The Sun.
London, England, 1846-11-09 00:00:00

in consequence, I hope, and believe, a general moral im-
provement—that many hours which otherwise would
have been passed in folly, perhaps in vice, will be em-
ployed either in pleasures which not only are harmless,
but have a positive tendency to elevate the cha-
racter. Our own experience leads us to think this.
My own observation in various parts of the world,
and among various classes of men, leads me to hold this
opition strongly. I have, as you may know, had occa-
sion officially to form some notion of what those causes
are which affect the moral and intellectual character of
regiments, and I will venture to say there is no
that
ex-
perienced and judicious officer who will not tell you
the whole character of a body of young officers may be.
most materially affected for the better by the
a valuable
merecir-
cumstance of being placed in the vic
library.—(Cheers.) I can myselt ginivetins of
tances which
have fallen within my own knowledge of this fact. I
was myself told by a most accomplished man—a man
who was an eminent soldier, an eminent diplomatist,
who enjoyed the confidence of the first generals and
statesmen Europe has produced in our own time—when
I asked him to what he owed those accomplishments, he
said this—" When I served as a young man in India,
and when it was the turning point of my life—when it
was an even chance that I should be a card playing,
hookah-smoking, punch-drinking lounger—l was quar-
tered for two years in the neighbourhood of an excel-
lent library which was made accessible to me."—
(Cheers.) Some objections which have been urged
to the species of mental cultivation which we trust this
institution will afford have been so happily and satisfac-
torily disposed of by my esteemed friend the Lord
Provost, and my most reverend friend the Archbishop
of Dublin, that to these I should think it very super-
fluous to advert. There is, indeed, a topic which has
often, and sometimes by men of eminence, been
urged against this and simiar institutions, which I
may beg your permission to notice. Their dread is
of superficial knowledge. They say, " Knowledge
is undoubtedly a great blessing to mankind ; it is closely
connected with virtue ; it is an indispensable preparative
for freedom, but then it must be profound knowledge.
A reading public, a crowd of people who have a little
mathematics, a little astronomy, a little chemistry, a
little reading of poetry, a little history, is dangerous to
states ; such a species of half knowledge is worse than
ignorance itself. Drink deep, or taste not ; shallow
draughts intoxicate ; drink largely—that will sober
you," repeating the well known lines of the poet. I
must confess this danger never appeared to me very
threatening, and for this reason, chiefly that I never
could prevail on any one of those persons who enter-
tained such apprehensions to let me know what was his
standard of profundity.—(Cheers.) The argument pre-
supposes that there is some line between profound know-
ledge and superficial knowledge, similar to the one which
runs between truth and falsehood. I know of no such
line. What is the standard of profundity ? When we
say that a man is deep in science, do we mean that he
has got to the bottom of it, or near to the &ottom of it ?
When we talk of deep and shallow, are we comparing
human knowledge with the vast mass of truth which is
capable of being known, and which, probably, in the
course of ages, human minds actually will attain ? If
that be the meaning, then we are all shallow together—
(Cheers)—and the greatest men who have ever lived
would be the very first to confess their shallowness.—
(Cheers.) If we could call up the greatest of all human
beings, if we could call up and ask Sir Isaac
Newton whether, even in those particular pur-
suits in which he attained the highest excel-
lence, he considered himself as profoundly knowing
by comparison with the mass of that which
is capable of being known, he would have told you
that he was a smatterer like yourselves, and that the
difference between him and you was nearly vanished
when compared with the difference between the mass of
science, just as the distance between a person standing
on the level of the sea and a person standing on the top
of Ben Lomond utterly vanishes when they are making
observations on the fixed stars.—(Cheers.) But if this
is not the standard, what is the standard? Is it the
same, in all ages? Was it ever the same for a genera-
tion together? Is it the same in any two countries? Is
it not notorious that the profundity of one country is the
shallowness of another—that the profundity of one gene-
ration is the shallowness of the next? What would now
be the profound chemist of 1746—what the profound
geologist of 1746? There is a natural, a necessary pro-
gress, in every experimental science, of such a nature
that in one generation the hind rank occupies the same
place which the fore rank occupied in a former genera-
tion. It is the same with countries. The same know-
ledge which entitled Ramohun Roy to be called the most
profound of the Hindoos, would have made, permit me to
say, but a very superficial member of this institution.—
(Cheers.) The very knowledge of geography which en-
titled Strabo to be called a profound geographer, would
be considered the shallowest ignerance on the part of a
girl from a boarding-school. The truth is, a change
takes a place, as in Gulliver's wanderings. The first
is shipwrecked in the country of little men, of only
six inches high. Immediately he is a colossus among
them ; he strides over the walls of the capital ; he
stands higher than the temple ; he stretches
his legs, and whole armies march in columns
between ; he devours for breakfast a whole granary
of corn and a whole herd of cattle. Bu' in a little
while he finds himself in the country of giants; then he
who in Lilliput took the people up in his hand to hear
them speak, is himself taken up in the hand by one of
his masters; and now, was Gulliver a tall or a short
man?—(A laugh) Why, truly at his own house I be
bey° he would have passed for neither one nor the other.
