculiarly unfortunate, if documents, the object of which is
to improve education, and consequently to inspire the adult with new
ardour, should be judged to have a discouraging tendency. Instructors
indeed, as we now find them, are too often unworthy and unamiable; but
instruction is not on that account a less generous and lofty task. It is
incident alike to the professors of every art to enumerate difficulties
and unfold them; to show how âAlps on Alps arise,â in opposition to the
daring adventurer. Having done so, they must always in a considerable
degree leave him to surmount the obstacles for himself. Language is
adequate to the first of these objects ; it sinks under the delicacy and
individualities of the second. The groveling and feeble-hearted are
consequently discouraged; they desert the vocation they hastily chose.
But the courage of the generously ambitious is by this means elevated to
its noblest height.
In what manner would reason, independently of the received modes and
practices of the world, teach us to communicate knowledge?
Liberty is one of the most desirable of all sublunary advantages. I
would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or
with as little as possible violence to, the volition and individual
judgment of the person to be instructed.
Again; I desire to excite a given individual to the acquisition of
knowledge. The only possible method in which I can excite a sensitive
being to the performance of a voluntary action, is by the exhibition of
motive.
Motives are of two sorts, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motives are
those which arise from the inherent nature of the thing recommended.
Extrinsic motives are those which have no constant and unalterable
connection with the thing recommended, but are combined with it by
accident or at the pleasure of some individual.
Thus, I may recommend some species of knowledge by a display of the
advantages which will necessarily attend upon its acquisition, or flow
from its possession. Or, on the other hand, I may recommend it
despotically, by allurements or menaces, by showing that the pursuit of
it will be attended with my approbation, and that the neglect of it will
be regarded by me with displeasure.
The first of these classes of motives in unquestionably the best. To be
governed by such motives is the pure and genuine condition of a rational
being. By exercise it strengthens the judgment. It elevates us with a
sense of independence. It causes a man to stand alone, and is the only
method by which he can be rendered truly an individual, the creature,
not of implicit faith, but of his own understanding.
If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such. If you cannot
demonstrate its excellence, it may well be suspected that you are no
proper judge of it. Why should not I be admitted to decide, upon that
which is to be acquired by the application of my labor?
Is it necessary that a child should learn a thing before it can have any
idea of its value? It is probable that there is no one thing that it is
of eminent importance for a child to learn. The true object of juvenile
education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind
well regulated, active, and prepared to learn[1]. Whatever will inspire
habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this
purpose. Is it not possible to find something that will fulfill these
conditions, the benefit of which a child shall understand, and the
acquisition of which he may be taught to desire? Study with desire is
real activity: without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of
activity. Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget
all the ends of education.
The most desirable mode of education therefore, in all instances where
it shall be found sufficiently practicable, is that which is careful
that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied
by desire. The best motive to learn, is a perception of the value of the
thing learned. The worst motive, without deciding whether of not it be
necessary to have recourse to it, may well be affirmed to be constraint
and fear. There is a motive between these, less pure than the first, but
not so displeasing as the last, which the teacher may have annexed to
it.
According to the received modes of education, the master goes first, and
the pupil follows. According to the method here recommended, it is
probable that the pupil should go first, and the master follow[2].
If I learn nothing but what I desire to learn, what should hinder me
from being my own preceptor?
The first object of a system of instructing, is to give the pupil a
motive to learn. We have seen how far the established systems fail in
this office.
The second object is to smooth the difficulties which present themselves
in the acquisition of knowledge.
The method of education here suggested is incomparably the best adapted
to the first of these objects. Its is sufficiently competent to answer
the purposes of the last.
Nothing can be more happily adapted to remove the difficulties of
instruction, than that the pupil should first be excited to desire
knowledge, and next that his difficulties should be solved for him, and
his path cleared, as often and as soon as he thinks proper to desire it.
This plan is calculated entirely to change the face of education. The
whole formidable apparatus which has hitherto attended it, is swept
away. Strictly speaking, no such characters are left upon the scene as
either preceptor or pupil. The boy, like the man, studies, because he
desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of his own. Every thing bespeaks
independence and equality. The man, as well as the boy, would be glad in
cases of difficulty to consult a person more informed than himself. That
the boy is accustomed almost always to consult the man, and not the man
the boy, is to be regarded rather as an accident, than anything
essential. Much even of this would be removed, if we remembered that the
most inferior judge may often, by the varieties of his apprehension,
give valuable information to the most enlightened. The boy, however,
should be consulted by the man unaffectedly, not according to any
preconcerted scheme, or for the purpose of persuading him that he is
what he is not.
There are three considerable advantages which would attend upon this
species of education.
