The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
General
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
Literature -- Collections
Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are implies a balance
and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful
effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased
impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame
curiosity. Montesquieu says: "The first motive which ought to impel us
to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and
to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent." This is the true
ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion, however
manifested, and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion;
and it is a worthy ground, even tho we let the term curiosity stand to
describe it.
But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the
scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are,
natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of
it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the
impulses toward action, help, and beneficence; the desire for removing
human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery,
the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we
found it--motives eminently such as are called social--come in as part
of the grounds of culture, and the main and preeminent part. Culture
is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but
as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of
perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the
scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and
social passion for doing good. As, in the first view of it, we took
for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words: "To render an intelligent
being yet more intelligent!" so, in the second view of it, there is no
better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: "To
make reason and the will of God prevail!"....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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