A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character — John Shaqi
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and CharacterHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Character; Self-culture
Another test of a man's value is an intellectual one. The largest
wastes of any nation are through ignorance. Failure is want of
knowledge; success is knowing how. Wealth is not in things of iron,
wood and stone. Wealth is in the brain that organizes the metal. Pig
iron is worth $20 a ton; made into horse shoes, $90; into knife
blades, $200; into watch springs, $1,000. That is, raw iron $20, brain
power, $980. Millet bought a yard of canvas for 1 franc, paid 2 more
francs for a hair brush and some colors; upon this canvas he spread
his genius, giving us "The Angelus." The original investment in raw
material was 60 cents; his intelligence gave that raw material a value
of $105,000. One of the pictures at the World's Fair represented a
savage standing on the bank of a stream, anxious but ignorant as to
how he could cross the flood. Knowledge toward the metal at his feet
gave the savage an axe; knowledge toward the tree gave him a canoe;
knowledge toward the union of canoes gave him a boat; knowledge toward
the wind added sails; knowledge toward fire and water gave him the
ocean steamer. Now, if from the captain standing on the prow of that
floating palace, the City of New York, we could take away man's
knowledge as we remove peel after peel from an onion, we would have
from the iron steamer, first, a sailboat, then a canoe, then axe and
tree, and at last a savage, naked and helpless to cross a little
stream. In the final analysis it is ignorance that wastes; it is
knowledge that saves; it is wisdom that gives precedence. If sleep is
the brother of death, ignorance is full brother to both sleep and
death. An untaught faculty is at once quiescent and dead. An ignorant
man has been defined as one "whom God has packed up and men have not
unfolded. The best forces in such a one are perpetually paralyzed.
Eyes he has, but he cannot see the length of his hand; ears he has,
and all the finest sounds in creation escape him; a tongue he has, and
it is forever blundering." A mechanic who has a chest of forty tools
and can use only the hammer, saw, and gimlet, has little chance with
his fellows and soon falls far behind. An educated mind is one fully
awakened to all the sights and scenes and forces in the world through
which he moves. This does not mean that a $2,000 man can be made out
of a two-cent boy by sending him to college. Education is
mind-husbandry; it changes the size but not the sort. But if no amount
of drill will make a Shetland pony show a two-minute gait, neither
will the thoroughbred show this speed save through long and assiduous
and patient education. The primary fountains of our Nation's wealth
are not in fields and forests and mines, but in the free schools,
churches, and printing presses. Ignorance breeds misery, vice, and
crime. Mephistopheles was a cultured devil, but he is the exception.
History knows no illiterate seer or sage or saint. No Dante or
Shakespeare ever had to make "his X mark."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account