The Intellectual Life

Pleasure of planning a studio--Opinions of an outsider--Saint Bernard--Father Ravignan--Goethe's study and bed-room--Gustave Doré's studio--Leslie's painting-room--Turner's opin...

A contrast--A poor student--His sad fate--Class-sentiment--Tycho Brahe--Robert Burns--Shelley's opinion of Byron--Charles Dickens--Shopkeepers in English literature--Pride of ar...

The liberal and illiberal spirit of aristocracy--The desire to draw a line--Substitution of external limitations for realities--The high life of nature--Value of gentlemen in a...

Danger of carelessness--Inconveniences of poverty unfavorable to the Intellectual Life--Necessity advances men in industrial occupations, but disturbs and interrupts the higher...

Mistaken estimates about time and occasion--The Unknown Element--Procrastination often time's best preserver--Napoleon's advice to do nothing at all--Use of deliberation and of...

Habits of Kant, the philosopher--Objection to an over-minute regularity of habit--Value of independence of character--Case of an English author--Case of an English resident in P...

Cases known to the Author--Opinion of an English linguist--Family conditions--An Englishman who lived forty years in France--Influence of children--An Italian in France--Displac...

The love of intellectual pleasure--The seeking for a stimulus--Intoxication of poetry and oratory--Other mental intoxications--The Bishop of Exeter on drudgery--The labor of com...

_Væ solis_--Society and solitude alike necessary--The use of each--In solitude we know ourselves--Montaigne as a book-buyer--Compensations of solitude--Description of one who lo...

Julian Fane--His late hours--Regularity produced by habit--The time of the principal effort--That the chief work should be done in the best hours--Physicians prefer early to lat...

The Church--Felicities and advantages of the clerical profession--Its elevated ideal--That it is favorable to noble studies--French priests and English Clergymen--The profession...

Early indocility of great workers--External discipline only a substitute for inward discipline--Necessity for inward discipline--Origin of the idea of discipline--Authors peculi...

Advantages in economy of time--Much of what we read in newspapers is useless to our culture--The too great importance which they attach to novelty--Distortion by party spirit--A...

The danger of deviation--Danger from increased expenditure--Nowhere so great as in England--Complete absorption in business--Case of a tradesman--Case of a solicitor--The pursui...

Dissatisfaction of the intellectual when they have not an extensive influence--A consideration suggested to the author by Mr. Matthew Arnold--Each individual mind a portion of t...

An idealized portrait--The scholars of the sixteenth century--Isolated students--French students of English when isolated from Englishmen--How one of them read Tennyson--Importa...

Men cannot restrict themselves in learning--Description of a Latin scholar of two generations since--What is attempted by a cultivated contemporary--Advantages of a more restric...

A domestic picture--Thoughts suggested by it--Importance of the senses in intellectual pursuits--Importance of hearing to Madame de Stael--Importance of seeing to Mr. Buskin--Mr...

Two classes in their lower grades inevitably hostile--The spiritual and temporal powers--The functions of both not easily exercised by the same person--Humboldt, Faraday, Living...

Necessity for time-thrift in all cases--Serious men not much in danger from mere frivolity--Greater danger of losing time in our serious pursuits themselves--Time thrown away wh...

Transition from the ages of tradition to that of experiment--Attraction of the future--Joubert--Saint-Marc Girardin--Solved and unsolved problems--The introduction of a new elem...

The first freshness--Why should it not be preserved?--The dulness of the intellectual--Fictions and false promises--Ennui in work itself--Dürer's engraving of Melancholy--Scott...

An unsettled class of English people--Effect of localities on the mind--Reaction against surroundings--Landscape-painting a consequence of it--Crushing effect of too much natura...

Byron's vexation at the idea of poetry being considered a profession--Buffon could not bear to be called a naturalist--Cuvier would not be called a Hellenist--Faraday's life not...

Secret enjoyment of rebellion against custom, and of the disabilities resulting from it--Penalties imposed by Society and by Nature out of proportion to the offence--Instances--...

The author of "Vathek"--The double temptation of wealth--Rich men tempted to follow occupations in which their wealth is useful--Pressure of social duties on the rich--The Duche...

Mr. Galton's advice to young travellers--That we ought to interest ourselves in the _progress_ of a journey--The same rule applicable in intellectual things--Women in the cabin...

The foundations of the intellectual marriage--Marriage not a snare or pitfall for the intellectual--Men of culture, who marry badly, often have themselves to blame--For every gr...

Some exceptional men may live alternately in different worlds--Instances--Differences between the fashionable and the intellectual spirit--Men sometimes made unfashionable by sp...

Absurd old prejudices against commerce--Stigma attached to the great majority of occupations--Traditions of feudalism--Distinctions between one trade and another--A real instanc...

TO A YOUNG MAN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, WELL EDUCATED, WHO COMPLAINED THAT IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO LIVE AGREEABLY WITH HIS MOTHER, A PERSON OF SOMEWHAT AUTHORITATIVE DISPOSITION...

Difficulty of detaching intellectual from religious questions--The sacerdotal system--Necessary to ascertain what religion is--Intellectual religion really nothing but philosoph...

The most essential virtue is disinterestedness--The other virtues possessed by the opponents of intellectual liberty--The Ultramontane party--Difficulty of thinking disintereste...

Poverty really a great obstacle--Difference between a thousand rich men and a thousand poor men taken from persons of average natural gifts--The Houses of Parliament--The Englis...

The intellectual ideal of marriage--The danger of dulness--To be counteracted only by the renewal of both minds--Example of Lady Baker--Separation of the sexes by an old prejudi...

