Intellectual advancement

“ I have arrived at the last division of my work, the period in national life answering to maturity in individual. The objects to be considered differ altogether from those which have hitherto occupied our attention. We have now to find human authority promoting intellectual advancement, and accepting as its maxim that the lot of man will be ameliorated, and his power and dignity increased, in proportion as he is able to comprehend the mechanism of the world, the action of natural laws, and to apply physical forces to his use. ”

“ They do not question the fact that human history, in the civilized communities, is a history of intellectual development and advancement. They concede the largest claims that can be made as to the growth of knowledge among men ”

“ Imposing as is the mere array of the visible tokens of progress in material civilization—a progress born of science, nourished by science, and in its turn begetting science—the whole must appear considerably more impressive when seen to be, as it really is, the outer expression of the inner intellectual life of mankind, the index of its vigor and plenitude, and the earnest of its future possibilities. ”

“ But now that we have entered upon a more advanced age in thought, as in all things pertaining to discovery and practical application, or invention, a critical defining intellectual age, we must henceforth depend upon true science for our progress toward a higher enlightenment. ”

“ But the Advancement was the first of a long line of books which have attempted to teach English readers how to think of knowledge; to make it really and intelligently the interest, not of the school or the study or the laboratory only, but of society at large. ”

“ Here I review the above points in more general terms, and develop a plea for a new science—a new discipline combining the best of science with the best of the humanities.
Several old questions should be revived and asked again with a new attitude, with more modern techniques of investigation and with more persistence. It may take twenty years or more to develop good answers; meanwhile the intellectual life of man will profit in the undertaking. ”

“ With increased culture and new mastery of nature, new desires, demands for new qualities of satisfaction, show themselves, for intelligence perceives new possibilities of action. This projection of new possibilities leads to search for new means of execution, and progress takes place; while the discovery of objects not already used leads to suggestion of new ends.
That science is the chief means of perfecting control of means of action is witnessed by the great crop of inventions which followed intellectual command of the secrets of nature. ”

“ Interest passed from mechanism to biology. And, with this change of interest, a wholly new scientific ideal began to dominate our intellectual imagination. It was the ideal of growth. Life was in movement. ”

“ It does not consist with the design of the present work to track that draught of a new science of morality and policy, that 'table' of an inductive science of human nature, and human life, which the plan of the Advancement of Learning contains, with all the lettering of its compartments put down, into these systematic scientific collections, which the Fables of the Modern Learning,—which these magnificent Parabolical Poems have been able hitherto to wrap up and conceal. ”

“ And the farther the world proceeds on that 'new road' it is travelling at present, the more the demand will be heard in this quarter, for an adaptation of instrumentalities to the advanced, and advancing ages of modern learning and civilization, and to that more severe and exacting genius of the occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and practical genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this advancement proceeds. ”

“ But why enumerate, when the entire intellectual history of our race demonstrates that every invention or thought which has extended man's mental vision and knowledge has been evolved from the discovery of some hitherto hidden law of the material world, or from the teachings of Nature, which always foreshadow the fundamental principles regnant in the seen and the unseen world? ”

“ The influence of the scientific spirit is now rapidly spreading in every field of human activity. Social progress, it is felt, must be guided and accompanied by accurate knowledge,—knowledge which is, in many departments, not yet open to the English reader. ”

“ Higher education ever enlarges the borders of science and leads forth into new fields. It transmutes superstition into knowledge. It is the spirit of civilization and the leader of progress. It stands at the summit of human development, represents the aggregate of human knowledge, is the goal for [Pg 235] intellectual endeavor, and it points the way for the discovery and progress of the future. ”

“ The accumulation of discoveries, the multiplication of inventions, the improvement of the means of comfort, the extension of instruction, and the perfecting of methods, are valuable in the degree in which they contribute to this end. The characteristic of progress is increase of spiritual force. In material progress even, the intellectual and moral element is the value-giving factor. ”

“ The modern nations of the civilized world owe the progress which they have made—as well in those physical sciences in which they have already excelled their masters, as in the moral and intellectual inquiries, in which, with all the advantage of the experience of the latter, it can scarcely be said that they have yet equalled them,—to what is called the revival of learning ”

“ But the higher education has been transformed, and mainly by the application of scientific methods, and of the philosophic spirit, to the study of history, economics, and the classics. When we are called to defend the pursuit of metaphysics or the study of the classics, either as indispensable to the discipline or to the enlargement of the mind, we are not called on to defend the methods of a generation ago. ”