First, liberty. Three fourths of the slavery and restraint that are now
imposed upon young persons would be annihilated at a stroke.
Secondly, the judgment would be strengthened by continual exercise. Boys
would no longer learn their lessons after the manner of parrots. No one
would learn without a reason, satisfactory to himself, why he learned;
and it would perhaps be well, if he were frequently prompted to assign
his reasons. Boys would then consider for themselves, whether they
understood what they read. To know when and how to ask a question is no
contemptible part of learning. Sometimes they would pass over
difficulties, and neglect essential preliminaries; but then the nature
of the thing would speedily recall them, and induce them to return to
examine the tracts which before had been overlooked. For this purpose it
would be well that the subjects of their juvenile studies should often
be discussed, and that one boy should compare his progress and his
competence to decide in certain points with those of another. There is
nothing that more strongly excites our inquiries than this mode of
detecting our ignorance.
Thirdly, to study for ourselves is the true method of acquiring habits
of activity. The horse that goes round a mill, and the boy that is
anticipated and led by the hand in all his acquirements, are not active.
I do not call a wheel that turns round fifty times in a minute, active.
Activity is a mental quality. If therefore you would generate habits of
activity, turn the boy loose in the fields of science. Let him explore
the path for himself. Without increasing his difficulties, you may
venture to leave him for a moment, and suffer him to ask himself the
question before he receives the information. Far be it from the system
here laid down, to increase the difficulties to youth. No, it diminishes
them a hundred fold. Its office is to produce inclination; and a willing
temper makes every burthen a light.
Lastly, it is the tendency of this system to produce in the young, when
they are grown up to the stature of men, a love of literature. The
established modes of education produce the opposite effect, unless in a
fortunate few, who by the celerity of their progress, and the
distinctions they obtain, perhaps escape from the general influence. But
in the majority of cases, the memory of our slavery becomes associated
with the studies we pursued, and it is not till after repeated
struggles, that those things can be rendered the objects of our choice,
which were for so long a time the themes of compulsion. This is
particularly unfortunate, that we should conquer with much labor and
application the difficulties that beset the entrance of literature, and
then should quit it when perhaps, but for this unfortunate association,
the obstacles were all smoothed, and the improvement to be made was
attended through all itâs steps with unequivocal delight.
There is but one considerable objection that seems to oppose all these
advantages. The preceptor is terrified at the outset, and says, How
shall I render the labors of literature an object of desire, and still
more how shall I maintain this desire in all its vigor, in spite of the
discouragements that will daily occur, and in spite of the quality
incident to almost every human passion, that its fervor disappears in
proportion as the novelty of the object subsides?
But let us not hastily admit this for an insuperable objection. If the
plan here proposed augments the difficulties of the teacher in one
particular point, let in be remembered that it relieves him from an
insufferable burthen in other respects.
Nothing can be more pitiable that the condition of the instructor in the
present modes of education. He is the worst of slaves. He is consigned
to the severest of imprisonments. He is condemned to be perpetually
engaged in handling and rehandling the foundations of science. Like the
unfortunate wretch upon whom the lot has fallen in a city reduced to
extremities, he is destroyed, that others may live. Among all the
hardships he is compelled to suffer, he endeavors to console himself
with the recollection that his office is useful and patriotic. But even
this consolation is a slender one. He is regarded as a tyrant by those
under his jurisdiction, and he is a tyrant. He mars their pleasures. He
appoints to each his portion of loathed labor. He watches their
irregularities and their errors. He is accustomed to speak to them in
tones of dictation and censure. He is the beadle to chastise their
follies. He lives alone in the midst of a multitude. His manners, even
when he goes into the world, are spoiled with the precision of pedantry
and the insolence of despotism. His usefulness and his patriotism
therefore, have some resemblance to those of a chimney-sweeper and a
scavenger, who, if their existence is of any benefit to mankind, are
however rather tolerated in the world, than thought entitled to the
testimonies of our gratitude and esteem.
[missing essays X-XVI of Part 1]
There is nothing that deserves to be more minutely watched, than may be
styled an intemperate spirit of philosophy.
The sect that carried this spirit to the most ridiculous extreme among
the ancients, were the stoics.
One of the decisions of this spirit is, that riches are no benefit, and
poverty no evil.
If this maxim were true, particularly the latter member, in its utmost
extent, the chief amendment in favour of political reform and amendment
would be utterly false.
The reverse of this maxim, it should seem, ought to be received. Poverty
is an enormous evil. By poverty I understand the slate of a man
posessing no permanent property, in a country where wealth and luxury
have already gained a secure establishment.
He then that is born to poverty, may be said, under another name, to be
born a slave.
