For the more languages a man can speak,
His talent has but sprung the greater leak:
And, for the industry he has spent upon't,
Must full as much some other way discount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac
Do, like their letters, set men's reason back,
And turn their wits that strive to understand It
(Like those that write the characters) left-handed.
Yet he that is but able to express
No sense at all in several languages
Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own.
--BUTLER.
The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of all others are
mere authors and readers. It is better to be able neither to read nor
write than to be able to do nothing else. A lounger who is ordinarily
seen with a book in his hand is (we may be almost sure) equally without
the power or inclination to attend either to what passes around him or
in his own mind. Such a one may be said to carry his understanding about
with him in his pocket, or to leave it at home on his library shelves.
He is afraid of venturing on any train of reasoning, or of striking out
any observation that is not mechanically suggested to him by parsing
his eyes over certain legible characters; shrinks from the fatigue of
thought, which, for want of practice, becomes insupportable to him; and
sits down contented with an endless, wearisome succession of words and
half-formed images, which fill the void of the mind, and continually
efface one another. Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common
sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of
as 'spectacles' to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out
its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent
dispositions. The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal
generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected
from the minds of others. Nature _puts him out._ The impressions of real
objects, stripped of the disguises of words and voluminous roundabout
descriptions, are blows that stagger him; their variety distracts, their
rapidity exhausts him; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, and
glare, and whirling motion of the world about him (which he has not an
eye to follow in its fantastic changes, nor an understanding to reduce
to fixed principles), to the quiet monotony of the dead languages, and
the less startling and more intelligible combinations of the letters of
the alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly well. 'Leave me to my repose,'
is the motto of the sleeping and the dead. You might as well ask the
paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch, or, without
a miracle, to 'take up his bed and walk,' as expect the learned reader
to throw down his book and think for himself. He clings to it for his
intellectual support; and his dread of being left to himself is like the
horror of a vacuum. He can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as other
men breathe common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas of
his own, and must live on those of other people. The habit of supplying
our ideas from foreign sources 'enfeebles all internal strength of
thought,' as a course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach.
The faculties of the mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by custom
and authority, become listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of
thought or action. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is
thus produced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance; by poring over
lines and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than if
they were the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye closes on
vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble hand! I would rather be a
wood-cutter, or the meanest hind, that all day 'sweats in the eye of
Phoebus, and at night sleeps in Elysium,' than wear out my life so,
'twixt dreaming and awake.' The learned author differs from the learned
student in this, that the one transcribes what the other reads. The
learned are mere literary drudges. If you set them upon original
composition, their heads turn, they don't know where they are. The
indefatigable readers of books are like the everlasting copiers of
pictures, who, when they attempt to do anything of their own, find
they want an eye quick enough, a hand steady enough, and colours bright
enough, to trace the living forms of nature.
Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical
education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having
had a very narrow escape. It is an old remark, that boys who shine at
school do not make the greatest figure when they grow up and come out
into the world. The things, in fact, which a boy is set to learn at
school, and on which his success depends, are things which do not
require the exercise either of the highest or the most useful faculties
of the mind. Memory (and that of the lowest kind) is the chief faculty
called into play in conning over and repeating lessons by rote in
grammar, in languages, in geography, arithmetic, etc., so that he who
has the most of this technical memory, with the least turn for other
things, which have a stronger and more natural claim upon his childish
attention, will make the most forward school-boy. The jargon containing
the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for casting up an
account, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can have no attraction to
the tyro of ten years old, except as they are imposed as a task upon
him by others, or from his feeling the want of sufficient relish of
amusement in other things. A lad with a sickly constitution and no very
active mind, who can just retain what is pointed out to him, and has
neither sagacity to distinguish nor spirit to enjoy for himself, will
generally be at the head of his form. An idler at school, on the other
hand, is one who has high health and spirits, who has the free use of
his limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his
blood and the motion of his heart, who is ready to laugh and cry in a
breath, and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open
air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path,
or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of
his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book,
repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so many hours pinioned
to a writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time and
pleasure in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There is
indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents children from learning the
usual lessons, or ever arriving at these puny academic honours. But what
passes for stupidity is much oftener a want of interest, of a sufficient
motive to fix the attention and force a reluctant application to the dry
and unmeaning pursuits of school-learning. The best capacities are as
much above this drudgery as the dullest are beneath it. Our men of the
greatest genius have not been most distinguished for their acquirements
at school or at the university.
Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever.
Gray and Collins were among the instances of this wayward disposition.
Such persons do not think so highly of the advantages, nor can they
submit their imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strict
scholastic discipline. There is a certain kind and degree of intellect
in which words take root, but into which things have not power to
penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with a certain slenderness of moral
constitution, is the soil that produces the most brilliant specimens of
successful prize-essayists and Greek epigrammatists. It should not be
forgotten that the least respectable character among modern politicians
was the cleverest boy at Eton.
Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to
others, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or other
artificial sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or about
us, which appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the
bosoms and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the knowledge
of that which none but the learned know. He is the most learned man who
knows the most of what is farthest removed from common life and actual
observation, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable to
be brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed down
through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the most full
of uncertainty, difficulties, and contradictions. It is seeing with the
eyes of others, hearing with their ears, and pinning our faith on their
understandings. The learned man prides himself in the knowledge of names
and dates, not of men or things. He thinks and cares nothing about his
next-door neighbours, but he is deeply read in the tribes and castes of
the Hindoos and Calmue Tartars. He can hardly find his way into the
next street, though he is acquainted with the exact dimensions
of Constantinople and Pekin. He does not know whether his oldest
acquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pompous
lecture on all the principal characters in history. He cannot tell
whether an object is black or white, round or square, and yet he is a
professed master of the laws of optics and the rules of perspective. He
knows as much of what he talks about as a blind man does of colours. He
cannot give a satisfactory answer to the plainest question, nor is he
ever in the right in any one of his opinions upon any one matter of
fact that really comes before him, and yet he gives himself out for an
infallible judge on all these points, of which it is impossible that he
or any other person living should know anything but by conjecture. He is
expert in all the dead and in most of the living languages; but he can
neither speak his own fluently, nor write it correctly. A person of
this class, the second Greek scholar of his day, undertook to point out
several solecisms in Milton's Latin style; and in his own performance
there is hardly a sentence of common English. Such was Dr. ----. Such
is Dr. ----. Such was not Porson. He was an exception that confirmed
the general rule, a man that, by uniting talents and knowledge with
learning, made the distinction between them more striking and palpable.
A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even of
them. 'Books do not teach the use of books.' How should he know anything
of a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned pedant is
conversant with books only as they are made of other books, and those
again of others, without end. He parrots those who have parroted others.
He can translate the same word into ten different languages, but he
knows nothing of the _thing_ which it means in any one of them. He
stuffs his head with authorities built on authorities, with quotations
quoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses, his understanding,
and his heart. He is unacquainted with the maxims and manners of the
world; he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty
in the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty world of eye and
ear' is hid; and 'knowledge,' except at one entrance, 'quite shut out.'
His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises
with the number of things of which he does not know the value, and which
he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of
pictures,--'Of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the
purity of Domenichino, the _corregioscity_ of Correggio, the learning
of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, or the grand
contour of Michael Angelo,'--of all those glories of the Italian and
miracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the eyes of mankind
with delight, and to the study and imitation of which thousands have in
vain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they had never been,
a mere dead letter, a by-word; and no wonder, for he neither sees
nor understands their prototypes in nature. A print of Rubens'
Watering-place or Claude's Enchanted Castle may be hanging on the walls
of his room for months without his once perceiving them; and if you
point them out to him he will turn away from them. The language of
nature, or of art (which is another nature), is one that he does not
understand. He repeats indeed the names of Apelles and Phidias, because
they are to be found in classic authors, and boasts of their works as
prodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he sees the finest
remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin Marbles, takes
no other interest in them than as they lead to a learned dispute,
and (which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek
particle. He is equally ignorant of music; he 'knows no touch of it,'
from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the shepherd's pipe
upon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened with
the sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of
school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows the
number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul or
spirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a
Latin epigram into Greek verse; but whether either is worth the trouble
he leaves to the critics. Does he understand 'the act and practique
part of life' better than 'the theorique'? No. He knows no liberal
or mechanic art, no trade or occupation, no game of skill or chance.
