Acquisitiveness

“ The question with the teacher then is. How can I develop each nature committed to my charge so as to strengthen its weak parts physical, intellectual, and moral, so that no faculty shall be unduly developed and that the balance of the whole shall be good—while I do not overlook those faculties that are strong and on which the success of the individual so much depends? It can with the utmost confidence be assumed that in all human beings some powers are by inheritance of different strength from others. ”

“ Good intentions, unaided by knowledge, will, perhaps, produce more injury than benefit, and therefore knowledge must be gained, but the acquisition is not momentary; is not bestowed unasked and untoiled for. ”

“ And what struck him, in contrast to the confusion and uncertainty and isolation of the sophistic teaching 'in the air,' was that when you get a man to talk on his own trade, which he knows, as is proved by the actual work he produces, you find invariably two {110} things—first, that the skill is the man's individual possession no doubt, the result of inborn capacity and continuous training and practice; but second, that just in proportion to that individual skill is the man's conviction that his skill has reference to a law higher than himself, outside himself. ”

“ But this is necessarily the case with all men who have acquired distinction in letters, science, or art. The education received at school or college is but a beginning, and is valuable mainly inasmuch as it trains the mind and habituates it to continuous application and study. That which is put into us by others is always far less ours than that which we acquire by our own diligent and persevering effort. Knowledge conquered by labour becomes a possession—a property entirely our own. ”

“ The mere knowledge, however, of the faculties and wants of man, without an acquaintance with the means of developing and satisfying them, would be not only a most sorrowful and discouraging, but also a vain and perfectly useless, acquirement. ”

“ Neither wealth nor poverty, neither strength nor weakness, neither genius nor the want of it, neither ten talents nor one, can excuse any human being from training his faculties in a way to develop them to the utmost, and forming them into a symmetrical whole, the type of a true humanity. ”

“ But if you mean only the ability to do some of those things which the greater part of mankind can do when properly taught, I can affirm that I find in him no peculiar deficiency. And whether you choose to bring him up to trade, or to some practical profession, I see no reason to doubt that he may in time become sufficiently qualified for it. It is my favourite maxim, sir, that everything most valuable in this life may generally be acquired by taking pains for it. ”

“ And in order to fulfil this vocation, and fulfil it always more and more thoroughly, we need a qualification which can only be acquired and improved by culture; and indeed a qualification of a double nature: an ability to give, or to act upon others as upon free beings; and an openness to receive, or to derive the greatest advantage from the action of others upon us. ”

“ I only want you to note that the faculties, capacities and powers given to us are like so many seeds and, as each seed has in it the pregnancy, the innate potentiality, to grow and develope from year to year and from decade to decade, so we have in these faculties, capacities and powers the potentialities of inexhaustible promise, of illimitable resource; and these cannot be fully unfolded, they cannot be completely realised, unless we have as the ideal of our life some lofty, noble, inspiring, up-lifting aim and purpose. That is what we should all fall in ardent love with. ”

“ Ideals, it is true, are attained but seldom, and with you as with us all, mental training is far from perfect, and zeal for knowledge far from pure. Yet we trust that in no inconsiderable measure you have a sense of the dignity of wisdom a sense of your own need of it, and a power at the same time of gathering it henceforward for yourselves. Thus you are complete with the completeness of a seed. ”

“ It is, as it were, the door-way of intellect,—the break in the cloud, through which the sun-light of concocted knowledge is to find its way, to enlighten and cheer the general community.—We refer to that acquirement, by which persons are enabled, without distraction of mind, internally to prepare and arrange their ideas, at the moment they are verbally communicating them to others. ”

“ When I speak of all the faculties, I mean all those which enter into and form the character created in the image of God, not merely those which minister to the selfish ends of life. There are faculties for business; there are others which open to us the avenues of knowledge,—others which connect us by chains soft as silk, but strong as iron, to the social and domestic circle,—others still which reveal to us, in vistas of infinite variety and inconceivable extension, our duties to God and man. ”

“ In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which are so much more important than all others, are also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to completeness. Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the circumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, which form an indispensable part of any true account of my education. ”

“ Your own rank and fortune will not assist you; your merit and your manners can alone raise you to figure and fortune. I have laid the foundations of them, by the education which I have given you; but you must build the superstructure yourself. ”

“ These qualities are elements of efficiency. They are [Pg 56] forces for making attainments, for securing results. The student, however, while he is securing the facts which lead to these qualities is in peril of forgetting the primary value of the qualities themselves.
On the other side, the student is also in peril of failing to distinguish between knowledge as knowledge, and knowledge which leads to personal cultivation. What is cultivation, and who is the cultivated person? ”

“ Notice, however, that man comes into his social heritage only by acquisition during his individual life, by his own individual efforts. Is he, now, as a conscious being, better and better endowed as time goes on for the process of absorption? Does talent grow as knowledge grows? ”

“ Interest and aims, concern and purpose, are necessarily connected. Such words as aim, intent, end, emphasize the results which are wanted and striven for; they take for granted the personal attitude of solicitude and attentive eagerness. Such words as interest, affection, concern, motivation, emphasize the bearing of what is foreseen upon the individual's fortunes, and his active desire to act to secure a possible result. They take for granted the objective changes. ”