A boy of a thoughtful and reflecting turn, will frequently look forward
in this respect to the slate of a manhood, with an aching heart. Now, he
will exclaim, I am maintained by the industry of others; I am freed from
all solicitude about the supply of tomorrow. But hereafter I shall be
told, you shall not have necessaries of the day without the labour of
the day; âHe that will not work, neither shall he eat[3].â His slate in
several respects resembles the prophetic denunciation of Jesus Christ to
the apostle Peter: âVerily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast
young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thy wouldest: but
when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and another
shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.â[4] In
reality however, the child and the adult are both slaves in different
ways: when we put on the manly gown we only change one species of despot
for another.
But, it will be asked, is not the complaint here recited, unreasonable
and unjust? Is any man entitled to claim through life, that he should be
maintained by the industry of others?
Certainly not. The injustice I suffer is not in the actual labour, but
in the quantity of that labour. If no man were absolutely compelled to
perform a greater share of labour than, multiplied by the number of
members in the community, was necessary for the subsistence of the
community, he would have no right to complain on that account. But the
labour then required, would be diminished to a tenth, perhaps a
twentieth part of the labour now imposed upon the husbandman and
artificer.[5]
The evil of poverty particularly consists of the following particulars:
leaving out of the enumeration the frequently experienced insufficiency
of labour to maintain the poor; the usual accident of menâs being thrust
out of their customary train (sic) of industry and resource for breadd
by the fluctuations of society; and the want of a suitable provision for
the sickness, infirmity and age.
We will confine ourselves to points of more universal application.
First, the abridgment of life, and the privation of the enjoyment of
life.
As to the abridgment of life we are scarcely competent judges, since
wealth, expended in sensuality and indulgence, is scarcely less inimical
to the protraction of existence. Every one can see however, that
inordinate labour produces untimely decrepitude. Everyone can concieve
of the varieties of pain and disease, which accrue from the restraint of
our limbs, the intemperate exercise of the muscles, and a continual
exposure to the inclemency of the seasons.
That the poor are peculiarly subjected to a privation of the enjoyments
of life, and obliged to content themselves for the greater part of their
existence with that negative happiness which consists in the absence of
pain, is a point too evident to need illustration.
Secondly, the poor are condemned to a want of that leisure which is
necessary for the improvement of the mind. They are the predestined
victims of ignorance and prejudice. They are compelled for the most part
to rank with those creatures, that exist only for a few years, and then
are as if they had never been. They merely vegetate. The whole of the
powers they possess, is engaged in the pursuit of the miserable
expedients to protract their existence. Whatever be the prejudice, the
weakness of the superstition of their age and country, they have
scarcely any chance to escape from it. It is melancholy to reflect, how
few moments they can have complacence, of exultation, of honest pride,
or of joy. Theirs is a neutral existence. They go forward with their
heads bowed down to the earth, in a mournful state of inanity and
torpor. Yet, like the victims of Circe, they have the understanding left
ever and anon to affor them a glimpse of what they might have been. In
this respect they are more unfortunate than the beasts.
Thirdly, even those who escape from the general sentence of ignorance,
are haunted with the ills of poverty in another shape. Leisure well
employed is the most invaluable benefit than can fall to the lot of man.
If they have had leisure to accumulate the rudiments of knowledge, they
have not the leisure to construct them. Even if their immediate
avocation have something in it analogous to the cultivation of intellect
still they are not carried whither they would, but whither they would
not. Wherever almost we find the records of talents and genius, we find
a man impelled by accident, hurried by necessity and the noblest
conceptions of his mind rendered abortive by the ills of fortune. There
is no plant that requires to be so assiduously tended, and so much
favoured by every incidental and subordinate circumstance, as the
effusions of fancy, and the divorces of science.
While such appear to me the genuine effects of poverty, never will I
insult the sacred preference of its victims, by telling them that
poverty is no evil!
Hence also we may be led to perceive the mistake of those persons who
affirm, that the wants which are of the first necessity, are
inconsiderable, and are easily supplied.
No; that is not the inconsiderable, which cannot be purchased but by the
sacrifice of the best part of my time, and the first fruit of my
labours.
This is the state of society at the period in which I am born into the
world. I cannot remedy the evil and therefore must submit to it. I ought
to work up my mind to endure it with courage; I should yeild with a
chearful and active temper to the inequality of my burthen; but it is
neither necessary nor desirable that I should be indefensible to the
true state of the case.
Addison ludicrously exclaims in his tragedy of Cato:
What pity âtis
That we can die but once to serve our country!
