Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 309. Various
exertion are most suitable, as the means of raising him to that condition wherein he will most admirably fulfil the design of his creation? To instruct and educate him with respect to this design is the highest and ultimate purpose of all knowledge. It has thus a grander aim than the mere promotion of the conveniencies of our material life. Prosecuted with reference to this loftier end, it is exalted into the appropriate guide of a man's endeavours – acquainting him with the laws and relations of his existence, and shaping for him the authentic course of his sublunary conduct.
It is accordingly obvious, that in order to obtain its lasting and most prizable advantages, the pursuit of knowledge must be entered on and followed as a duty. A man must esteem his personal culture as the noblest end of his existence, and accept his responsibility in regard to it as the most paramount of obligations. To this one pre-eminent aim all other aims and aspirings must be held as inconsiderable and subordinate. Let him know, and lay earnestly to heart, that all his efforts at cultivation are to be everlasting in their results – fruitful for ever in blessed consequences to himself and to the world, or otherwise miserably and perpetually abortive, according to the character and spirit of his activity. All learning and experience have an intimate and natural respect to the progressive perfection of the human soul. The original idea of a man – what he individually ought to be and do– that is the basis whereon he is to found and build up his entire being. He must therefore prosecute knowledge with a reverent and religious earnestness, strive diligently to comprehend the relations in which he stands to God and his fellow-men, and sedulously endeavour to fulfil his true and peculiar destination, which is, to make his temporal existence correspondent with the inner laws of his own soul, and to leave behind it in the spiritual world an imperishable and eternal consequence.
This view of the intrinsic worth and significance of knowledge must be admitted to be far more exalting and salutary to the mind than any which has reference exclusively or principally to its agency in simply secular affairs. It leads a man inevitably to respect the integrity and rightful exercise of his capacities, by discountenancing all employment of them which might tend in anyway to invalidate or impair the natural supremacy of the moral sentiment. Considered as the power whereby he may cultivate and enlarge his being, knowledge is invested with a lofty and perennial momentousness, which cannot, and may not, be disregarded without derogation to our highest interests as human and spiritual intelligences. It is indeed a revelation, in all its manifold departments, of that vital and sustaining element of things which is designated Truth, and whereon every effort that can reasonably be expected to be lastingly successful is most intimately dependent. As man liveth not by bread alone, but by every gracious word that proceedeth from the mouth of God, by every just and everlasting law which He has established for the guidance and edification of mankind, so assuredly is it of primary concern to men to be qualified to interpret those sublime utterances, and to apprehend their import and significancy, in relation to the aims and hopes of life. This is the great and inestimable excellency of knowledge, that it acquaints us with something of the reality and nature of the mysterious frame of things wherein we live, and are necessitated constantly to work, and unfolds for us the laws and reasons of that obedience which we are constrained to yield to the established economy wherewith our existence and essential welfare are connected. The highest and most binding obligation for us to know anything at all, is our natural need of intellectual enlightenment – the soul's unquestionable necessity for an intimacy with Truth, and the joy and satisfaction which it finds in its contemplation. And thus it is that all knowledge is eminently sacred, as being the stream through which a human mind draws insight from the central source of all intelligence; as being that which informs us of self-subsistent Law and Power, and consciously connects us with their reality and operations. That baneful divorce between intelligence and holiness which a sceptical and frivolous age has so disastrously effected, will need to be set aside as altogether founded on a serious mistake; and indeed men are already beginning to apprehend that no pure faith can be sustained, no sound or abiding virtue inculcated and established, which is not deeply grounded in that mental certainty and assurance which clear, indisputable knowledge alone can furnish.
Let knowledge, then, be recognised as a primary indispensability for the mind, the natural and appropriate inheritance of every human soul; and let us esteem it as a sufficient and authentic plea for its universal dissemination, that it is ever needful for the soul's health and welfare; and condescend not to demand it on any inferior pretext. If there is one right of man more essentially sacred than another, it is his right to as complete and perfect an education as his own capacity, and the attainments and adaptations of the age he lives in, are adequate to supply him with; and again, if there is one human duty more paramount and obligatory than the rest, it is that which enjoins upon a man the use of his best energies and efforts to advance himself in intellectual and moral vigour, and to turn every talent and capability most honestly to account; since upon the depth and extent of his own inward force will depend the essential worth of his subsequent performances. The rational enlargement of the individual is indeed the one great end of life. Nothing has so high a claim on us as the cultivation of ourselves. 'It is most true,' as a vigorous and thoughtful modern writer has remarked – 'it is most true, and most fitting to be said to many in our day, that a man has no business to cut himself off from communion with so rich and manifold a world as ours, or arbitrarily to harden and narrow his life on any of the sides on which it is open and sensitive. But it is also no less necessary, and perhaps in this time more required to urge, that a man's first vocation is to be a man – a practical, personal being, with a reasonable and moral existence, which must be kept strong, and in working order, at all expense of pleasure, talent, brilliancy, and success. It is easy to lose one's self, or, as the Scripture has it, one's own soul, in the midst of the many and glittering forms of good which the world offers, and which our life apprehends: but to know any of these as realities, it is necessary to begin by being real in our own human ground of will, conscience, personal energy. Then will the world also begin to be real for us; and we may go on through eternity mining deeper and deeper, and in endless diversities of direction, in a region of inexhaustible realities.'1
WORLDLY WISDOM
Mr and Mrs Davenant especially prided themselves on their worldly wisdom and on their strong good sense – excellent qualities undoubtedly, but susceptible of being carried to an injurious excess. If it be true that in our faults lie the germ of virtues, no less true is it that almost every virtue is capable of being exaggerated into vice. Thus was it with the Davenants: in their code everything was made subservient to worldly wisdom: all their own and their friends' actions were measured by that standard; consequently every generous aspiration was checked, every noble, self-denying action decried, if it could not be reconciled to their ideas of wisdom. In course of time Mr and Mrs Davenant grew cold-hearted, calculating, and selfish; and as their fortunes flourished, more and more did they exult in their own wisdom, and condemn as foolish and Quixotic everything charitable and disinterested. To the best of their power they brought up their children in the same principles, and they succeeded to admiration with their eldest daughter, who was as shrewd and prudent as they could wish. Mrs Davenant would often express her maternal delight in her Selina: there never was a girl possessing such strong good sense – such wisdom. Some people might have thought that in Miss Selina's wisdom the line was somewhat faint that divided it from mere cunning; but mothers are rarely very quick-sighted with regard to their children's faults, and Mrs Davenant never saw the difference.
With their other daughter they were not so successful. When Lucy Davenant was but five years old, a relation of her mother's, a maiden lady residing in Wales, had, at her own earnest request, adopted the younger daughter. Miss Moore was very rich, and her fortune was entirely at her own disposal, so Mr and Mrs Davenant at once acceded to her request, never doubting that she would make Lucy her heiress. Lucy remained with Miss Moore till that lady died; but although she left her nothing in her will but a few comparatively valueless mementos, she owed more to her care and teaching than thousands could repay. Under the influence of her precepts, and the admirable example she afforded, Lucy became generous, unselfish, open-hearted, and truthful as the day. But her parents, unhappily, were blind to these virtues, or rather they deemed that, in possessing them, their child was rather unfortunate than otherwise. Lucy was utterly astonished when she came home from Wales after her kind friend's death, at the strange manner
Sterling's Sayings and Essayings.