Spare Hours. Brown John

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СКАЧАТЬ by Mr. Baynes, contains the gist of all we have been trying to say. It should be engraven on the tablets of every young student’s heart – for the heart has to do with study as well as the head.

      “There is nothing more desirable than good sense and justness of mind, – all other qualities of mind are of limited use, but exactness of judgment is of general utility in every part and in all employments of life.

      “We are too apt to employ reason merely as an instrument for acquiring the sciences, whereas we ought to avail ourselves of the sciences, as an instrument for perfecting our reason; justness of mind being infinitely more important than all the speculative knowledge which we can obtain by means of sciences the most solid. This ought to lead wise men to make their sciences the exercise and not the occupation of their mental powers. Men are not born to employ all their time in measuring lines, in considering the various movements of matter: their minds are too great, and their life too short, their time too precious, to be so engrossed; but they are born to be just, equitable, and prudent, in all their thoughts, their actions, their business; to these things they ought especially to train and discipline themselves.”

      So, young friends, bring Brains to your work, and mix everything with them, and them with everything. Arma virumque, tools and a man to use them. Stir up, direct, and give free scope to Sir Joshua’s “that,” and try again, and again; and look, oculo intento, acie acerrimâ. Looking is a voluntary act, – it is the man within coming to the window; seeing is a state, – passive and receptive, and, at the best, little more than registrative.

      Since writing the above, we have read with great satisfaction Dr. Forbes’ Lecture delivered before the Chichester Literary Society and Mechanics’ Institute, and published at their request. Its subject is, Happiness in its relation to Work and Knowledge. It is worthy of its author, and is, we think, more largely and finely imbued with his personal character, than any one other of his works that we have met with. We could not wish a fitter present for a young man starting on the game of life. It is a wise, cheerful manly, and warm-hearted discourse on the words of Bacon, – “He that is wise, let him pursue some desire or other: for he that doth not affect some one thing in chief, unto him all things are distasteful and tedious.” We will not spoil this little volume by giving any account of it. Let our readers get it, and read it. The extracts from his Thesis, De Mentis Exercitatione et Felicitate exinde derivandâ, are very curious – showing the native vigor and bent of his mind, and indicating also, at once the identity and the growth of his thoughts during the lapse of thirty-three years.

      We give the last paragraph, the sense and the filial affection of which are alike admirable. Having mentioned to his hearers that they saw in himself a living illustration of the truth of his position, that happiness is a necessary result of knowledge and work, he thus concludes: —

      “If you would further desire to know to what besides I am chiefly indebted for so enviable a lot, I would say: – 1st, Because I had the good fortune to come into the world with a healthful frame, and with a sanguine temperament. 2d, Because I had no patrimony, and was therefore obliged to trust to my own exertions for a livelihood. 3d, Because I was born in a land where instruction is greatly prized and readily accessible. 4th, Because I was brought up to a profession which not only compelled mental exercise, but supplied for its use materials of the most delightful and varied kind. And lastly and principally, because the good man to whom I owe my existence, had the foresight to know what would be best for his children. He had the wisdom, and the courage, and the exceeding love, to bestow all that could be spared of his worldly means, to purchase for his sons, that which is beyond price, EDUCATION; well judging that the means so expended, if hoarded for future use, would be, if not valueless, certainly evanescent, while the precious treasure for which they were exchanged, a cultivated and instructed mind, would not only last through life, but might be the fruitful source of treasures far more precious than itself. So equipped he sent them forth into the world to fight Life’s battle, leaving the issue in the hand of God; confident, however, that though they might fail to achieve renown or to conquer Fortune, they possessed that which, if rightly used, could win for them the yet higher prize of HAPPINESS.”

      Since this was written, many good books have appeared, but we would select three, which all young men should read and get – Hartley Coleridge’s Lives of Northern Worthies, Thackeray’s Letters of Brown the Elder, and Tom Brown’s School-days– in spirit and in expression, we don’t know any better models for manly courage, good sense, and feeling, and they are as well written as they are thought.

      There are the works of another man, one of the greatest, not only of our, but of any time, to which we cannot too earnestly draw our young readers. We mean the philosophical writings of Sir William Hamilton. We know no more invigorating, quickening, rectifying kind of exercise, than reading with a will, anything he has written upon permanently important subjects. There is a greatness and simplicity, a closeness of thought, a glance keen and wide, a play of the entire nature, and a truthfulness and downrightness, with an amount, and accuracy, and vivification of learning, such as we know of in no one other writer, ancient or modern – not even Leibnitz; and we know no writings which so wholesomely at once exalt and humble the reader, make him feel what is in him, and what he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and need never hope to know. In this respect, Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more simple; he exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of Scripture – unless a man become a little child, he cannot enter into the kingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but he presses on, intrepid and alone, to the inmost adytum, worshipping the more the nearer he gets to the inaccessible shrine, whose veil no mortal hand has ever rent in twain. And we name after him, the thoughtful, candid, impressive little volume of his pupil, his friend, and his successor, Professor Fraser.

      The following passage from Sir William Hamilton’s Dissertations, besides its wise thought, sounds in the ear like the pathetic and majestic sadness of a symphony by Beethoven: —

      “There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance; we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life is itself only a travelling from grave to grave.

Τίς βίος; – Ἐκ τύμβοιο θορὼν, ἐπὶ τύμβον ὁδεύω

      The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance; ‘Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.’ This ‘learned ignorance’ is the rational conviction by the human mind of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the knowledge of ourselves, – the science of man. This is accomplished by a demonstration of the disproportion between what is to be known, and our faculties of knowing, – the disproportion, to wit, between the infinite and the finite. In fact, the recognition of human ignorance, is not only the one highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is not proud; consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it is not, which ‘puffeth up;’ but its opposite, the conceit of false knowledge, – the conceit, in truth, as the apostle notices, of an ignorance of the very nature of knowledge: —

      ‘Nam nesciens quid scire sit,

      Te scire cuncta jactitas.’

      “But as our knowledge stands to Ignorance, so stands it also to Doubt. Doubt is the beginning and the end of our efforts to know; for as it is true, – ‘Alte dubitat qui altius credit,’ so it is likewise true, – ‘Quo magis quærimus magis dubitamus.’

      “The grand result of human wisdom is thus only a consciousness that what we know is as nothing to what we know not, (‘Quantum est quod nescimus!’) – an articulate confession, in fact, by our natural reason, of the truth declared in revelation, that ‘now we see through a glass, darkly.’”

      His СКАЧАТЬ