If the condition of human life corresponded indeed with this patriotic
wish,a man might content himself to pass though (sic) one of its
repetitions under the pressure of great disadvantages. But, when we
recollect that we appear but once upon this theatre, that our life is
short and precarious, that we rise our of nothing, and that, when we
dies, we âpass a bourne from which no traveller returns[6];â we cannot
but deeply regret, that our exertions are so many ways fettered and
draen aside from their true direction, and that the life we would
improve for happiness or for honour, is almost inevitably rendered in a
great degree abortive.
The genuine wealth of man is leisure, when it meets with a disposition
to improve it. All other riches are of petty and inconsiderable value.
Is there not a slate of society practicable, in which leisure shall be
made the inheritance of every one of its members?
Which character deserces our preference, the man of avaricious habits,
or of profuse ones? Which of the two conducts himself in the manner most
beneficial to society? Which of the two is actuated by motives the most
consonant to justice and virute?
Riches and poverty are in some degree necessarily incidental to the
social existence of man. There is no alternative, but that men must
either have their portion of labour assigned them by the society at
large, and the produce collected into a common flock; or that each man
must be left to exert the portion of industry, and cultivate the habits
of economy, to which his mind shall prompt him.
The first of these modes of existence deserves our fised
disapprobation.[7] It is a state of slavery and imbecility. It reduces
the exertions of a human being to the level of a piece of mechanism,
prompted by no personal motives, compensated and alleviated by no
genuine passions. It puts an end to that independence and individuality,
which are the genuine characteristics of an intellectual existence, and
without which nothing eminently honourable, generous or delightful can
in any degree subsist.
Inequality therefore being to a certain extent unavoidable, it is the
provinces of justice and virtue to counteract the practical evils which
inequality has a tendency to produce. It is certain that men will differ
from each other in their degrees of industry and economy. But it is not
less certain, that the wants of one man are similar to the wants of
another, and that the same things will conduce to the improvement and
happiness of each, except so far as either is corrupted by the
oppressive and tyrannical condition of the society in which he is born.
The nature of man requires, that each man should be trusted with a
discretionary power. The principles of virtue require, that the
advantages existing in any community should be equally administered; or
that the inequalities which inevitably arise, should be repressed, and
kept down within as narrow limits as possible.
Does the conduct of the avaricious man, or of the man of profusion, best
contribute to this end?
That we may try the question in the most impartial manner, we will set
out of the view the man who subjects himself to the expences which he is
unable to discharge. We will suppose it is admitted, that the conduct of
the man, whose proceedings tend to a continual accumulation of debt, in
eminently pernicious. It does not contribute to his own happiness. It
drives him to the perpetual practice of subterfuges.It obliges him to
treat men, not according to their wants or their merits, but according
to their importunity. It fixes on him an ever gnawing anxiety that
poisons all his pleasures. He is altogether a stranger to that genuine
lightness of heart, which characterises the man at ease, and that man of
virtue. Care has placed her brand conspicuous (sic) on his brow. He is
subject to occasional paroxysms of anguish which no luxuries or
splendour can compensate. He accuses the system of nature of poisonous
infection, but the evil is in his own system of conduct.
The pains he suffers in himself are the obvious counterpart of the evils
he inflicts upon others. He might have foreseen the effects of his own
conduct, and that foresight migt have taught him to avoid it. But
foresight was in many instances to them impracticable. They suffer, not
in consequence of their own extravagance. They cannot take to themselves
the miserable consolation, that, if now they are distressed, they have
at least lavished their money themselves, and had their period of
profusion and riot.
There is no reason to be found in the code of impartial jsutice, why one
man should work, while another man is idle. Mechanical and daily labour
is the deadliest foe to all that is great and admirable in the human
mind. But the Spedthrift is not merely content, that other men should
labour, while he is idle. They have reconciled themselves to that. They
have found that, though unjust in itself, they cannot change the system
of political society; and they submit to their lot. They console
themselves with recollectiong the stipulated compensation of their
labours. But he is not satisfied that they should labour for his
gratification: he obliges them to do this gratuitously; he trifles with
their expectations ; he baffles their hopes ; he subjects them to a long
succession of tormenting uncertainties. they labour indeed ; but they do
not consume the commodities they produce, nor derive the smallest
advantage from their industry. âWe have laboured; and other men have
entered into the fruits of our labours.â[8]
Setting therefore out of the question the man
---
[missing 172â239]
The greatest of all human benefits, that at least without which no other
benefit can be truly enjoyed, is independence.
He who lives upon the kindness of another; must always have a greater or
less portion of a servile spirit. He has not yet come to feel what man
is. He has not yet essayed the muscles of his mind, and observed the
sublimity of his nature. True energy, the self-conscious dignity of the
man, who thinks not of himself otherwise than he ought to think, but
enjoys in sober perception the certainty of his faculties, are
sentiments to which he is a stranger. He knows not what shall happen
tomorrow, for his resources are out of himself. But the man that is not
provided for tomorrow, cannot enjoy today. He must either have a
trembling apprehension of sublunary vicissitude, or he must be indebted
for his repose to the lethargy of his soul.