At Lilliput he was man-mountain; but move him to
Brobdigtiag and be is Gulliver, the little manikin
again.—(Cheers and laughter.) The intellectual giants
of one age become the intellectual pigmies of the next;
and if those effects which are said to flow from shallow
knowledge really flow from it, it must have been one of
the very greatest of all evils, that, in the thirteenth
century, fir example, there should have been such a
thing as a profoundly learned man. It strikes me that
you might, without much difficulty, make a parallel be-
tween the most profoundly learned man of the thirteenth
century and one of those who, we hope, will pass their
evenings in our library, which would
-not be altogether to
the advantage of the profound, and might lead us, per-
haps, to change the names of profundity and shallow-
ness. Try the parallel in one or two points. Take
Hur great learned man of 600 years ago (at the time of
enry 111., or Alexander 111. of Scotland), some one
considered first in intellectual attainments, first in
science, first in literature in the whole island, and let us
see to what his attainments amount. Take him in the
two sciences which were then, as ever, studied with
care, assiduity, and which were munificently patronised
in the middle ages let us take him as an
astronomer and a chemist. A firm believer in
the Ptolemaic system, one who never heard of
the law of gravitation—tell him that the succession of
night and day is produced by the revolution of the
earth on its axis—tell him that the polar diameter of the
earth is shorter than the equatorial, and if he does no:.
set you down as an idiot the probability is he will repot
you to the bishop to be burnt as a heretic.—(Cheers )
But if not perfectly informed on the points, there are
others in which undoubtedly he has made great profl-
cleney—he can casta nativity for you.—(A laugh.) He
knows perfectly well what is meant by Saturn being in
the horse of light ; and what events are portended by
M trs being in conjunction with the dragon's tail ; and
he can tell by these events which of your children will
be fortunate in marriage and which of them will
be lost at sea.—(A. laugh.) Now, compare this man
with one of your shallow persons, whose exceedingly
superficial knowledge is so dangerous to their moral and
intellectual character. I doubt not that in our library
will be found at least one copy of Sir J. Herschel's
beautiful volume on astronomy ; a very few evenings
passed in the perusal of that volume will not indeed
enable our friends to cast the nativities of their children,
but will give them, I believe, a far more correct and a far'
more profound notion of the solar system ; and of the laws
that govern the heavenly bodies than the greatest astro-
nomer of the 14th century possessed.—(Cheers.) Or
take chemistry ; our great man—for we will suppose
him a great man ; we will suppose him to be a uni-
versal genius—our great man of the 13th century is
a great chemist. Be has perhaps got just so far—
the very pillars of Hercules of his chemical know-
ledge—he has got so far as to know, that if you mix
charcoal and saltpetre together in certain propor-
tions, and rut fire to them, a great explosion will take
place. But of the possibility of applying these powers
to make a revolution in the art of war, in fortification,
to perform any scientific operations, he has no concep-
tion. There are things with which he busies himself
perhaps beyond the reach of modern chemists. He is in
full chase after the philosopher's stone.—(Laughter.)
He has an array of furnaces with saltpetre and red and
white oil burning night and day, and he entertains the
firm conviction that by means of these stews he will
some morning turn all his pots and pans into gold.—
(Laughter.) Now, suppose—l heartily hope it will be
the case—suppose that Professor Faraday comes here
and gives at your lecture-room the lectures I heard him
give to the little children during the Christmas holidays
at the Royal Institution; I cannot promise you he will
teach you to turn your halfpence into sovereigns, but I
do promise that you will carry away from those lectures
a very much more correct and profound knowledge of
chemistry than a chemist who could have been consi-
dered deserving the patronage of kings could possibly
have given with years of study in the 13th century
(Cheers.) So it was in science; but when we turn to
literature is it not much the same? With respect to li-
terary knowledge—with respect to knowledge of great
masterpieces in composition—compere the position of
our supposed learned man of the 13th century and
that
in which the superficial student in the library of this in-
stitution will be placed. As to Greek, they are on a
par—for neither the one nor the other would possess any;
and with respect to the vernacular, no great writer had
yet appeared. The only literature of such a man was
Latin. He might have had a great many manuscripts.
Suppose his library well furnished, with some 40
Latin manuscripts—suppose he has a considerable
portion of really the best books in the Latin lan-
guage, the best specimens of that literature, and I
say with perfect confidence that his opportunities of en-
larging his mind, his means of literary enjoyment are
not to be named with those you possess in the English
language. Such a man could form no notion of tragedy
_ and no
had spere,
idea of comedy as you can from Shak -he no epic poem within reach of " Paradise Lost;"
and as for all his dialects, one passage cf the " Novurn
Organum" would be worth it all.—(Cheers.) One of the
great advantages which
those possess who, though they
are ignorant of
gouthaegretozubes, are well acquainted with
the English lan
good English library
at their command, is this, that to great extent it is in
their power to enjoy, in an imperfect manner,. but still
to enjoy, the great productions of minds of other
great variety of
times and other nations. We havet e
translationsa
translations. It is scarcely possiblae
should completely attain to the excellenacte
ginal; but it is not the less true, that as to ttils'ee or
-1- m
features of every great work—the conception of charataca
ter, the general plan and outline—a very large portion
may be preserved. Such works will give to the English