Tree of Knowledge

“ We should seek substantial information, and trust little to that kind of so-called learning that is based entirely upon theory. We should pluck fruit from the tree of knowledge, and taste, then shall our eyes be open to see, our ears to hear and our hearts to understand. ”

“ If W.'s alteration be intentional, it must be pronounced a remarkable attempt at a conceit in the style of the metaphysical school: the tree of knowledge proved to be the tree of life, by 'one greater man' restoring us. ”

“ Great attainments, experience, and skill are certainly the fruits of age and of labor; but what are these things, compared with the ideal enjoyments which come of the first sciences we study, when the tree of knowledge, grafted upon the tree of life, puts forth its branches,--compared with the delight with which the new truths of geometry, or of philosophy, or of any favorite science new-born to us, fill the soul? ”

“ The tree of knowledge is an evergreen, and in science, no more than in arts, is there any decay. When Darwin published his great Origin of Species which was hailed as a revelation, not only by scientific men, but by intelligent laymen, religious people became very much alarmed. ”

“ Herein, until very recently, the tree of knowledge was supposed to yield of its fruits of good and evil, most abundantly of the latter, and men long pertinaciously refused to partake of, or even to look at, the precious things that dropped from its numerous well-laden branches. ”

“ Our conception, then, of knowledge leads us back to the early similitude which likened it to a tree. Knowledge does not increase, like a honey-comb, cell simply added to cell, but, like an oak, whose every year of growth implies not addition merely, but vital transformation of structure. Nothing is fixed but the axis from which the branches and boughs spread out, as if they felt they had all the universe for their expansion. ”

“ And as at first, mankind fell by tasting of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, so we, their Posterity, may be in part restor'd by the same way, not only by beholding and contemplating, but by tasting too those fruits of Natural knowledge, that were never yet forbidden. ”

“ The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality. The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. ”

“ These considerations may serve to show that although we see the men of both abstract and applied science group themselves in minor bodies for the better prosecution of special objects, the points of contact between the different branches of knowledge are ever multiplying, all tending to form part of a mighty tree—the tree of modern science—under whose ample shadow its cultivators will find it both profitable and pleasant to meet, at least once a year ”

“ The fruit of the tree of knowledge, always drives man from some paradise or other; ”

“ Meanwhile, this aggregation of human experiences, this compounding of age with age, one generation heaping up knowledge upon another; this begetting of knowledge by knowledge, the seed so infinitesimal, the tree now so rapidly sending forth its branches, whither does it tend? ”

“ These still live in the Tree of Life. But those who look outwards and try to draw happiness from without, eat tor the first time of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, as indicated by the figurative language of the Christian Bible. ”

“ Taken together, the various living races of Man seem almost to form a kind of living genealogical tree, as it were, and it is as an epiphyte upon this tree that the comparative ethnologist largely thrives; while to the archaeologist it may also prove a tree of knowledge the fruit of which may be eaten with benefit rather than risk. ”

“ The purely scientific statement may incline either to popular discourse or to philosophic language, and according to this bias it places us more or less in possession of some branch of knowledge. All that popular elocution does is to lend us this knowledge for a momentary pleasure or enjoyment. The first, if I may be allowed the comparison, gives us a tree with its roots, though with the condition that we wait patiently for it to blossom and bear fruit. ”

“ Kinds.—The mental synthesis of which we have thus spoken, gives us our knowledge of individual things; it enables me to apprehend that particular tree or man which I now see, or, by the help of memory, the tree or the man I saw yesterday. But the knowledge with which we have mainly here to do is not a knowledge of individuals but of kinds; of such classes as are indicated by common names. We have to make assertions concerning a tree or a man in general, without regarding what is peculiar to this man or that tree. ”

“ Although it is the possessor of existence in the world of creation, a tree, nevertheless, has no knowledge of the superior degree of the animal kingdom. Likewise, no matter how great the advancement of the animal, it can have no idea of the human plane, no knowledge of intellect and spirit. Difference in degree is an obstacle to this comprehension. A lower degree cannot comprehend a higher although all are in the same world of creation—whether mineral, vegetable or animal. ”

“ At the present stage, however, the question is to assign the motives connected with general knowledge as distinct from individual knowledge.
General knowledge, represented by science, consists in holding together, by a single grasp, whole classes of objects, of facts, of operations. This must, by the very nature of the case, be more severe than holding an individual. To form an idea of one tree that we have repeatedly surveyed at leisure, round and round, is about the easiest exertion whether of attention or of memory. ”

“ These names I have endeavoured to put in their due places in the Tables; and the Inductive Tree of our knowledge in each science becomes, in this way, an exhibition of the claims of each discoverer to distinction, and, as it were, a Genealogical Tree of scientific nobility. It is by no means pretended that such a tree includes the 103 names of all the meritorious labourers in each department of science. Many persons are most usefully employed in collecting and verifying truths, who do not advance to any new truths. The labours of a number of such are included in each stage of our ascent. ”

“ And when the whole kingdom of plants has thus been surveyed, and a simple tissue of names been thrown over the garden of nature; when we can lift it up, as it were, and view it in our mind as a whole, as a system well defined and complete, we then speak of the science of plants, or botany. We have entered into altogether a new sphere of knowledge where the individual is subject to the general, fact to law; we discover thought, order, and purpose pervading the whole realm of nature, and we perceive the dark chaos of matter lighted up by the reflection of a divine mind. ”