The question relative to the establishment and maintenance of
independence, is intimately connected with the question relative to our
taste for, and indulgence in, the luxuries of human life.
Various are the opinions that have been held upon the latter of these
topics.
One of these opinions has been carried to its furthest extreme by
certain sects of religionists.
Their doctrine is commonly known by the appellation of self-denial. The
postulate upon which it principally proceeds, is that of the superiority
of the mind to the body. There is an obvious distinction between
intellectual pleasures and sensible ones. Either of them taken, in any
great degree, tends to exclude the other. The man who is engrossed in
contemplation, will, without expressly intending it, somewhat macerate
his body. The man who studies without restraint the gratifications of
appetite, will be in danger of losing the activity of his minds the
delicacy of his intellectual tact, and the generosity of his spirit.
There must be a superiority in favour, either of intellectual pleasures,
or of sensible ones. But that manâs mind must surely be of an
unfortunate construction, who can hesitate to prefer the former to the
latter. That which we possess in common with the brutes, is not of so
great value, as that which we possess distinctively to ourselves. That
man must possess the surest, the most extensive and the most resined
sources of happiness, whose intellect is cultivated with science, and
purified by taste, is warmed with the ardour of genius, and exalted by a
spirit of liberality and benevolence. There can be no comparison between
this man, and the glutton, the epicure or the debauchee [9].
The inference drawn from these premises by the persons whose system we
are here considering, is as follows. Sensible pleasures are to be
avoided, when they tend to impair the corporeal faculties. They are to
be avoided when they tend to the injury of our neighbours, or are
calculated to produce in ourselves habits of stratagem and deceit. Thus
far all systems of morality and rational conduct are agreed. But the
preachers of self-denial add to these limitations, a prohibition to the
frequent indulgence of sensible pleasures, from the danger of suffering
ourselves, to set too great a value upon them, and to postpone the best
and most elevated, to the meanest, part of our natures.
Having assumed this new principle of limitation, there is no visionary
and repulsive extreme to which these sectaries have not in some
instances proceeded. They have regarded all sensible pleasure as a
deduction from the purity and dignity of the mind, and they have not
abstained from invective against intellectual pleasure itself. They have
taught men to court persecution and calamity. They have delighted to
plant thorns in the path of human life. They have represented sorrow,
anguish and mortification as the ornaments and honour of our existence.
They have preached the vanity and emptiness of all earthly things, and
have maintained that it was unworthy of a good man and a wife to feel
complacency in any of the sensations they can afford.
These notions may sufficiently accord with the system of those who are
willing to part with all the benefits of the present scene of existence,
in exchange for certain speculations upon the chances of a world to
come. But they cannot enter into any liberal and enlightened system of
morality. Pleasure or happiness is the sole end of morality. A less
pleasure is not to be bartered but for a greater, either to ourselves or
others, nor a scheme attended with the certainty or probability of
considerable pleasure for an air-built speculation. Dismissing therefore
these extravagant dogmas, it remains to enquire how far we ought to
sacrifice or restrain the empire of sensible pleasures, for the sake of
contributing to the substantial improvement of the better part of our
nature.
There are obvious reasons why this restraint is not to be too severely
imposed.
It is a mistake to suppose that sensible pleasures and intellectual ones
are by any means incompatible. He that would have great energy, cannot
perhaps do better than to busy himself in various directions, and to
cultivate every part of his nature. Man is a little world within
himself, and every portion of that world is entitled to attention. A
wise man would wish to have a sound body, as well as a sound mind. He
would wish to be a man at all points. For this purpose he would exercise
and strengthen the muscles of every part of his frame. He would prepare
his body to endure hardship and vicissitude. He would exercise his
digestic powers. He would cultivate the delicacy of the organs of taste.
He would not neglect the sensations, the affociaions, and the
involuntary processes and animal economy annexed to the commerce of the
sexes. There is a harmony and a sympathy through every part of the human
machine. A vigorous and animated tone of body contributes to the
advantage, of the intellect, and an improved state of intellect
heightens and refines our sensible pleasures. A modern physician of
great character[10], has maintained life to be an unnatural state, and
death the genuine condition of man. If this thesis is to be admitted, it
seems to follow, that true wisdom would direct us to that proceeding,
which tended most to inform with life, and to maintain in activity,
every portion of our frame and every branch of our nature. It is thus
that we shall most effectually counterwork an enemy who is ever in wait
for us.