“ Having fixed the chief aim in the effort to influence and strengthen moral character, we find concentration to be the central principle in which all others unite. It is the focusing of life and school experiences in the unity of the personality. The worth and choice of studies is determined by this. Interest unites knowledge, feeling, and will. The culture epochs supply the nucleus of materials for moral-educative purposes. Apperception assimilates new ideas by bringing each into the bond of its kindred and friends, spinning threads of connection in every direction. ”

“ By such an education as that, while we are getting culture along all the lines that in any degree tend to increase the wants of a person, we are, in the meantime, getting skill to increase our ability to supply these wants. ”

“ Most important of all, we inherit capacities, and our capacities include all that we are capable of becoming in intellect, in morality, in art, and in religion. What we inherit is not specific ability but general capacity. ”

“ Where nature doth with merit challenge. 'Where inherent goodness vies with moral growth,' i.e., virtue developed by training. If, on the other hand, challenge means demand, then with merit would be an adverbial phrase qualifying challenge, and the whole expression would mean 'Where inherent goodness deservedly demands our largest bounty.' I prefer the former interpretation. ”

“ The affirmation of bounds to our capacity holds good as regards the property of the mind—education, cultivation, æsthetic satisfactions—just as it does of material goods. There is a definite limit to what we can effectively make our own. ”

“ Experience taught us that when we embraced one opportunity, one responsibility, the acceptance of it invariably led to another, and so the servant who had five talents, five opportunities, gained ten. ”

“ With great zeal for human improvement, a strong sense of duty, and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed any intellectual task of magnitude. ”

“ His success, aside from his moral qualities, will be in direct proportion to his influence over other men; and this influence, again, will be in part proportional to his command of the means by which the minds of men are moved, mainly, language. ”

“ It awakens interest in his class, because it offers them variety, and it awakens interest in him, because it is a plan which he has devised, and for whose success therefore he feels that his credit is at stake. ”

“ To most other acts of virtue or exertions of wisdom, a concurrence of many circumstances is necessary, some previous knowledge must be attained, some uncommon gifts of nature possessed, or some opportunity produced by an extraordinary combination of things; but the mere power of saving what is already in our hands, must be easy of acquisition to every mind ”

“ Average.—Confer only fair perceptive and knowing powers, but, well [Pg 106] cultivated, know considerable about matters and things, and learn with tolerable ease; yet without cultivation are deficient in practicability of talent, and capability of gathering and retaining knowledge. ”

“ The two former serve, so to express it, for the education of man, and enable us to master, in our own persons, the points already secured, and the wisdom laid up in the great magazine of human knowledge; the last imparts to us the power of adding to the stock, and carrying forward by one step and another the improvements of which our nature is susceptible. ”

“ Wonder if our own highest things have not grown up out of equally simple things. The compulsion first—then the sense of duty become habit, automatic, the conviction expanding into knowledge of ethical habit,—then the habit creating conviction,—then relations,—then the capacity for general ideas. ”

“ It was determination which raised so many worthy individuals from the humble walks of society, and from poverty, and placed them in positions of trust and renown. It is no slight barrier that can effectually oppose the determination of the will—success must ultimately crown its efforts. ”

“ He is an example of what early and continued zeal, talent, and diligence, united with energy of character and consistent moral habits, may accomplish in the cause of letters and science, by the force of solitary application, without the advantage of hereditary wealth, the impulse of patronage, or the prestige of early academic honors. ”

“ And here we reach a point toward which we have attempted to steer; we mean the fullness of character, the entire inward person—the meeting—the combination—the fusion, indeed, of all those properties and qualities of the mind, by a well-directed education; the balancing of the various propensities and gifts by the skillful hand of instruction, so that no appetite, natural or acquired, shall have an undue predominancy, or serve to constitute the distinguishing characteristic of the possessor. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, whilst we follow our daily business for the sake of legitimate temporal gain, we see, above that, the aspect of daily life as educating in all Christian nobleness and lofty thoughts and purposes, then we shall have given away the lower ends for the sake of attaining the higher. You live, suppose, to found a business, to become masters of your trade, to gain wisdom and knowledge, to establish for yourselves a position amongst your fellow-men, to cultivate your character so as to grow in wisdom and purity, apart from God. ”

“ I have now tried, in as much detail as the time will permit, to show the importance of that education which will enable you to rise in your trade or business, whatever it may be, to the upper places; and I have tried to show that a true ambition leads one to [96] strive to be chief rather than a subordinate, to be a foreman rather than a journeyman.
But, after all, everything will depend upon yourselves and upon God. There is no royal road to education ”

“ These opposite conditions, however, you will find to be, more than anything else, the result of difference in degrees of intelligence, knowledge, and consequently ambition. Your aims, even the higher ones, are so indissolubly connected with wealth as the means by which most of them are promoted, that your [Pg 235] incentives to acquire riches have become a part of your intellectual constitution. ”

“ We should also decide what interests we should cultivate265 for our own personal development and happiness, and for the service we are to render in a sphere outside our immediate vocation. We should consider avocations as well as vocations. Whatever interests are selected should be carried to efficiency. Better a reasonable number of carefully selected interests well developed and resulting in efficiency than a multitude of interests which lead us into so many fields that we can at best get but a smattering of each, and that by neglecting the things which should mean the most to us. ”