p>Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 309 / New Series, Saturday, December 8, 1849
KNOWLEDGE
It was for a long time the custom to recommend knowledge to the attention of the people by depicting the material advantages and pleasures incident to its pursuit. Glowing and attractive pictures were exhibited of the career and progress of meritorious and successful persons, who had been elevated by their intelligence to positions of consideration and distinction. Universal history and biography were ransacked to furnish instances of a persevering and well-rewarded prosecution of knowledge 'under difficulties;' and the general mind was invited to contemplate and reflect on these, as worthy exemplars for its imitation. The inference, moreover, that was almost uniformly intended to be drawn, was such a one as was naturally acceptable to the crude and undisciplined understanding – the obvious purpose of all such representations being to stimulate the energies and enterprise of the ambitious, by the offer or indication of material rewards, and to make intelligence respected and desirable for the sake of its sensible compensations.
There might perhaps be reasons adducible to justify the employment of such incitements, as there may doubtless be circumstances under which the cultivation of knowledge might, for a time, be more effectually advanced by means of interested considerations, than by an appeal to motives more strictly rational, and accordant with a disinterested reverence for its spiritual worth and dignity. There are evidently stages of human progress when a regard for their personal interests has a more powerful efficacy in urging men into improvement, than any of the finer influences of which they are susceptible, or which an advanced culture would probably awaken. Thus, as an exoteric or introductory intimation of the value and desirableness of knowledge, it may not be amiss to attract a people, otherwise indisposed to its acquirement, by an exhibition of the conventional advantages and distinctions which it may contribute, more or less successfully, to realise. And though it cannot be allowed that the culture of the intellect is to be subordinated to the acquisition of any of the temporal benefits of life, yet inasmuch as an increase of intelligence and sagacity may be reasonably applied to the promotion of such comforts and conveniencies as tend to enhance the rational satisfactions of existence, it is not to be questioned that the latter may be innocently, and even serviceably, urged upon the attention, as reasons and motives for stimulating the slothful or indifferent mind to an appropriate activity, whensoever higher and worthier considerations may have been found to be ineffectual, or are in any likelihood of being imperfectly apprehended. The sole condition needful to be observed by those who thus endeavour to promote the education and enlightenment of the people, is a clear and firm persuasion in themselves that such a method of interesting men in the pursuits of literature or science, can only be considered as initiatory, and preparatory to something higher, and that at last knowledge must stand recommended to the mind by its own intrinsic charms, and by its grand and native tendency to further a man's spiritual advancement.
It is scarcely to be doubted that the oversight of this has greatly contributed to occasion the failure of many of those popular schemes and institutions which have had for their object the intellectual improvement of the people. Starting with the flattering assumption that literary and scientific information possessed the power of raising men to social consequence, it was presently perceived that the result was not answerable to the expectations which had been excited, and that the more generally intelligence was spread, the greater was the competition for the advantages in view, and the less the chance of attaining them. By being taught to regard their education as a means or process whereby they might be more readily and securely inducted into positions of emolument and honour, not only were the people misdirected with respect to the real and authentic signification of manly culture, but even the inducements held out as the encouragements of their efforts were found to end mainly in disappointment. The generality were not, and could not be enriched, nor very sensibly elevated in the estimation of the world; they did not usually attain to what they had been taught to aim after, which was, in most cases, antecedence of their fellow-men, distinction and exalted notice in the eyes of accredited respectability. The conditions of society to which they were subjected limited most of them to their old employments and pursuits, and it only occasionally happened that a man's personal fortunes were very materially promoted by the intelligence he had gained through studious exertion. If, by some favourable concurrence of circumstances, one might chance to attain eminence, or realise any considerable share of the substantial possessions of life, for every individual thus fortunate, there has probably been a thousand whose efforts were utterly unproductive of any such success. Upon the whole, it is evident that the more universally the benefits of instruction are extended among a people, the casual prizes which were formerly accessible to rare examples of ability and intelligence become less and less easy of attainment, and have an eventual tendency to become distributed altogether without reference to that intellectual superiority which, when education was less general, more invariably commanded them. The peculiar distinctions which knowledge is competent to confer must be looked for in other directions than those which are supposed to lead to the acquisition of wealth or mere conventional reputability – must be sought, indeed, among the inner laws and necessities of the human mind. The power which we ascribe to intelligence must be exercised for ends and objects which have hitherto been too commonly overlooked, and the purposes and aims of education will need to be more intimately adjusted to the essential demands of character.
A notorious consequence of the popular instruction most prevalent within the last twenty years, has been the elicitation of a certain superficial cleverness, valuable principally for marketable or ostentatious purposes, and no more indicative of intellectual elevation than the frivolous accomplishment of rope-dancing. It is for the most part an affair of memory, a mere mechanical agility, expertness in acts of routine; and in its superior developments takes most commonly the shape of a keen vulpine perspicacity, which may very readily be cultivated independently of any coincident development of the reflective reason or the moral attributes. The practical understanding, being trained into separate activity, and exercised apart from its constitutional connection, may obviously be used like an implement, in subordination to the propensities or the will, and for the accomplishment of purely selfish, or even discreditable ends. Thus, while it is perfectly true that a liberal and complete education – using the word in its largest and strictly philosophical significance – is the sole and certain means of human elevation, it is not to be denied that very considerable acquisitions of information, and much intellectual ability and shrewdness, may subsist together with a manifest unscrupulousness or depravity of disposition. And hence it is evident that the power of knowledge is good or evil according as it is used; and so long as its cultivation is enjoined out of motives involving a primary regard to worldly advantages and promotions, there will never be wanting persons to pursue it out of mercenary, and in other respects questionable considerations. The entire grounds of the common advocacy of education must be abandoned; we must ascend from the low places of expediency and selfish benefit to the nobler platform of that universal and inborn necessity in man, which demands a circular and simultaneous culture of his whole nature – that essential and inward law of being whose perfect and successful development shall be answerable to the destination contemplated in the origin and intention of the human constitution.
The true reason for individual cultivation is undoubtedly to be sought for in the native requirements of the soul. The essential worth of knowledge lies not so much in its adaptations to our temporal conveniencies or ambition, as in the service it performs in promoting spiritual enlargement. What we more especially understand by education is a progressive process whereby the intellectual and moral powers are expanded and developed to the extent of their capabilities, and directed towards objects of action and speculation which have a tendency to advance the effectual wellbeing of the individual – a wellbeing whose character is not to be determined arbitrarily by opinion, or considered as consisting in conditions accordant with mere conventional preconceptions of mortal happiness, but one which pre-exists as an ideal prefigurement in human nature. That only is a right and sufficient education which aims at the perfect culture of the man – which, as far as is possible with objective limitations, educes and invigorates his latent aptitudes and gifts, to the end that he may employ them in a manner which is consistent with the pure idea of his own being. The consideration to be kept continually in view is, what is a man by natural capacity destined to become? – what heights of intellectual and moral worth is he capable of attaining to? – and, on the whole, what courses of