Practical Essays Part 15

One other point may be noted under this head. In the application to a book of importance and difficulty, there are two ways of going to work: to move on slowly, and master as we go; or to move on quickly to the end, and begin again. There is most to be said for the first method, although distinguished men have worked upon the other. The freshness of the matter is taken off by a single reading; the re-reading is so much flatter in point of interest. Moreover, there is a great satisfaction in making our footing sure at each step, as well as in finishing the task when the first perusal is completed. We cannot well dispense with re-reading, but it need not extend to the whole; marked pa.s.sages should show where the comprehension and mastery are still lagging.

[DESULTORY READING.]

IV. Another topic is Desultory Reading. This is the whole of the reading of the unstudious ma.s.s; it is but a part of the reading of the true student. It may mean, for one thing, jumping from book to book, perhaps reading no one through, except for pure amus.e.m.e.nt. It may also include the reading of periodicals, where no one subject is treated at any length. As a general rule, such reading does not give us new foundations, or const.i.tute the point of departure of a fresh department of knowledge; yet the amount of labour and thought bestowed upon articles in periodicals, may render them efficacious in adding to a previous stock of materials, or in correcting imperfect views. The truth is, that to the studious man, the desultory is not desultory. The only difference with him is that he has two _att.i.tudes_ that he may a.s.sume--the severe and the easy-going; the one is most a.s.sociated with systematic works on leading subjects; the other with short essays, periodicals, newspapers, and conversation. In this last att.i.tude, which is reserved for hours of relaxation, he skips matters of difficulty, and absorbs scattered and interesting particulars without expressly aiming at the solution of problems or the discussion of abstract principles.

There is no reason why an essay in a periodical, a pamphlet, or a speech in Parliament, may not take a first place in anyone's education. All the labour and resource that go to form a work of magnitude may be concentrated in any one of these. Still, they are presented in the form that we are accustomed to a.s.sociate with our desultory work, and our times of relaxation; and so, they seldom produce in the minds of readers the effect that they are capable of producing. The thorough student will not fail to extract materials from one and all of them, but even he will scarcely choose from such sources the text for the commencement of a new study.

The desultory is not a bad way of increasing our resources of expression. Although there be a systematic and a best mode of acquiring language, there is also an inferior, yet not ineffective mode; namely, reading copiously whatever authors have at once a good style and a sustaining interest. Hence, for this purpose, shifting from book to book, taking up short and light compositions, may be of considerable value; anything is better than not reading at all, or than reading compositions inferior in point of style. The desultory man will not be without a certain flow of language as well as a command of ideas; notwithstanding which, he will never be confounded with the studious man.

V. A fifth point is the proportion of book-reading to Observation of the facts at first hand. From want of opportunity, or from disinclination, many persons have all their information on certain subjects cast in the bookish mould, and do not fully conceive the particular facts as these strike the mind in their own character. A reader of History, with no experience of affairs, is likely to have imperfect bookish notions; just as a man of affairs, not a reader, is subject to narrowness of another kind. It was remarked by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, that the German historians of the Athenian Democracy write like men that never had any actual experience of popular a.s.semblies. A lawyer must be equally versed in principles and in cases as heard in court: this is a type of knowledge generally. In the Natural History Sciences, observation and reading go hand in hand from the first. In the science of the Human Mind, there are general doctrines, contrived to embrace the world of mental phenomena: the student may have to begin with these, and work upon them exclusively for a time, but in the end, phenomena must be independently viewed by him in their naked character, as exhibited directly in his own mind, and inferentially in the minds of those that fall under his observation. Book knowledge of Disease has to be coupled with bed-side knowledge; neither will take the place of the other.

VI. I began by limiting the meaning of study to the reading of books, and have reviewed the various points in the economy of this process. The other means of attaining, enlarging, deepening our knowledge, namely, Observation of facts, Conversation, Disputation, Composition, have each an art of its own--especially Disputation, which has long been reduced to rule. Observation also admits of specific directions, but, in stating the necessity of combining observation with book theories and descriptions, I have a.s.sumed the knowledge of how to observe.

