Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
General
Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
American essays; English essays
than that they inculcate so little an impartial, earnest, reverential
love of truth, a readiness to toil, to live and die for it. Let the
laboring man be imbued in a measure with this spirit; let him learn to
regard himself as endowed with the power of thought, for the very end of
acquiring truth; let him learn to regard truth as more precious than his
daily bread; and the spring of true and perpetual elevation is touched
within him. He has begun to be a man; he becomes one of the elect of his
race. Nor do I despair of this elevation of the laborer. Unhappily
little, almost nothing, has been done as yet to inspire either rich or
poor with the love of truth for its own sake, or for the life, and
inspiration, and dignity it gives to the soul. The prosperous have as
little of this principle as the laboring mass. I think, indeed, that the
spirit of luxurious, fashionable life, is more hostile to it than the
hardships of the poor. Under a wise culture, this principle may be
awakened in all classes, and wherever awakened, it will form
philosophers, successful and noble thinkers. These remarks seem to me
particularly important, as showing how intimate a union subsists between
the moral and intellectual nature, and how both must work together from
the beginning. All human culture rests on a moral foundation, on an
impartial, disinterested spirit, on a willingness to make sacrifices to
the truth. Without this moral power, mere force of thought avails
nothing towards our elevation.
I am aware that I shall be told that the work of thought which I have
insisted on is difficult,--that to collect and concentrate the mind for
the truth is harder than to toil with the hands. Be it so. But are we
weak enough to hope to rise without toil? Does any man, laborer or not,
expect to invigorate body or mind without strenuous effort? Does not the
child grow and get strength by throwing a degree of hardship and
vehemence and conflict into his very sports? Does not life without
difficulty become insipid and joyless? Cannot a strong interest turn
difficulty into pleasure? Let the love of truth, of which I have spoken,
be awakened, and obstacles in the way to it will whet, not discourage,
the mind, and inspire a new delight into its acquisition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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