"Ah, my son!" said the Parson, "if I wished to prove the value of
Religion, would you think I served it much, if I took as my motto,
'Religion is power?' Would not that be a base and sordid view of its
advantages? And would you not say he who regards religion as a power,
intends to abuse it as a priestcraft?"
"Well put!" said Riccabocca.
"Wait a moment--let me think. Ah--I see, sir!" said Leonard.
PARSON.--"If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales of the
market; if its objects be peaceful, do not seek to arm it with the
weapons of strife; if it is to be the cement of society, do not vaunt it
as the triumph of class against class."
LEONARD (ingenuously.)--"You correct me nobly, sir. Knowledge is power,
but not in the sense in which I have interpreted the saying."
PARSON.--"Knowledge is _one_ of the powers in the moral world, but one
that, in its immediate result, is not always of the most worldly
advantage to the possessor. It is one of the slowest, because one of the
most durable, of agencies. It may take a thousand years for a thought to
come into power; and the thinker who originated it might have died in
rags or in chains."
RICCABOCCA.--"Our Italian proverb saith that 'the teacher is like the
candle, which lights others in consuming itself.'"
PARSON.--"Therefore he who has the true ambition of knowledge should
entertain it for the power of his idea, not for the power it may bestow
on himself; it should be lodged in the conscience, and, like the
conscience, look for no certain reward on this side the grave. And since
knowledge is compatible with good and with evil, would it not be better
to say, 'Knowledge is a trust?'"
"You are right, sir," said Leonard, cheerfully, "pray proceed."
PARSON.--"You ask me why we encourage you to KNOW. First, because (as
you say yourself in your Essay) knowledge, irrespective of gain, is in
itself a delight, and ought to be something far more. Like liberty, like
religion, it may be abused; but I have no more right to say that the
poor shall be ignorant, than I have to say that the rich only shall be
free, and that the clergy alone shall learn the truths of redemption.
You truly observe in your treatise that knowledge opens to us other
excitements than those of the senses, and another life than that of the
moment. The difference between us is this, that you forget that the same
refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains--the
horny hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine
skin of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of
the desires, opens to them also new temptations. Vanity, the desire of
applause, pride, the sense of superiority--gnawing discontent where that
superiority is not recognized--morbid susceptibility, which comes with
all new feelings--the underrating of simple pleasures apart from the
intellectual--the chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for
things unattainable below--all these are surely among the first
temptations that beset the entrance into knowledge."
Leonard shaded his face with his hand.
"Hence," continued the Parson, benignantly--"hence, so far from
considering that we do all that is needful to accomplish ourselves as
men, when we cultivate only the intellect, we should remember that we
thereby continually increase the range of our desires, and, therefore,
of our temptations; and we should endeavor, simultaneously, to cultivate
both those affections of the heart, which prove the ignorant to be God's
children no less than the wise, and those moral qualities which have
made men great and good when reading and writing were scarcely known--to
wit, patience and fortitude under poverty and distress; humility and
beneficence amidst grandeur and wealth: and, in counteraction to that
egotism, which all superiority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire,
Justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity,
which is their loving mother. Thus accompanied, knowledge, indeed,
becomes the magnificent crown of humanity--not the imperious despot, but
the checked and tempered sovereign of the soul."
The Parson paused, and Leonard, coming near him, timidly took his hand,
with a child's affectionate and grateful impulse.
RICCABOCCA.--"And if, Leonard, you are not satisfied with our Parson's
excellent definitions, you have only to read what Lord Bacon himself has
said upon the true ends of knowledge, to comprehend at once how angry
the poor great man, whom Mr. Dale treats so harshly, would have been
with those who have stinted his elaborate distinctions and provident
cautions, into that, coxcombical little aphorism, and then misconstrued
all he designed to prove in favor of the commandant, and authority of
learning. For," added the sage, looking up as a man does when he is
tasking his memory, "I think it is thus that, after saying the greatest
error of all is the mistaking or misplacing the end of knowledge, and
denouncing the various objects for which it is vulgarly sought;--I think
it is thus that he proceeds.... 'Knowledge is not a shop for profit or
sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief
of men's estate.'"[9]
PARSON (remorsefully.)--"Are those Lord Bacon's words? I am very sorry I
spoke so uncharitably of his life. I must examine it again. I may find
excuses for it now, that I could not when I first formed my judgment. I
was then a raw lad at Oxford. But I see, Leonard, there is still
something on your mind."