[AIDS OF CONVERSATION AND COMPOSITION.]

Of all the adjuncts of study, none is so familiar, so available, and, on the whole, so helpful, as Conversation. The authors of Guides to Students, as Isaac Watts, give elaborate rules for carrying on conversation, a good many of them being more moral than intellectual; but an art of conversation would be very difficult to formulate; it would take quite as long an essay as I have devoted to study, and even then would not follow half of the windings of the subject. The only notice of it that my plan requires, is such as I have already bestowed upon Observation: namely, to point out the advantage of combining a certain amount of reading with, conversation; a thing that almost everybody does according to their opportunities. To rehea.r.s.e what we have read to some willing and sympathizing listener, is the best way of impressing the memory and of clearing up difficulties to the understanding. It brings in the social stimulus, which ranks so high among human motives. It is a wholesome change of att.i.tude; relieving the fatigue of book-study, while adding to its fruitfulness. Even beginners in study are mutually helpful, by exchanging the results of their several book acquirements; while it is possible to raise conversation to the rank of a high art, both for intellectual improvement and for mutual delectation. I cannot say that the ideal is often realized; since two or more must combine to conversation, and it is not often that the mutual action and re-action is perfectly adjusted for the highest effect.

The last great adjunct of study is original Composition, which also would need to be formulated distinct from the theory of book-study.

Viewed in the same way as we have viewed the other collateral exercises, one can p.r.o.nounce it too an invaluable adjunct to book-reading, as well as an end in itself; it is a variation of effort that diverts the mental strain, and re-acts powerfully upon the extraction of nutriment from books. Besides the pride of achievement, it evokes the social stimulus with the highest effect; our compositions being usually intended for some listeners. But, when to begin the work of original composition, as distinct from the written exercises upon books, in the way of abstracting, amending, and the rest; what forms it should a.s.sume at the outset, and by what steps it should gradually ascend to the culminating effects of the art,--would all admit of expansion and discussion as an altogether separate theme. Enough to remark here, that a course of book-reading without attempts at original composition is as faulty an extreme, as to begin and carry on writing upon a stinted basis of reading. The thorough student, as concerned in my present essay, carrying on book-study in the manner I have sketched, will almost infallibly end, at the proper time, in a self-thinker, and a self-originator. An adequate familiarity with the great writers of the past both checks presumptuous or hasty efforts of reproduction, and encourages modest attempts of our own as we feel ourselves becoming gradually invigorated through the combined influence of all the various modes of well-directed study.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: Milton had charge of pupils in 1644, when Locke was twelve.]

VIII.

RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS.

Every man has an interest in arriving at truth for himself. However useful it may be to mislead other people, however sweet to look down from a height on the erring throng beneath, it is neither useful nor sweet to be ourselves at sea without a compa.s.s. We may not care to walk by the light we have, but we do not choose to exchange it for darkness.

This reflection is most obvious with reference to the order of Nature.

Our life depends on adapting means to ends; which supposes that we know cause and effect in the world around us. A long story is cut short by the adage, "Knowledge is power"; otherwise rendered, "Truth is bliss".

The bearing of truth is free from all doubt when the problem is, how to gain certain ends--how to be fed, how to get from one place to another, how to cure disease. A new case is presented by the choice of ends. The tyrannical French minister, when appealed to by a starving peasantry in the terms, "We must live," replied, "I do not see the necessity". There was here no question of true and false, no problem for science to solve.

It was a question of ends, and could not be reargued. The only possible retort was to ask, "What does your Excellency consider a necessity?" If the reply were, "That I and my King may rule France and be happy," then might the starving wretches find some aid from a political scientist who could show that, in the order of nature, ruler and people must stand or fall together. So, it is no question of true or false in the order of nature, whether I shall adopt, as the end of life, my own gratification purely, the good of others purely, or part of both. In like manner the Benthamite, who propounds happiness as the general end of human society, cannot prove this, as Newton could prove that gravity follows the inverse square of the distance; nor can his position be impugned in the way that Newton impugned the vortices of Descartes, by showing that they were at variance with fact.