Victor Jacquemont on the intellectual labors of the Germans--Business may be set off as the equivalent to one of their pursuits--Necessity for regularity in the economy of time-...

Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse--Geoffroy St. Hilaire in the besieged city of Alexandria--Goethe at the bombardment of Verdun--Lullo, the Oriental missionary--Giordano Bruno...

The first thing to be noted is that, with exceptions so rare as to be practically of no importance to an argument, women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labor. Even...

How ignorant we all are about marriage--People wrong in their estimates of the marriages of others--Effects of marriage on the intellectual life--Two courses open--A wife who wo...

Loss of time to acquire an ancient language too imperfectly for it to be useful--Dr. Arnold--Mature life leaves little time for culture--Modern indifference to ancient thinking-...

Lesson learned from a cook--The ingredients of knowledge--Importance of proportion in the ingredients--Case of an English author--Two landscape painters--The unity and charm of...

Miss Mitford on the selfishness of authors--A suggestion of Emerson's--A laconic rule of his--Traces of jealousy--And of a more subtle feeling--A contradiction--Necessary to res...

That Society which is frivolous in the mass contains individuals who are not frivolous--A piece of the author's early experience--Those who keep out of Society miss opportunitie...

The situation of mother and son a very common one--Painful only when the parties are in earnest--The knowledge of the difference evidence of a deeper unity--Value of honesty--Ev...

That the Author does not write in the spirit of advocacy--Two different kinds of immorality--Byron and Shelley--A peculiar temptation for the intellectual--A distinguished forei...

The Author's dread of protection in intellectual pursuits--Example from the Fine Arts--Prize poems--Governmental encouragement of learning--The bad effects of it--Pet pursuits--...

Mental labor rarely compatible with the best physical conditions--Wordsworth's manner of composition--Mr. W. F. A. Delane--George Sand working under pressure--Sir Walter Scott's...

Difficulty of conciliating the animal and the intellectual lives--Bodily activity sometimes preserved by an effort of the will--Necessity of faith in exercise--Incompatibility b...

Conventional idea about the completeness of education--The estimate of a schoolmaster--No one can be fully educated--Even Leonardo da Vinci fell short of the complete expression...

Muscular and intellectual tendencies in two boys--Difficulty of finding time to satisfy both--Plato on the influences of music and gymnastics--Somnolence and digestion--Neglect...

People who like to be hurried--Sluggish temperaments gain vivacity under pressure--Routine work may be done at increased speed--The higher intellectual work cannot be done hurri...

The author rather inclined to congratulation than to condolence--Value of a selecting memory--Studies of the young Goethe--His great faculty of assimilation--A good literary mem...

Joubert--"Not yet time," or else "The time is past"--His weakness for production--Three classes of minds--A more perfect intellectual life attainable by the silent student than...

Some intellectual products possible only in excitement--Byron's authority on the subject--Can inventive minds work regularly?--Sir Walter Scott's opinion--Napoleon on the winnin...

"What grounds have I for concluding that the professed tastes and opinions of Society are in any degree insincere? May not society be quite sincere in the preferences which it p...

"Rambling over the wild moors, with thoughts oftentimes as wild and dreary as those moors, the young Carlyle, who had been cheered through his struggling sadness, and strengthen...

That intellectual friendships are in their nature temporary, when there is no basis of feeling to support them--Their freshness soon disappears--Danger of satiety--Temporary acq...

Compensations resulting from the necessity for time--Opportunity only exists for us so far as we have time to make use of it--This _or_ that, not this _and_ that--Danger of appa...

Certain dangers to the intellectual life--Difficult to resist the influences of society--Gilding--Fashionable education--Affectations of knowledge--Not easy to ascertain what pe...

The world only recognizes performance--Uselessness of botch-work--Vastness of the interval between botch-work and handicraft--Delusions of the well-to-do--Quotation from Charles...

Men are not very good judges of feminine conversation--The interest of it would be increased if women could be more freely initiated into great subjects--Small subjects interest...

Mental labor believed to be innocuous to healthy persons--Difficulty of testing this--Case of the poet Wordsworth--Case of an eminent living author--Case of a literary clergyman...

Necessity for treating affirmations as if they were doubtful--The Papal Infallibility--The Infallibility of the Sacred Scriptures--Opposition of method between Intellect and Fai...

Studies, whatever they may be, always considered, by some a waste of time--The classical languages--The higher mathematics--The accomplishments--Indirect uses of different studi...

Anecdote of a Swiss gentleman--Religious belief protects traditions, but does not weaken the critical faculty itself--Illustration from the art of etching--Sydney Smith--Dr. Arn...

The regret for lost time often a needless one--Tillier's doctrine about _flânerie_--How much is gained in idle hours--Sainte-Beuve's conviction that whatever he did he studied t...

Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in ancient ones--Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions--Prevalent illusion about the facility of modern languages--Ea...

Considering death as a certainty--The wisdom learned from suffering--Employment of happier intervals--The teaching of the diseased not to be rejected--Their double experience--I...

Greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women--They do not hear truth--Men disguise their thoughts for women--Cream and curaçoa--Probable permanence of the desire to ple...

Need of a near intellectual friendship in solitude--Persons who live independently of custom run a peculiar risk in marriage--Women by nature more subservient to custom than men...

Inaccuracy of the common distinction between amateur pursuits and more serious studies--All of us are amateurs in many things--Prince Albert--The Emperor Napoleon III.--Contrast...

I. To a young gentleman of intellectual tastes, who, without having as yet any particular lady in view, had expressed, in a general way, his determination to get married 285

[13] "This work has at any rate the character of having come into the world like every really living creation. It has been produced by the heat of a gentle incubation."