The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-04-10 00:00:00

STOTTRITRIDC-IrP, OBSERVER.

Mon, to hod, in the event of obtatotog the 5000005 whien he
hopes for, that his bodily as well as mental powers st ill be
taxed to the utmost. And if that possibility in realised Vie
question, all important for him, whether he will be able to
hold his own, or whether he will break down, will depend
very much on the nature of his early training. Thi is a
subject on which there exists, I think, a good deal of
prejudice and misinformation. We have often heard of men
crushed in youth by excessive mental strain. That such cases
do occur I cannot in the face of •vidence deny. Hut I believe
they are nine times out of tell the result of simple mis-
management. The 711.,411 tuna in corpora surto hi as much
now us it was 1,000 years ago the most rational object of
human wishee and the most necessary condition of human
success....

I believe that with no extraordinary quickness or bril-
liance, but with perseverance, memory, and that soundness
of judgment which habits of patient Inquiry confer—all
qualities with which cultivation has more to do than nature
—a man may rise very high is almost any department of
human labour, and may pas; by in the race many whom at
school or at college, IT possibly even in later life, he re.
ganled as hopelessly superior to himself. But of all these
qualities, for every purpose, whether for action or specula-
tion, I hold that one to be most valuable which it is almost
entirely within our own power to acquire, trail which nature
unassisted never yet gave to any man. I mean • perfectly
accurate habit of thought and expres-ion. Thli is, as far aa
I can see, oven? the very rarest acquirements For it implies a
good deal—carefuMess, close attention to details, a certain
power of memory, and the habit of distinguishing between
things which are alike, but not Identical. I lay stress on this
because it seems ti me the characteristically distinguishing
mark of good and faulty teaching, of real and unreal learn-
ing. The best thing is to know your subject thoroudily
the next beat to know nothing about it, and to be aware that
you do know nothing ; the win St is to know a little, and to
know that vaguely and confusedly....
- • -

Speaking of the rational use, and not the abuse, of classical
literature, I think it has o e great merit which is not easily
to be found elsewhere. Even those who feel most strongly
the incomparably wider range of modern thought will seldom
deny that in precision, in conciseness, in sliiiiiy of style, and
In verbal felicity, the great writers of ancient times have
scarcely been equalled. Itis 8111PeStiVe to think how, under
the influence of the mercanti'e principle, making books to
be paid or in proportion not to their merits but to their
length, and if the lifelong hurry which prevents us from
studying condensation, such narratives as those of Ctesar and
Tacitus would iii modern hands have swelled into the dimen-
sions of a modern h.. al compilation, witn the certain
result that they would have occupied in men's memories 110
more enduring plane than this last. I say, then, to these
whose leisure will allow it, don't be led Into the folly of
treating classical study no a thing antiquated and iiseless.
It In not what people used to think It, the only training; but
it is a training, arid not the worst. Only let it be taken,
up in. earnest, or not at all. If a young 1111111 has time and
taste for Latin literature, no much, I think, the better. But
a mere beginning of that—and still m re a mere beginning
both of Latin and Breek, which does not last long enough to
give familiar acquaintance with either language, is sheer
folly anti waste of time. In this, as in everything el., a
man should prop a-tion his means to his ends, and not begin
by laying the foundations of a house three times bigger that,
he can ever hope to if To leans it little of everything
under the souls barely possible, and questionably useful if it
were pounds. Compendia, dispendia—the value of all
bitching, as! take it—consists far less in the facts acquired
than in the action on the mind of the individual produced by
the process of acquiring them. The question which life asks
of us all Is not "What du you know I' but "What citil you
,lo?" I believe that any one wilily, steadily and earnestly
followed, is useful in that respect; and perhaps the differ-
ence in their respective values islets ?heti we are apt to sup-
pose. If a 111311 wants only to train himself to lie a good
walker, it matters very litle what road he chooses to walk
up.in. But more that, that --if you will allow me to express
an opinion which I knew may provoke dissent, but which I
entertain very strongly- I believe that no course of reading
of lecture-hearing is of much avail unless something is to
follow, either in the way of public examination-- which I
hold to he best—or, failing that, of close and careful self-
examination by the student hiiiisrlf, to test and measure how
much of what has linen read is retained What is merely lis-
tened tour run over by the eye Is mostly forgotten ; what
has to be assimilated and reproduced in another shape
Incomes, as it were, worked into the very substance of the
brain.

Ma general ride, I think that the aim of a liberal educa-
tion ought unite he to fit men for this or that special profession
exclusively, but to supply such acquirements and to sharpen
such Licidties as shall be equally useful in any. It is not
goof, I am sure, for anybody to be too early and exclusively
buried in his own special pursuit If from circumstances it
is necea•ary that he should be so, let him accept the necessity
for that as for any other privation without complaining.
But do not let him assert or think that it is in Wed it good.
Law, medicine, architecture, engineering, practical art—all
these are pursuits of the highest useful. s and even neces-
sity ; but ISO man can even dabble in them all, nor has the
architect any particular use for law, nor the lawyer f. o. archi-
tecture. What they both want, what they both have • use
for, is accuracy of thought, clearness ef expression, and that
Indefinable something—excluding pedan, ry, on the one hand,
and vulg coarseness iii, the other—which nnuks the man to
whom literature has been more than the amusement of a
casual him..

You will sometimes hear it said—it is one of the crotchets
of the day—that what is called culture is unfavourable to
moral earnestness. Don't belive that.... Admitting that
knowledge Is often a check on action, and that great ques-
tions are often most earnestly taken up by those who can
only see one site of them—l think there can be n, doubt on
which side the balance of advantage lies. If cultivated
apathy has done its share of mischief and recollect that you
are just as likely to have the apathy without the cultivation),
unreasoning activity, enthusiasm without knowledge or
judgment, has done a hundred times more. If increased in-
tellectual light, or what seemed such, has weakened some
men's convictions, shaken their faith in the principles which
govern mankind, and left them simply perplexed and
helpless in face of the great problems of existence,
let us point, on the other hand, to the horrible
calamities which men, from the earliest ages of the
world to our own, have brought on one another, not
we may hope in wilful wickedness, but in the con-
fused strutgle to defend errors ignorantly and honestly
mistaken for truth. No, gentlemen, whatever may come
of it, let us not ignore or shrink front our responsiblity.
Every one of us is bound, not merely to do the thing which
seems to hist right, but to do also what lies in his power that
the thing which seems to him right may be that which
really is right, Good intentions wool help or serve you if
you take poimn instead of medicine ; and in social matters
we well know that ignorant philanthropy has often caused—
perhaps Men clauses even now—as much mischief as could
be done by denhet ate ill will. We want seal. IS e want
earnestness for truth. and justice. but the zeal of ignorance
is a poor affair, arid the earnestness must be very shallow
and unreal which i will not be ar the strictest scrutiny of the
objects to which it is directed.
Actioe is the end of all thought, but to act justly and
effew lively you must think wisely. The time is not wasted
which is spent in laying solid fouedations for the future; nor
that which soldiers pass in preparatory drill before they
are trwt.il to take the held. Recollect too that the deck
of i dellectual furniture which the man takes aith him into
business iv professional life is not likely to be toilet hicrease.l
afterwards. Wit mat of us, I fear, the faculty of receiving
new ide is is the very earliest part of our organisation that de-
cays. Special acquirene-nts. professional experience, the can-
ner) and prudence and tact that come of protracted inter-
course with the world are the grow t h niid. ile age ; but Len,-
poet that Inee.t boay men, if they to loh stock of their intellectual
gains and losses, would find that otter a certain time—say
nve-and•tliirty or forty—the former hail not been consider-
able. Make the 01 ,1, then, of your opportunity, fe it will
not last long. Wmte no regret on the past if it has dime less
for you than it ought. There is leisure tai redeem all that.
Dream no dreams of the future the future will take care of
Itself, and whatever may be the difficultim you foresee, what-
ever the successes you expect, it is a hundred to 4one that
neither the firmer nor the latter will come up m you in the
way you now anticipate. But make your footing good at
every step you take, do manfully the task that is allotted to
you, know thoroughly the thin you have to learn, discipline
your energies without exhatuniug them, and have faith
enoUgh in yourselves arid in the good sense of your fellow
men to beli,ve that whatever temporary success may be wo
by pulling and quackery and, thank Heaven, such success is
seldom more than temporary!, the capable workman mostly
gets the tools he o his tenets ; oppoitunity sooner or later
comes to nearly all who work and wait ; nil though I to not
contend that there is no such thing as unnierited failure or
unrewarded effort, yet even in that rare and painful case it is
something to lie able to think that you have tried your best,
that though worsted in fair light you have done justice to
yourself and to yours, and that if advalicement and fortune
have net been obtained you sill have, at least, preserved
that Inward content, that sense of honest self-approval, with
which neither obscurity nor poverty are an unendurable
affliction: without which neither by world-wide fame or un-
told wealth can any real and lasting happiness he secured.