There is a third case. a.s.sertions are made out of the sphere of the sensible world, and beyond the reach of verification by the methods of science. There is a region of the supersensible or supernatural, where cause and effect may be affirmed and human interests involved, but where we cannot supply the same evidence or the same confutation as in sublunary knowledge. That all human beings shall have an existence after death is matter of truth or falsehood, but the evidence is of a kind that would not be adduced for proving that a caterpillar becomes a b.u.t.terfly or that a seed turns to a plant. The reasoning employed, no doubt, makes references to facts of the order of nature; but it is circuitous and a.n.a.logical, and is admitted merely because better cannot be had.

[THREE DIFFERENT CLa.s.sES OF a.s.sERTIONS.]

The peculiarity of this last cla.s.s of affirmations is that they give great room for the indulgence of our likings. So little being fixed with any precision, we can shape our beliefs to please ourselves. Even as regards the sensible world, we can sometimes accommodate our views to what we wish, as when we a.s.sume that our favourite foods and stimulants are wholesome; but such license soon meets with checks in the physical sphere, while there are no such checks in the realms of the superphysical.

Now, in all these three departments of opinion, the interest of mankind lies in obtaining the best views that can possibly be obtained. As regards the first and third--- the region of true and false, one in the sensible, the other in the supersensible world--we are clearly interested in getting the truth. As regards the second--the region of ends--if there be one cla.s.s of ends preferable to another, we should find out that cla.s.s.

The only doubt that can arise anywhere is, whether in the third case--the case of the supernatural,--truth is of the same consequence to us. Such a doubt, however, begs the whole question at issue. If the truth be of no consequence here, it is because we shall never be landed in any reality corresponding to what is declared: that the nature of the future life is purely imaginary and not to be converted into fact; in other words, that there is no future life; that there is merely a land of dreams and fiction, which can never be proved true and never proved false. It would then be a projection of thought from the present life, and would cease with that life. All that people could claim in the matter would be the liberty of imagination; and this being so, we are not to be committed to any one form. In short, we are to picture what we please in a world that cannot be made out to exist. The point is not, to be true or false; it is, to be well or ill imagined.

What, then, is to be the criterion of proper or improper imagination? On what grounds are we to make our preference between the different schemes of the supersensible world? Is each one of us to be free to imagine for ourselves, or are we to submit to the dictation of others? These questions lead up to another. How far are the interests of the present life concerned in the form given to our conceptions of a future life?

It would seem to be an unanswerable a.s.sumption that, in all the three situations above supposed, we should do the very best that the case admits of. In the order of nature we should get, as far as possible, the truth and the whole truth; in the choice of ends for this life we should embrace the best ends; in the shaping of another life we should be free to follow out whatever may be the course suitable to the operation.

[EARLY SOURCES OF INTOLERANCE.]

The means for arriving at truth in the order of nature is an active search according to certain well-known methods. It farther involves the negative condition of perfect freedom to canva.s.s, to controvert, or to refute, every received doctrine or opinion. There is no use in going after new facts, or in rising to new generalities, if we are not to be allowed to displace errors. This is now conceded, except at the points of contact of the natural and the supernatural. In spite of the wide separation of the two worlds--the world of fact and the world of imagination,--we cannot conceive the second except in terms of the first; and if the shaping of the supernatural acquires fixity and consecration, the natural facts made use of in the fabric acquire a corresponding fixity, even although the rendering is found to be inaccurate. The prevailing conception of a future life needs a view of the separate and independent subsistence of the mental powers of man, very difficult to reconcile with present knowledge.

The growth of intolerance is quite explicable, but the explanation is not necessarily a justification. Although every division of the human family must have pa.s.sed through many social phases, and must therefore have experienced revolutionary shocks, yet the rule of man's existence has been a rigorous fixity of inst.i.tutions, with a hatred of change.

