Produced by Marius Masi, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's note:
The following typographical errors have been corrected:
Page 86: "We bring ourselves, by its help, to face petty details that
are wearisome, and heavy tasks that are almost appalling."
'appalling' amended from 'appaling'.
Page 153: "That which is truly, and deeply, and seriously an injury
to our intellectual life, is the foolishness of the too common
vanity." 'too' amended from 'two'.
Page 161: "the child had the defects of children, but of children
born in the different countries where he lived." 'lived' amended from
'live'.
Page 294: "The girl was uneducated: it seems hopeless to try to
educate the woman". 'educate' amended from 'educated'.
Page 364: "I am sure that my modern artillery captain,
notwithstanding his bad manners." 'notwithstanding' amended from
'notwithstand'.
Page 377: "I know a distinguished Englishman who is quite remarkable
for the talent with which he arranges his intellectual friendships,
so as never to be dependent on any one." 'intellectual' amended from
'inintellectual'.
Page 383: "The truth is, that to succeed well in fashionable society
the higher intellectual attainments are not so useful as
distinguished skill in those amusements which are the real business
of the fashionable world." 'business of' amended from 'busiof'.
Page 387: "To me it appears the perfect type of that preoccupation
about appearances which blinds the genteel vulgar to the true
nobility of life." 'preoccupation' amended from 'pre-occupation'.
Page 417: "She moves; movement is the law of her life; yet she is as
tranquil in her little cabin as any goodwife on shore." 'she' amended
from 'see'.
Page 489: "I certainly think that if a good cure has an exceptional
genius for sanctity." 'sanctity' amended from 'sancitity'.
Page 558 (index): "Dullness of general conversation." 'Dullness'
amended from 'Dulness'.
THE
INTELLECTUAL LIFE,
BY
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON,
AUTHOR OF "A PAINTER'S CAMP," "THOUGHTS ABOUT ART," "THE UNKNOWN
RIVER," ETC.
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
TO EUGENIE H.
We have shared together many hours of study, and you have been willing,
at the cost of much patient labor, to cheer the difficult paths of
intellectual toil by the unfailing sweetness of your beloved
companionship. It seems to me that all those things which we have
learned together are doubly my own; whilst those other studies which I
have pursued in solitude have never yielded me more than a maimed and
imperfect satisfaction. The dream of my life would be to associate you
with all I do if that were possible; but since the ideal can never be
wholly realized, let me at least rejoice that we have been so little
separated, and that the subtle influence of your finer taste and more
delicate perception is ever, like some penetrating perfume, in the whole
atmosphere around me.
PREFACE.
I propose, in the following pages, to consider the possibilities of a
satisfactory intellectual life under various conditions of ordinary
human existence. It will form a part of my plan to take into account
favorable and unfavorable influences of many kinds; and my chief
purpose, so far as any effect upon others may be hoped for, will be to
guard some who may read the book alike against the loss of time caused
by unnecessary discouragement, and the waste of effort which is the
consequence of misdirected energies.
I have adopted the form of letters addressed to persons of very
different position in order that every reader may have a chance of
finding what concerns him. The letters, it is unnecessary to observe,
are in one sense as fictitious as those we find in novels, for they have
never been sent to anybody by the post, yet the persons to whom they are
addressed are not imaginary. I made it a rule, from the beginning, to
think of a real person when writing, from an apprehension that by
dwelling in a world too exclusively ideal I might lose sight of many
impediments which beset all actual lives, even the most exceptional and
fortunate.
The essence of the book may be expressed in a few sentences, the rest
being little more than evidence or illustration. First, it appears that
all who are born with considerable intellectual faculties are urged
towards the intellectual life by irresistible instincts, as water-fowl
are urged to an aquatic life; but the lower animals have this advantage
over man, that as their purposes are simpler, so they attain them more
completely than he does. The life of a wild duck is in perfect
accordance with its instincts, but the life of an intellectual man is
never on all points perfectly in accordance with _his_ instincts. Many
of the best intellectual lives known to us have been hampered by
vexatious impediments of the most various and complicated kinds; and
when we come to have accurate and intimate knowledge of the lives led by
our intellectual contemporaries, we are always quite sure to find that
each of them has some great thwarting difficulty to contend against. Nor
is it too much to say that if a man were so placed and endowed in every
way that all his work should be made as easy as the ignorant imagine it
to be, that man would find in that very facility itself a condition most
unfavorable to his intellectual growth. So that, however circumstances
may help us or hinder us, the intellectual life is always a contest or a
discipline, and the art or skill of living intellectually does not so
much consist in surrounding ourselves with what is reputed to be
advantageous as in compelling every circumstance and condition of our
lives to yield us some tribute of intellectual benefit and force. The
needs of the intellect are as various as intellects themselves are
various: and if a man has got high mental culture during his passage
through life it is of little consequence where he acquired it, or how.
The school of the intellectual man is the place where he happens to be,
and his teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones, and
earth round about him. The feeling almost always predominant in the
minds of intellectual men as they grow older, is not so much one of
regret that their opportunities were not more abundant, as of regret
that they so often missed opportunities which they might have turned to
better account.
I have written for all classes, in the conviction that the intellectual
life is really within the reach of every one who earnestly desires it.
The highest culture can never be within the reach of those who cannot
give the years of labor which it costs; and if we cultivate ourselves to
shine in the eyes of others, to become famous in literature or science,
then of course we must give many more hours of labor than can be spared
from a life of practical industry. But I am fully convinced of this,
convinced by the observation of living instances in all classes, that
any man or woman of large natural capacity may reach the tone of
thinking which may justly be called intellectual, even though that
thinking may not be expressed in the most perfect language. The essence
of intellectual living does not reside in extent of science or in
perfection of expression, but in a constant preference for higher
thoughts over lower thoughts, and this preference may be the habit of a
mind which has not any very considerable amount of information. This may
be very easily demonstrated by a reference to men who lived
intellectually in ages when science had scarcely begun to exist, and
when there was but little literature that could be of use as an aid to
culture. The humblest subscriber to a mechanics' institute has easier
access to sound learning than had either Solomon or Aristotle, yet both
Solomon and Aristotle lived the intellectual life. Whoever reads English
is richer in the aids to culture than Plato was, yet Plato _thought_
intellectually. It is not erudition that makes the intellectual man, but
a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just
as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct. Intellectual
living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or condition of the
mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and purest truth. It is
the continual exercise of a firmly noble choice between the larger truth
and the lesser, between that which is perfectly just and that which
falls a little short of justice. The ideal life would be to choose thus
firmly and delicately always, yet if we often blunder and fail for want
of perfect wisdom and clear light, have we not the inward assurance that
our aspiration has not been all in vain, that it has brought us a
little nearer to the Supreme Intellect whose effulgence draws us whilst
it dazzles? Here is the true secret of that fascination which belongs to
intellectual pursuits, that they reveal to us a little more, and yet a
little more, of the eternal order of the Universe, establishing us so
firmly in what is known, that we acquire an unshakable confidence in the
laws which govern what is not, and never can be, known.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS.
LETTER PAGE
I. To a young man of letters who worked excessively 17
II. To the same 22
III. To a student in uncertain health 27
IV. To a muscular Christian 42
V. To a student who neglected bodily exercise 47
VI. To an author in mortal disease 53
VII. To a young man of brilliant ability, who had just taken his
degree 57