Learning 'has no skill in surgery,' in agriculture, in building, in
working in wood or in iron; it cannot make any instrument of labour,
or use it when made; it cannot handle the plough or the spade, or the
chisel or the hammer; it knows nothing of hunting or hawking, fishing or
shooting, of horses or dogs, of fencing or dancing, or cudgel-playing,
or bowls, or cards, or tennis, or anything else. The learned professor
of all arts and sciences cannot reduce any one of them to practice,
though he may contribute an account of them to an Encyclopedia. He has
not the use of his hands nor of his feet; he can neither run, nor walk,
nor swim; and he considers all those who actually understand and can
exercise any of these arts of body or mind as vulgar and mechanical
men,--though to know almost any one of them in perfection requires long
time and practice, with powers originally fitted, and a turn of mind
particularly devoted to them. It does not require more than this to
enable the learned candidate to arrive, by painful study, at a doctor's
degree and a fellowship, and to eat, drink, and sleep the rest of his
life!
The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very
small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have
an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practise. The rest
is affectation and imposture. The common people have the use of their
limbs; for they live by their labour or skill. They understand their own
business and the characters of those they have to deal with; for it
is necessary that they should. They have eloquence to express their
passions, and wit at will to express their contempt and provoke
laughter. Their natural use of speech is not hung up in monumental
mockery, in an obsolete language; nor is their sense of what is
ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express it, buried
in collections of _Anas_. You will hear more good things on the outside
of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a
twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that
famous university; and more _home_ truths are to be learnt from
listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending a formal
one in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often
know more of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing
anecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and
gossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than the best
bluestocking of the age will be able to glean from that sort of learning
which consists in an acquaintance with all the novels and satirical
poems published in the same period. People in towns, indeed, are
woefully deficient in a knowledge of character, which they see only _in
the bust_, not as a whole-length. People in the country not only know
all that has happened to a man, but trace his virtues or vices, as they
do his features, in their descent through several generations, and
solve some contradiction in his behaviour by a cross in the breed half
a century ago. The learned know nothing of the matter, either in town
or country. Above all, the mass of society have common sense, which the
learned in all ages want. The vulgar are in the right when they judge
for themselves; they are wrong when they trust to their blind guides.
The celebrated nonconformist divine, Baxter, was almost stoned to death
by the good women of Kidderminster, for asserting from the pulpit that
'hell was paved with infants' skulls'; but, by the force of argument,
and of learned quotations from the Fathers, the reverend preacher at
length prevailed over the scruples of his congregation, and over reason
and humanity.
Such is the use which has been made of human learning. The labourers
in this vineyard seem as if it was their object to confound all common
sense, and the distinctions of good and evil, by means of traditional
maxims and preconceived notions taken upon trust, and increasing in
absurdity with increase of age. They pile hypothesis on hypothesis,
mountain high, till it is impossible to come at the plain truth on any
question. They see things, not as they are, but as they find them in
books, and 'wink and shut their apprehensions up,' in order that they
may discover nothing to interfere with their prejudices or convince them
of their absurdity. It might be supposed that the height of human wisdom
consisted in maintaining contradictions and rendering nonsense sacred.
There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which these persons
have not set their seals, and tried to impose on the understandings of
their followers as the will of Heaven, clothed with all the terrors
and sanctions of religion. How little has the human understanding been
directed to find out the true and useful! How much ingenuity has been
thrown away in the defence of creeds and systems! How much time
and talents have been wasted in theological controversy, in law, in
politics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and in finding out
the art of making gold! What actual benefit do we reap from the writings
of a Laud or a Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop Waterland, or
Prideaux' Connections, or Beausobre, or Calmet, or St. Augustine, or
Puffendord, or Vattel, or from the more literal but equally learned and
unprofitable labours of Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius? How many grains
of sense are there in their thousand folio or quarto volumes? What would
the world lose if they were committed to the flames to-morrow? Or are
they not already 'gone to the vault of all the Capulets'? Yet all these
were oracles in their time, and would have scoffed at you or me, at
common sense and human nature, for differing with them. It is our turn
to laugh now.
To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to be met with in
society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they
see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things
ought to be. Women have often more of what is called _good sense_ than
men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and
judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on
the mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reason
wrong; for they do not reason at all. They do not think or speak by
rule; and they have in general more eloquence and wit, as well as sense,
on that account. By their wit, sense, and eloquence together, they
generally contrive to govern their husbands. Their style, when they
write to their friends (not for the booksellers), is better than that of
most authors.--Uneducated people have most exuberance of invention
and the greatest freedom from prejudice. Shakespear's was evidently an
uneducated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and in the
variety of his views; as Milton's was scholastic, in the texture both of
his thoughts and feelings. Shakespear had not been accustomed to write
themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the
unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to know
the force of human genius we should read Shakespear. If we wish to see
the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators.