Part 12

Intellectual training is to be prized, but practical knowledge is necessary to make it available. Experience gained from books, however valuable, is of the nature of learning; experience gained from outward life is wisdom; and an ounce of the latter is worth a pound of the former. Rich mental endowments, thorough culture, great genius, brilliant parts have often existed in company with very glaring deficiencies in what may be called good judgment; while there is a certain stability of judgment and soundness of understanding often displayed by those who have not an extensive education. The old sailor knows nothing of nautical astronomy. Azimuths, right ascensions, and the solution of spherical triangles have no charm and little meaning to him. But he can scan the seas and skies and warn of coming danger with a natural wisdom which all the keen intellect and ready mathematics of the young lieutenant do not afford. The man who has traveled much accumulates a store of useful information, and can give hints of practical wisdom which no deep study of geological lore or of antiquarian research could afford. The student of life rather than of books gains an understanding by experience for which no store of erudition can prove an adequate compensation. The true order of learning should be, first, what is necessary; second, what is useful; and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice. Practical ability depends in a large measure on the employment of what is known as common sense, which is the average sensibility and intelligence of men undisturbed by individual peculiarities. Fine sense and exalted sense are not half as useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense, and he that will carry nothing but gold will be every day at a loss for readier change.

The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things and of the genius of the age we live in, and could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius becomes prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills his father paid for. That knowledge of the world which inculcates strict vigilance in regard to our individual interests and representation, which recommends the mastery of things to be held in our own hands, or which enables us to live undamaged by the skillful maneuvers and crafty plots of plausible men on the one hand or uncontaminated by the depravities of unprincipled ones on the other, is of daily acquisition and equally accessible to all.

The most learned of men do not always make the best of teachers; the lawyer who has achieved a classical education is not always the most successful. The men who have wielded power have not always been graduates. Brindley and Stephenson did not learn to read and write until they were twenty years old; yet the one gave England her railroads, and the other her canals. The great inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honors, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil. It is not known where he who invented the plow was born, or where he died; yet he has effected more for the happiness of the world than the whole race of heroes and conquerors who drenched it in tears and blood, whose birth, parentage, and education have been handed down to us with a precision proportionate to the mischief they have done. Mankind owes more of its real happiness to this humble inventor than to some of the most acute minds in the realm of literature.

Education, indeed, accomplishes wonders in fitting a man for the work of success, but we sometimes forget that it is of more consequence to have the mind well disciplined rather than richly stored,—strong rather than full. Every day we see men of high culture distanced in the race of life by the upstart who can not spell. The practical dunce outstrips the theorizing genius. Life teems with such illustrations. Men have ruled well who could not define a commonwealth; and they who did not understand the shape of the earth have commanded a greater portion of it. The want of practical talent in men of fine intellectual powers has often excited the wonder of the crowd. They are astonished that one who has grasped, perhaps, the mightiest themes, and shed a light on the path to be pursued by others, should be unable to manage his own affairs with dexterity. But this is not strange. Deep thinking and practical talents require habits of mind almost entirely dissimilar, and though they may, and often do, exist conjointly, and while it is the duty of all to strive to cultivate both, yet such is the constitution of the human mind that it is apt to go to extremes. And he who accustoms himself to deep prying into nature's secrets, to exploring the hidden mysteries of the past, is too apt to forget the practical details of every-day life, to pass them by with disgust, as altogether beneath his attention. This is an error, and none the less reprehensible on that account than is the conduct of those who become so engrossed with the practical affairs of their calling or profession as to forget that they have a higher nature, and sink the man in the pursuit of their ambitious dreams.