LEONARD.--"It is true, sir. I would but ask whether it is not by
knowledge that we arrive at the qualities and virtues you so well
describe, but which you seem to consider as coming to us through
channels apart from knowledge?"
PARSON.--"If you mean by the word knowledge something very different
from what you express in your essay--and which those contending for
mental instruction, irrespective of religion and ethics, appear also to
convey by the word--you are right;--but, remember, we have already
agreed that by the word knowledge we mean culture purely intellectual."
LEONARD.--"That is true--we so understood it."
PARSON.--"Thus, when this great Lord Bacon erred, you may say that he
erred from want of knowledge--the knowledge that moralists and preachers
would convey. But Lord Bacon had read all that moralists and preachers
could say on such matters; and he certainly did not err from want of
intellectual cultivation. Let me here, my child, invite you to observe,
that He who knew most of our human hearts and our immortal destinies,
did not _insist_ on this intellectual culture as essential to the
virtues that form our well-being here, and conduce to our salvation
hereafter. Had it been essential, the All-wise One would not have
selected humble fishermen for the teachers of his doctrine, instead of
culling his disciples from Roman Portico, or Athenian Academy. And this,
which distinguishes so remarkably the Gospel from the ethics of heathen
philosophy, wherein knowledge is declared to be necessary to virtue, is
a proof how slight was the heathen sage's insight into the nature of
mankind, when compared with the Saviour's; for hard, indeed, would it be
to men, whether high or low, rich or poor, if science and learning, or
contemplative philosophy, were the sole avenues to peace and redemption;
since, in this state of ordeal, requiring active duties, very few, in
any age, whether they be high or low, rich or poor, ever are or can be
devoted to pursuits merely mental. Christ does not represent heaven as a
college for the learned. Therefore the rules of the Celestial Legislator
are rendered clear to the simplest understanding as to the deepest."
RICCABOCCA.--"And that which Plato and Zeno, Pythagoras and Socrates,
could not do, was done by men whose ignorance would have been a by-word
in the schools of the Greek. The gods of the vulgar were dethroned; the
face of the world was changed! This thought may make us allow, indeed,
that there are agencies more powerful than mere knowledge, and ask,
after all, what is the mission which knowledge should achieve?"
PARSON.--"The Sacred Book tells us even that; for, after establishing
the truth that, for the multitude, knowledge is not essential to
happiness and good, it accords still to knowledge its sublime part in
the revelation prepared and announced. When an instrument of more than
ordinary intelligence was required for a purpose divine--when the
Gospel, recorded by the simple, was to be explained by the acute,
enforced by the energetic, carried home to the doubts of the
Gentile--the Supreme Will joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the
learning and genius of St. Paul--not holier than the others--calling
himself the least, yet laboring more abundantly than them all--making
himself all things unto all men, so that some might be saved. The
ignorant may be saved no less surely than the wise; but here comes the
wise man who helps to save! And how the fullness and animation of this
grand Presence, of this indomitable Energy, seem to vivify the toil, and
to speed the work! 'In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils
of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen,
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the
sea, in perils among false brethren.' Behold, my son! does not Heaven
here seem to reveal the true type of Knowledge--a sleepless activity, a
pervading agency, a dauntless heroism, an all-supporting faith?--a
power--a power, indeed--a power apart from the aggrandizement of self--a
power that brings to him who owns and transmits it but 'weariness and
painfulness; in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings
often, in cold and nakedness'--but a power distinct from the mere
circumstance of the man, rushing from him as rays from a sun;--borne
through the air, and clothing it with light--piercing under earth, and
calling forth the harvest! Worship not knowledge--worship not the sun, O
my child! Let the sun but proclaim the Creator; let the knowledge but
illumine the worship!"
The good man, overcome by his own earnestness, paused; his head drooped
on the young student's breast, and all three were long silent.