Another argument in favour of a certain degree of attention to be paid
to, and cultivation, to be bestowed upon, sensible pleasures, is, that
the sensations of our animal frame make an important part of the
materials of our knowledge. It is from sense that we must derive those
images which so eminently elucidate every department of science. One of
the great objects both of natural science and morality, is to judge of
our sensible impressions. The man who had not yielded a due attention to
them, would, in vain attempt to form an enlightened judgment in the very
question we are here attempting to discus. There is a vast variety of
topics that he would be disqualified to treat of or to estimate.
Add to this, that all our resined and abstracted notions are compounded
from ideas of sense. There is nothing so elevated and pure, but it was
indebted to this source for its materials. He therefore who would obtain
vividness in his ideas of intellect, ought probably to maintain with
care the freshness and vigour of his ideas of sense.
It seems to be owing to this that we find, for the most part, the
rustic, flow of apprehension, and unsusceptible of discernment; while it
is only from the man who maintains, not only the health of his body, but
the delicacy and vividness of his corporeal tact, that we ordinarily
expect delicacy of taste, brilliancy of imagination, or profoundness of
intellectual discussion.
Having endeavoured to ascertain the benefits to be derived from delicacy
and activity in our external senses, let us recur to the direct part of
the question, how far the improvement of the better past of our nature,
demands from us a sacrifice of, or a restraint to be improved on,
sensible pleasure. In the first place, if, as we have already
endeavoured to prove, intellectual pleasures are entitled to a
preference over sensible ones, they are of course also entitled to be
first considered in the arrangement of our time, and to occupy the
choicest part of our life. Nothing can be more contemptible, than the
man who dedicates all, the energies of his mind to the indulgence of his
appetites. They may, comparatively speaking, if we may be allowed the
expression, be thrust, up in a corner, and yet enjoy scope enough for
every valuable purpose. It is more necessary that we should not
proscribe them, than that we should make them one of the eminent
pursuits of our lives.
Secondly, we ought not only to confine them within limits considerably
narrow, as to the time they should occupy, but should also be careful
that they do not confound and inebriate our understandings. This is
indeed necessary, in order to the keeping them in due subordination in
the respect last mentioned. If they be not held in subjection as to
their place in our thoughts, they will speedily usurp upon all other
subjects, and convert the mind into a scene of tumult and confusion.
Intellectual and elevated pursuits demand from us a certain calmness of
temper; that the mind should rest upon its proper centre, that it should
look round with steadiness and freedom, that it should be undisturbed by
the intrusion of thoughts foreign to the present object of its
attention, and that it should be capable of a severe and obstinate
investigation of the point under review.
A further reason for moderation in our appetite for sensible pleasure,
not less important than any other that can possibly be assigned is that
which was alluded to in the commencement of this essay, the preservation
of our independence.
The man who is anxious to maintain his independence, ought steadily to,
bear in mind how few are the wants of a human being. It is by our wants
that we are held down, and linked in a thousand ways, to human society.
They render the man who is devoted to them, the slave of every creature
that breathes. They make all the difference between the hero and the
coward. The man of true courage is he who, when duty and public good
demand it, can cheerfully dispense with innumerable gratifications. The
coward is he who, wedded to particular indulgences and a certain mode of
life, is not able so, much as to think with equanimity of the being
deprived of them.
Hunc folem, et stellas, & decedentia certis
Tempora momentis,funt qui, formidine nulla,
Imbuti, spectent, [11].
HOR.
POPE.
Such undoubtedly is the characteristic of genuine virtue. It teaches us
to look upon events, not absolutely with indifference, but at least with
tranquillity. It instructs us to enjoy the benefits which we have, and
prepares us for what is to follow. It smiles upon us in the midst of
poverty and adverse circumstances. It enables us to collect and combine
the comforts which a just observer may extract from the most untoward
situation, and to be content.
The weakness which too many are subject to in regard to the goods of
fortune, puts them to a certain degree in every manâs power. It is of
little consequence how virtuous may be a manâs personal inclinations, if
he be inordinately sensible to the presence or absence of the
accommodations and luxuries of life. This man is not his own master. If
he have not been seduced to the commission of base and dishonourable
actions, he may thank accident for his escape, not the strength of his
virtue. He is truly a stave. Any man, possessing the command of a
certain portion of the goods of life, may order him this way or that at
his pleasure. He is like those brute animals, that are allured to the
learning innumerable postures and ridiculous tricks, by the attraction
of a morsel of meat. He knows not whether he shall end his life with a
virtue, plausible, hollow, and ever on the brink of dissolution; or
whether, on the contrary, his character shall be hated and contemned, as
long as his story endures.