A man who sees limitedly and clearly is both more sure of himself and is more direct in dealing with circumstances and with men than is a man who has a large horizon of thought, whose many-sided capacity embraces an immense extent of objects, just as the somnambulist treads with safety where the wide-awake man could not hope to follow. Practical men cut the knots which they can not untie, and, overleaping all preliminaries, come at once to a conclusion. Men of theoretical knowledge, on the other hand, are tempted to waste time in comparing and meditating when they should be up and doing. Practical knowledge will not always of itself raise a man to eminence, but for want of it many a man has fallen short of distinction. Without it the best runner, straining for the prize, finds himself suddenly tripped up and lying on his back in the midst of the race. Without it the subtlest theologian will live and die in an obscure country village, and the acutest legal mind fail of adorning the bench. The man who lacks it may be a great thinker or a great worker. He may be an acute reasoner and an eloquent speaker, and yet, in spite of all this, fail of success. There is a hitch, a stand-still, a mysterious want somewhere. Little, impalpable trifles weave themselves into a web which holds him back. The fact is, he is not sufficiently in accord with his surroundings. He has never seen the importance of adjusting his scale of weights and measures to the popular standard. In a word, he is not a man of the world, in a popular sense.

While it may be very difficult to define this practical ability, which is so all-important, yet the path to be pursued by him who would advance therein is visible to all. It requires a shrewd and careful observance of men and things rather than of books. It requires that the judgment be strengthened by being called upon in apparently trivial affairs. The memory must be trained to recall principles rather than statements. All the faculties of the mind must be trained to act with decision and dispatch. Education must be regarded as a means and not as an end. By these means, while admitting that practical talents are, in their true sense, a gift of God, still we can cultivate and bring them to perfection, and by education and experience convert that which before lay dormant in the rough pebble into a dazzling diamond.

From time immemorial intellectual endowments have been crowned with bays of honor. Men have worshiped at the shrine of intellect with an almost Eastern idolatry. Men of more than an average endowment of intellect have been regarded as superior beings. The multitude have looked upon them with wonder. With reverent hands the world at large has crowned intellect with its richest honors. Its pathway has been strewn with flowers; its brow has worn the loftiest plume; it has held the mightiest scepter of power, and sat upon the proudest throne. Evidence mightier than the plaudits of admiring multitudes is every-where found in the universe proclaiming the worth and power of the human intellect. There can not be a grander theme to engross the attention of all classes than that subject which has to do with the training of the intellect. The subject of education is fraught with a deep interest to all who have a just appreciation of its merits. It should be of interest to all within the pale of civilization, inasmuch as the happiness of all classes is connected with the subject of education.

Education is development. It is not simply instruction, facts, and rules communicated by the teacher, but it is discipline, a waking up, a development of latent powers, a growth of the mind. It finds the child's mind passive; it trains it to think independently; it awakens its powers to observe, to reflect, to combine. It aims to bring into harmonious action all the powers of the mind, not, as some suppose, a cultivation of a few to the neglect of all the rest. Education should have reference to the whole man—the body, the mind, and the heart. Its object, and, when rightly conducted, its effect, is to make him a complete creature of his kind. To his frame it would give vigor, activity, and beauty; to his heart virtue; to his senses correctness and acuteness. The educated man is not the gladiator, nor the scholar, nor the upright man alone, but a well balanced combination of the three. The well-developed tree is not one simply well rooted, nor with giant branches, nor resplendent with rich foliage, but all of these together. If you mark the perfect man you must not look for him in the gymnasium, the university, or the Church exclusively, but you look for the healthful mind in the healthful body, with a virtuous heart. The being in whom you find this union is the only one worthy to be called educated.

Education, strictly speaking, covers the whole area of life. It is the word which means all that God asks of us, all we owe the world or ourselves. It expresses the sum total of human duty. Nor is it confined to the present period of life. For aught we know education may be continued in heaven. Reason may continue to widen its powers and deepen its sanctities there. The affections may grow in beauty and fervor through innumerable ages. Mind may expand and intensify through eternity. Education is a work of progress. It begins in life, but has no end. Death does not terminate it. We learn the elements of things below; above, we will study their essence. We progress only by efforts. Whatever expands the affection or enlarges the sphere of our sympathies, whatever makes us feel our relation to the universe, to the great and beneficial cause of all, must unquestionably refine our nature and elevate us in the scale of being.

