Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness: A Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art and Education in Canada — John Shaqi
Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness: A Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art and Education in CanadaBourinot, John George
History
Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness: A Short Historical and Critical Review of Literature, Art and Education in Canada
Bourinot, John George
Canada -- Intellectual life; Canadian literature -- History and criticism; French-Canadian literature -- History and criticism
two national elements, we can see in the Dominion generally less of
that provincialism which means a narrowness of mental vision on the
part of our literary aspirants, and prevents Canadian authors reaching
a larger audience in other countries, then we shall rise superior to
those weaknesses of our intellectual character which now impede our
mental development, and shall be able to give larger scope to what
original and imaginative genius may exist among our people. So with
the expansion of our mental horizon, with the growth of experience
and knowledge, with the creation of a wider sympathy for native
talent, with the disappearance of that tendency to self-depreciation
which is so essentially colonial, and with the encouragement of more
self-reliance and confidence in our own intellectual resources, we may
look forward with some degree of hopefulness to conditions of higher
development, and to the influence on our national character of what can
best elevate Canadians and make them even happier and wiser,
"The love of country, soaring far above all party strife;
The love of learning, art and song,--the crowning grace of
life."[65]
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL, ART AND GENERAL NOTES.
LOWELL'S ADDRESSES.
[Footnote 1: Page 1.--See "Democracy, and Other Addresses," by James
Russell Lowell (Boston and New York, 1887) pp. 235-237. The address
at the Harvard Anniversary, from which I quote in the commencement of
the text, should be carefully read and studied by all those who are
interested in education and culture in the Dominion, and do not wish
to see the classics superseded by purely scientific and utilitarian
theories. "Leave," he said, for instance, "in their traditional
pre-eminence those arts that were rightly called liberal; those studies
that kindle the imagination, and through it irradiate the reason:
those studies that manumitted the modern mind; those in which the
brains of the finest temper have found alike their stimulus and their
repose, taught by them that the power of intellect is heightened in
proportion as it is made gracious by measure and symmetry. Give us
science, too, but give, first of all and last of all, the science that
ennobles life and makes it generous.... Many-sidedness of culture makes
your vision clearer and keener in particulars. For, after all, the
noblest definition of Science is that breadth and impartiality of view
which liberates the mind from specialties, and enables it to organize
whatever we learn, so that it becomes real Knowledge by being brought
into true and helpful relation with the rest."]
JAMESTOWN, VA.
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