He that desires to be, virtuous, and to remain so, must learn to be
content with a little; to, use the recreations of sense for the purposes
of living, and not to live for the sake of these recreations.
Summuft credet nefas animam preferre pudori Et propter vitam vivendi
perdere caufas [12].
JUV.
STEPNEY
How far then is it requisite that he, who would not be the slave of
appetite, should rigidly restrain himself in the indulgence of appetite?
There have been men who, living in the midst of luxury and inordinate
indulgence, have yet, when an adequate occasion presented itself to
rouse their virtue, shown that they were superior to these trivial
accessories of human life, and that they could stoop with a cheerful
spirit to calamity and penury. He however, who would desire to have
reason to depend upon his fortitude, ought not probably to expose
himself to so doubtful an experiment. It has often happened that those
who, in the outset of their career, have been full of a gallant spirit,
have been insensibly subdued by a course of unexpected gratification.
There is something particularly dangerous in this situation. The man
remembers with how much cheerfulness he formerly submitted to
inconvenience, and he does not feel, and cannot persuade himself, that
he is worse than he was. He does not advert to the way in which luxury
is undermining all the energies of his soul. He does not see that it is
twining itself about his heart, and will not be torn away but with life.
This is unfortunately one of the peculiar characteristics of degeneracy,
that it invades us in a secret and crafty manner, and is less easily
perceived by its victim, than by the least sagacious of the bystanders.
[missing 252â350]
If we examine with a curious and attentive eye those individuals who may
be said to have in any degree exerted themselves for the improvement of
their intellectual faculties, we shall find ourselves easily able to
distinguish those who are usually denominated the self-educated, from
every other description of mentally industrious persons.
By the self-educated in this place I would understand, not merely those
who have not passed through the regular forms of a liberal education; I
include, in addition to this, the notion of their not having engaged in
any methodical and persevering course of reading, but devoted themselves
rather to the labour of investigating their own thoughts, than the
thoughts of others.
These persons are well worthy of the intercourse and careful observation
of men who are desirous of embracing every means of adding to their own
stock of knowledge. There is a striking independence of mind about them.
There is a sort of audaciousness of thinking, that has a most happy
tendency to counteract that stationariness and facredneis of opinion
which is too apt to insinuate itself among mankind. New thoughts, daring
opinions, intrepid enquiries, are thus set afloat, upon which more
disciplined minds would perhaps scarcely have ventured. There is
frequently a happiness in their reflections, that flashes light and
conviction upon us at once.
Yet such persons are often wholly, perhaps always very considerably,
desicient in the art of reasoning. There is no sufficient arrangement in
their arguments, or lucidness in their order. Often they assign, reasons
wholly foreign to the question; often they omit in silence, steps the
most material to their demonstration, and which none but the acutest
auditor can supply; and this, not because they forgot them, but because
they never at any time occurred to their minds. They strain words and
phrases in so novel a manner as altogether to calumniate their meaning,
and their discourse must be translated into the vernacular tongue,
before we can fairly make trial of its merits. Their ideas, if I may be
allowed the expression, are so Pindarical and unmethodised, that our
chief wonder is at the felicity and wisdom which mixes itself among
them. They furnish however rather materials of thinking, than proofs of
the truth or falshood of any proposition; and, if we adopt any of their
assertions, we are often obliged to reject, their imaginary
demonstrations, and invent demonstrations of our own altogether
different.
In the mean time this is the favourable side of the picture. Many of the
self-educated study themselves into a sort of infanity. They are not
only incoherent in their thoughts, and wild in their language: often
they adopt opinions the most unequivocally visionary, and talk a
language, not merely unintelligible to others, but which is put together
in so fantastic and mystical a way, that it is impossible it should be
the representative of wisdom in themselves.
There is another feature peculiarly characteristical of, the
self-educated. Reflecting men of a different description, are frequently
sceptical in their opinions. They have so carefully entered into the
very souls of the authors they read, and so minutely followed out the
whole train of their reasonings, as to enable them to do full justice to
an antagonistâs argument. But this to a self-educated man is impossible.
He has therefore no doubts. If he is tolerant, it is less in consequence
of feeling the weakness of human understanding and the inevitable
varieties of human opinion, than through the medium of an abstract
speculation, or a generous consciousness, leaning to the side of
toleration. It will be strange if, so far as relates to conversation and
the ordinary intercourse of human life, he be not frequently betrayed
into intolerance. It will be strange, if he do not prove in many
instances, impatient of contradiction, and inurbane and ungenerous in
his censures of those by whom he is opposed.