It requires extensive observation to enable us even partially to appreciate the wonderful extent to which all the faculties are developed by mental cultivation. The nervous system grows more vigorous and active, the touch is more sensitive, and there is greater mobility to the hand. Men are often like knives with many blades. They know how to open one and only one; the rest are buried in the handle, and from misuse become useless. Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of one's self. He is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty, how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes. Education is of three parts,—from nature, from man, and from things. The development of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and all that we have acquired in the years of our maturity, shows the need and effect of education. The power of education is shown in that it hath power to give to children resources that will endure as long as life endures, habits that time will ameliorate but not destroy, in that it renders sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible.

Education may be right or wrong, good or bad. Reason may grow strong in error and revel in falsities. The heart may grow in vice, and the passions expand in misrule. It has been wisely ordained that light should have no color, water no taste, and air no odor; so knowledge should be equally pure and without admixture. If it comes to us through the medium of prejudice it will be discolored; through the channels of custom, it will be adulterated; through the Gothic walls of the college or of the cloister, it will smell of the lamp. It is not what a man eats, but what he digests that makes him strong; not what he gains, but what he saves that makes him rich; so it is not what he reads or hears, but what he remembers and applies that makes him learned. He who knows men and how to deal with them, whose mind by any means whatever has received that discipline which gives to its action power and facility, has been educated.

We can not be too careful to have our education proceed in the right direction. It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as to acquire his knowledge. Error is more hopeless than ignorance, for error is always the more busy. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we can write, but error is a scribbled one, from which we must first erase. Ignorance is content to stand still without advancing towards wisdom, but error, more presumptuous, proceeds in the contrary direction. Ignorance has no light to guide her, but error follows a false one. The consequences are that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has a long distance to go before she is in as good condition for the acquiring of truth as ignorance.

A right conception of the value and power of wisdom is a great incentive in stimulating us to proceed in the work of educating ourselves. It is knowledge that has converted the world from a desert abode of savage men to the beautiful homes of civilization. Human knowledge is permitted to approximate, in some degree and on certain occasions, with that of the Deity—its pure and primary source. And this assimilation is never more conspicuous than when from evil it gathers its opposite good. What, at first sight, appears to be so insurmountable an obstacle to the intercourse of nations as the ocean? But knowledge has converted it into the best and most expeditious means by which they may supply their mutual wants and carry on their intimate communications. What so violent as steam, or so destructive as fire? What so uncertain as the winds, or so uncontrollable as the wave? Yet wisdom has rendered these unmanageable things instrumental and subsidiary to the necessities, the comforts, and even the elegancies of life. What so hard, so cold, so insensible as marble? Yet the sculptors can warm it into life and bid it breathe an eternity of love. What so variable as color, so swift as light, or so empty as shade? Yet the painter's pencil can give these fleeting fancies both a body and a soul; can confer upon them an imperishable vigor, a beauty which increases with age, and which will continue to captivate generations. In short, wisdom can draw expedients from obstacles, invention from difficulties, remedies from poisons. In her hands all things become beautiful by adaptation, subservient by their use, and salutary by their application.

Since, then, intellectual attainments are so precious and wisdom so grand in its achievements, he who neglects to improve his mental faculties, or fails to train all his powers of mind and body, is not walking in those paths that, under God's guidance, conduce most surely to happiness and content. This can be done by all, since education is within the reach of all, even the most humble. The youth who believes it is impossible for him to get an education is deficient in courage and energy. Too many have imbibed the idea that to obtain a sufficient education to enable a man to appear advantageously upon the theater of public life his boyhood and youth must be spent within the walls of some classical seminary of learning, that he may commence his career under the banner of a collegiate diploma, and with it win the first round in the ladder of fame. That a refined, classical education is desirable all will admit; that it is indispensably necessary does not follow. He who has been incarcerated from his childhood to majority within the limited circumference of his school and boarding room, though he may have mastered all the classics, is destitute of that knowledge of men and things indispensably necessary to enable him to act with vigor and dispatch either in public or private life.