Innovations, when not the effect of conquest, would be made under the pressure of some great crisis, or some tremendous difficulty that could not otherwise be met. The idea of individuals being allowed, in quiet times, to propose alterations in government, in religion, in morals, or even in the common arts of life, was thought of only to be stamped out.

There was a step in advance of the ancient and habitual order of things, when an innovating citizen was permitted to make his proposal to the a.s.sembled tribe, with a rope about his neck, to be drawn tight if he failed to convince his audience. This might make men think twice before advancing new views, but it was not an entire suppression of them.

The first introduction of the great religions of the world would in each case afford an interesting study of the difficulties of change and of the modes of surmounting these difficulties. There must always have concurred at least two things,--general uneasiness or discontent from some cause or other; and the moral or intellectual ascendency of some one man, whose views, although original, were yet of a kind to be finally accepted by the people. These conditions are equally shown in political changes, and are historically ill.u.s.trated in many notable instances. It is enough to cite the Greek legislation of Lycurgus and of Solon.

Such changes are the exceptions in human affairs; they occur only at great intervals. In the ordinary course of societies, the governing powers not merely adhere to what is established, but forbid under severe penalties the very suggestion of change. The chronic misery of the race is compatible with unreasoning acquiescence in a state of things once established; incipient reformers are at once immolated _pour encourager les autres_. It is the aim of governments to make themselves superfluously strong; they take precautions against unfavourable ideas no less than against open revolt. In this, they are seconded by the general community, which would make things too hot even for a reforming king.

[SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM POLITICS.]

It is said by the evolution or historical school of politicians, that this was all as it should be. The free permission to question the existing inst.i.tutions, political and religious, would have been incompatible with stability. In early society more especially, religion and morality were a part of civil government; a dissenter in religion was the same thing as a rebel in politics; the distinction between the civil and the religious could not yet be drawn.

Without saying whether this was the case or not--for I should not like to commit myself to the position, "Whatever was, was right" at the time--I trust we are now far on the way to being agreed that the civil and the religious are no longer to be identified; that the State, as a state, is not concerned to uphold any one form of religious belief.

Modern civilized communities are believed capable of existing without an official religion; the citizens being free to form themselves into self-governed religious bodies, as various as the prevailing modes of religious belief. It may be long ere this goal be fully reached; but even the upholders of the present state religions admit that, supposing these were not in existence, n.o.body would now propose to inst.i.tute them.

The foregoing remarks may appear somewhat desultory, as well as too brief for the extent of the theme. They must be accepted, however, as an introduction to a more limited topic, which presupposes in some measure the general principle of toleration by the state of all forms of religious opinion. Whether with or without established religions, perfect freedom of dissent is now demanded, and, with some hankering reservations, pretty generally conceded. Individuals are allowed to congregate into religious societies, on the most various and opposite creeds.

So far good. Yet there remains a difficulty. Long before the age of toleration, when each state had an established religion, the people in general formed their habits of religious observance in connection with the State Church--its doctrines, its ritual, its buildings, and its sacred places. When disruption took place, the separatists formed themselves into societies on the original model, merely dropping the matters of disagreement. Fixity of creed and of ritual was still enacted; the only remedy for dissatisfaction on either subject was to swarm afresh, and set up a new variety of doctrine or of ritual, to which a rigid adherence was still expected as a condition of membership.

By this costly and troublesome process, Churches have been multiplied according to the changes of view among sections of the community. A certain energy of conviction has always been necessary to such a result.

Equally great changes of opinion occur among members of the older Church communities, without inducing them to break with these; so that nominal membership ceases to be a mark of real adhesion to the articles of belief.

[EVILS OF PENAL RESTRAINT ON DISCUSSION.]

These few commonplaces are meant to introduce the enquiry--now a pressing one--whether, and how far, fixed creeds are desirable or expedient in religious bodies generally; no difference being made between state Churches and voluntary Churches. This is the question of Subscription to Articles by the clergy.