It is too common a feature with all disputants, that they think, only of
their own arguments, and listen, in the strictest sense of the word,
only to themselves. It is not their purpose to try whether they may not
themselves be convicted of error; they are merely intent upon convincing
and changing the mind of the person who differs from them. This, which
is too frequent a fault with all men, is peculiarly incident to the
self-educated. The generality of men of talent and reflection, were
taught first by listening to other menâs ideas, and studying other menâs
writings. The wildness of their nature, and the stubbornness of their
minds, have by long practice been broken into a capacity of candid
attention. If I talk to such men, I do not talk m vain. But, if I talk
to a self-educated man, it too often happens that I am talking to the
air. He has no suspicion that I may possibly be in the right, and
therefore no curiosity to know what is capable of being alleged in
favour of my opinion. A truly ludicrous spectacle would be to see two
such men talking together, each hearing himself only, and each, however
he may cover it with an exterior politeness, deaf to the pretensions of
his antagonist.
From this description of a self-educated man it may fasely be inferred,
that I ought to wish any young person in whose future eminence I
interest myself, rather occasionally to associate with individuals of
this description, than to be one of their body himself.
It ought however to be remarked that, whatever rank the self-educated
man may hold among persons who have exerted themselves for the
improvement of their intellectual faculties, he will always, if
judicious and able, be regarded by the discerning with peculiar respect,
in as much as there has been much more of voluntary in his acquisitions,
than can well have fallen to the share of those who have enjoyed every
advantage of institution and scientifical incitement.
There is a kind of declamation very generally afloat in the world,
which, if it could be taken as just and well founded, would prove that
the self-educated, educated, instead of labouring under the important
difadvantages here enumerated, were the most fortunate of men, and those
upon whom the hopes of their species, whether for instruction or
delight, should principally be fixed.
How much eloquent invective has been spent in holding up to ridicule the
generation of bookworms! We have been told, that a persevering habit of
reading, kills the imagination, and narrows the understanding; that it
overloads she intellect with the notions of others and prevents its
digesting them, and, by a still stronger reason, prevents it from
unfolding its native powers; that the man who would be original and
impressive, must meditate rather than hear, and walk rather than read.
He that devotes himself to a methodical prosecution of his studies, is
perhaps allowed some praise for his industry and good intention; but it
is at the same time insinuated, that the only result to be expected
from, such ill-placed industry, is a plentiful harvest of laborious
dulness.
It is no wonder that this fort of declamation has been generally
popular. It favours one of the most fundamental passions, of the human
mind, our indolence. To acquaint ourselves profoundly with what other
men have thought in different ages of the world, is an arduous task; the
ascent of the hill of knowledge is steep, and it demands the most
unalterable resolution to be able to conquer it. But this declamation
presents to us every discouragement, and severs all the nerves of the
soul. He that is infected by it, no longer âgirds up the loins of his
mind[13];â but surrenders his days to unenterprising indulgence. Its
effect is like that of a certain religious creed, which, disclaiming the
connection between motives and action, and between one action and
another, instructs its votaries to wait, with pious resignation, for the
influx of a supernatural strength which is to supersede the benefit of
our vigilance and exertions.
Nothing however can be more ill founded than this imputed hostility
between learning and genius. If it were true, it is among savages only
that we ought to seek for the genuine expansion of the human mind. They
are, of all their kind, the most undebauched by learning, and the least
broken in upon by any regular habits of attention. In civilised society,
and especially among that class in civilised society who pay any
attention to intellectual pursuits, those who have the greatest
antipathy to books, are yet modified in a thousand ways by the actual
state of literature.
---
[1] See the close of Essay I
[2] To some persons this expression may be ambiguous. The sort of âgoing
firstâ and âfollowingâ here censured, may be compared to one personâs
treading over a portion of ground, and anotherâs coming immediately
after, treading in his footsteps. The adult must undoubtedly be supposed
to have acquired their information before the young; and they may at
proper intervals incite and conduct their diligence, but not so as to
supersede in them the exercise of their own discretion.
[3] II Thes. Chap. iii, ver. 10.
[4] John, Chap. xi, ver. 18.
[5] Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. VI, octavo edition.
[6] Shakespeare.
[7] Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. II octavo edition.
[8] John, Chap. iv. ver. 38
[9] Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. XI, octavo edition.
[10] Brown.
[11] This vault of air, this congregated ball,
Self-centerâd fun, and stars that rife and fall,
There are, my friend! whose philosophic eyes
Look throâ, ----
And view this dreadful All without a fear.
[12] Heâd rather chuse
To guard his Honour, and his Life to lose,
Rather than let his Virtue be betrayâd;
Virtue, the Noble Cause for which heâs made.
[13] I Peter, Chap. I, ver. 13. Aa3