Classical lore and polite literature are very different from that vast amount of practical intelligence, fit for every-day use, that one _must have_ to render his intercourse with society pleasing to himself or agreeable to others. Let boys and girls be taught first what is necessary to prepare them for the common duties of life; then all that can be gained from fields of classic lore or works of polite erudition is of the utmost value. In this enlightened age ignorance is a voluntary misfortune, for all who will may drink deeply at the fountain of knowledge. By the proper improvement of time the mechanic's apprentice may lay in a store of information that will enable him to take a stand by the side of those persons who have grown up in the full blaze of a collegiate education.

Learn thoroughly what you learn, be it ever so little, and you may speak of it with confidence. A few well-defined facts and ideas are worth a whole library of uncertain knowledge. We are frequently placed in position where we can learn with scarcely an effort on our part, and yet we hang back because it takes so long to acquire a mastery of any thing. Let the end alone! Begin at the beginning, and though, after all, it prove but a mere smattering, you are informed on one point more, and your life will be happier for making the effort. By gaining an education you shall have your reward in the rich stores of knowledge you have thus collected, and which shall ever be at your command, more valuable than material treasures. While fleets may sink, storehouses consume, and riches fade, the intellectual stores you have thus gathered will be permanent and enduring, as unfailing as the constant flow of Niagara—a bank whose dividends are perpetual, whose wealth is undiminished, however frequent the drafts upon it. How wise, then, to secure, as far as possible, a complete and lasting education.

The mind has a certain vegetative power which can not be wholly idle. If it is not laid out and cultivated into a beautiful garden, it will shoot up in weeds and flowers of a wild growth. From this, then, is seen the necessity of careful mental cultivation—a training of all the faculties in the right direction. This should be the first great object in any system of education, public or private. The value of an education depends far less upon varied and extensive acquirements than upon the cultivation of just powers of thought and the general regulation of the faculties of the understanding. That it is not the amount of knowledge, but the capacity to apply it, which promises success and usefulness in life, is a truth which can not be too often inculcated by instructors and recollected by pupils. If youths are taught _how_ to think, they will soon learn _what_ to think. Exercise is not more necessary to a healthful state of the body than is the employment of the various faculties of the mind to mental efficiency. The practical sciences are as barren of useful products as the speculative where facts only are the objects of knowledge, and the understanding is not habituated to a continual process of examination and reflection.

It is the trained and disciplined intellect which rules the world of literature, science, and art. It is knowledge put in action by trained mental faculties which is powerful. Knowledge merely gathered together, whether in books or in brains, is devoid of power, unless quickened into life by the thoughts and reflections of some practical worker. But when this is supplied knowledge becomes an engine of power. It is this which forms the philosopher's stone, the true alchemy, that converts every thing it touches into gold. It is the scepter that gives us our dominion over nature; the key that unlocks the storehouse of creation, and opens to us the treasures of the universe. It is this which forms the difference between savage and civilized nations, and marks the distinction between men as they appear in society. It is this which has raised men from the humblest walks of life to positions of influence and power.

The lack of mental training and discipline explains, in a large measure, why we so often meet with men who are the possessors of vast stores of erudition, and yet make a failure of every thing they try. We shall at all times chance upon men of profound and recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from a lack of practical application on their owners' part, are as utterly useless to them as though they had them not. A person of this class may be compared to a fine chronometer which has no hands to its dial; both are constantly right without correcting any that are wrong, and may be carried around the world without assisting one individual either in making a discovery or taking an observation. Every faculty of the mind is worthy of cultivation; indeed, all must be cultivated, if we would round and perfect our mental powers as to secure therefrom the greatest good. Memory must be ready with her stores of useful knowledge, gathered from fields far and near. She must be trained to classify and arrange them, so as to hold them in her grasp. Observation must be quick to perceive the apparently trivial events which are constantly occurring, and diligent to ascertain the cause. The judgment must pronounce its decision without undue delay; the will move to execution in accordance with the fiat of an enlightened understanding.