“ It is for the present, then, quite sufficient to describe this education by these its results, and for our purpose we can spare ourselves the wearisome task of analysing the inner sap and fibre of a tree whose fruit is now fully ripe and lies fallen before the eyes of all, proclaiming most clearly and distinctly the inner nature of its creator. Strictly speaking, according to this view, the present system has been by no means the art of educating men. ”

“ Why, we know philosophy.”
“I think the forest trees could lecture on philosophy,” said the wind.
“Yes, yes, yes,” they all cried. “The forest trees, for they are very old and have had longer to search for wisdom than we.”
“Very well; three lectures a week on philosophy, by the old forest trees; write it down, please,” cried Bachelor.
The secretary, a scarlet-headed woodpecker, carefully carved it on the trunk of an old tree, and I think you [48] can still find the minutes of that day written in lines of beauty all over the tree. ”

“ Difficulty of Interpretation.—In this as in all other examples we must know the nature of the beings that we see lasting on and braving the centuries. Is it the individual? Is it the species? Is it a living being, properly so called, having its unity and its individuality, or is it a series of generations succeeding one another in time and extending in space? In a word, the question is one of knowing if we have to do with a real tree or with a genealogical tree. We are just as uncertain when we deal with animals. ”

“ I would like to consider the unity of science under the figure of a tree of life which grows upward from the earth from which one part takes its power and nutriment and in which it finds its support. The parts of this tree—roots, stem, branches, and whatever they may all be called—appear to us externally different, but within they belong together; they stand among each other continually in helpful interaction. ”

“ To form an idea of ten trees partly agreeing and partly differing among themselves is manifestly an entirely altered task; it is to exchange comparative simplicity for arduous complexity; yet this is what is needed everywhere in the higher knowledge. ”

“ When, however, the potential is replaced by the actual, and when the form of the tree has really been comprehended, the form comprehended is the intellect, and it is by that same intellect, by the intellect in action, that the tree has been converted into an abstract idea, and has been comprehended. ”

“ It is but a branch from this same trunk—this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of practice will scorn no more, when once they reach the multitudinous boughs of this great tree of miracles, where the nobler fruits, the more chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still. ”

“ In this science of being, the herb bore seed and the tree fruit, not because of root, seed, or blossom, but because their Principle sustained these ideas, not as Substance, but idea, for Intelligence held dominion over matter. ”

“ You have a hundred thousand species of plants to become acquainted with—to learn their names, and to what genera and orders they belong, besides everything like a knowledge of their habitats, their properties, and their physiology. Seeing that this is but one of the sciences, there might well be a pause before admitting that the moral and intellectual regeneration of our people was to be brought about by the useful-knowledge movement. ”

“ We say simply: the tree exists or is part of nature; and only the philosopher is aware that we silently mean by it that it exists for every subject and that it is therefore not necessary to refer to any particular subject. But the perception of the tree which is either your idea or my idea evidently gets its existence only if it is referred and attached to a particular subject which is aware of it. ”

“ But the doctrine, held in our own day, that knowledge of the plant that yields the poppy consists in referring the peculiarities of an individual to a type, to a universal form, a doctrine so firmly established that any other method of knowing was conceived to be unphilosophical and unscientific, was a survival of precisely the same logic. ”

“ AT a time when most naturalists who venture at all beyond the facts of life-science are busied with the attempt to trace the relationship between the various groups of living things, and to express this relationship in a tree-like system of classification, it is startling to hear from one of the highest authorities on life-science the statement that "the time for genealogical trees is past. ”

“ And this method of progression, with which the enigmatical has some affinity, is to be used, he tells us, in cases where knowledge is delivered as a thread to be spun on, where science is to be removed from one mind to another to grow from the root, and not delivered as trees for the use of the carpenter, where the root is of no consequence. ”

“ For instance, in order to explain the manner in which a tree is formed, it is not enough to study the tree as it stands before us in its full-leaved glory; it is necessary to construct a history of the tree by the aid of accurate observations of the different states and forms through which it has successively passed. ”

“ It contains an active, organizing life principle. Falling into the soil, this folded life power begins to stir. It lays hold upon the elements about it, digests them, assimilates them, and turns them into an oak. The mind is to the raw material of knowledge, what the acorn is to the raw material of oak. Through the senses the raw material is conveyed into the mind. It is then appropriated, assimilated, digested, and turned into knowledge. The active, organizing, combining power that turns the raw material presented by the [191] senses into knowledge, does not come from the outside world. ”

“ We are slowly beginning to recognize that there may be a science of History, a science of Language, a science of Religion, and, in fact, that all knowledge may be systematized on a common method. The facts of the External Order, which yield a cosmology, are supplemented by the facts of the Internal Order, which yield a psychology, and the facts of the Social Order, which yield a sociology. ”

“ Now the Tree of Truth stands just over this line at which all but the gods' own turn to scamper back before supper. It is the first tree to the left—an apple-tree, twisted, blackened, scathed, eaten with age, yet full of blossoms as fresh and fertile as those first born of any young tree whatsoever. Those able rightly to read this tree of Truth become at once as the gods, keeping the faith of children while absorbing the wisdom of the ages—lacking either of which, be it known, one may not become an imperishable ornament of Time. ”

“ What is the relation of the intelligence to the outer world? Does the outside world create knowledge in the mind by the impressions it makes upon it, [158] or does the mind bring something to the outside world which converts this raw material into knowledge? Is knowledge a reflection of the outer, or a creation of the inner? Does nature work it in us, or is there some spontaneous, creative, organizing, mental activity within us that takes the material presented by nature, turning it into a rational system of knowledge? ”