“ It must equally in the sphere of science as of literature enlarge the mind, give it an organizing power and a philosophic habit by which each new acquirement is measured in relation to the whole, and made to take its place in a system. It must give a love of knowledge for its own sake, and the loftiness and independence of character which extensive knowledge should produce. ”

“ The advances made in all kinds of knowledge in this our age are known to be enormous; and the public desire for instruction, which the intellectual triumphs of the time naturally and inevitably arouse, is commensurate with the growth of knowledge. ”

“ The constant widening of the intellectual field indefinitely extended the range of that especially human faculty of looking before and after, which adds to the fleeting present those old and new worlds of the past and the future, wherein men dwell the more the higher their culture. ”

“ That the generation which follows us received from us at least, something which is agreed upon: the rational and scientific education, this renewing and liberating education, essentially progressive, of form that can always add and never have anything to unmake.
II
Eliminating imaginary factors as a result of the formula, science approaches the human being in all its solidarity, with an understanding of organs, energies, faculties of a different sort, in which [the many activities] are expressed by this convergence of physical, intellectual and passionate acts which life is made up of. ”

“ And as he aspires to exhibit models of education, possessing higher excellencies than mechanical dexterity or mere intellectual acuteness; his anxious aim will be to make instruction in art and science, the culture of the understanding, and of the physical powers, subservient to the nobler intention of fostering and maturing the virtues of the heart. ”

“ With respect to the higher qualities of intellect necessary for understanding and developing the general laws of the science, the same talents I believe are required as for making advancement in every other department of human knowledge ”

“ Its influence penetrates every public and private institution, and is exciting the best energies of the human mind, both to the invention of new methods of intellectual cultivation and the application of knowledge to the practical purposes of life. ”

“ Then let half your work be in the direction in which you think you may make your life outwardly effective; for instance, if you are a Darwin let it be in the line of natural science. Let the other half of your work be constantly varied. Suppose you have chosen history as the study for a life-time, take as a companion study something new every year,—first a science, then art, then literature, then mathematics, then a language, etc., etc. For the fruit of culture is to be and not to do ”

“ If we can hold on till they bear their fruits in the explanation of things that we have already begun to take notice of, the pursuit is sustained by a genuine and proper scientific interest, whose real groundwork, however deeply hidden, is the stimulus of agreement among differing particulars, and the lightening of the intellectual labor in comprehending the world. ”

“ Hence in deciding upon the right method of education, an inquiry into the method of civilisation will help to guide us.
5. One of the conclusions to which such an inquiry leads, is, that in each branch of instruction we should proceed from the empirical to the rational. During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art. It results from the necessity we are under, both individually and as a race, of reaching the abstract by way of the concrete, that there must be practice and an accruing experience with its empirical generalisation, before there can be science. ”

“ Is there not an inward and intellectual world also which has to be studied in its historical development, from the first appearance of predicative and demonstrative roots, their combination and differentiation, leading up to the beginning of rational thought in its steady progress from the lowest to the highest stages? ”

“ Is there any one element which communicates the decisive impulse to all the rest,—any predominating agency in the course of social evolution? The answer is that all the other parts of social existence are associated with, andDecisive Importance of Intellectual development. drawn along by, the contemporary condition of intellectual development. ”

“ New scientific knowledge affords advantages to all classes of men; to the minister of religion, by supplying him with new illustrations of Creative power, in the greatness, smallness, and vast variety of nature; to the physician, by explaining to him more perfectly the structure and phenomena of the human body, and by providing him with new remedies ”

“ In each century we shall see a great widening of the horizon of human thought, a great increase of precision in each branch of human knowledge, a great improvement in the conditions of human life, as enlightenment and precision come to be controlling factors in human action. ”

“ The various knowledge, the endlessly multiplied observation, the experience and reasonings of man added to man, of generation following generation, which were required to bring to a moderate state of advancement the great primary arts subservient to physical life—the arts of providing food, habitation, clothing, and defence, we are utterly unable to conceive. ”

“ But the history of human progress consists in the gradual and partial substitution of science for art, of the power over nature acquired in youth by study, for that which comes in late middle age as the half-conscious result of experience. ”

“ Look at the improvements that have resulted from the efforts of inventive genius, and at the progress that the arts and sciences have made. We are in a new world, so different from that of our forefathers, that their experiences count almost nothing in this new era. ”

“ To pursue science for the sake of the truths it may reveal, is an endeavour to advance the elements of human happiness through the intelligence of the race. To avail ourselves of facts for the improvement of art and manufactures, is the duty of every nation moving in the [Pg 411] advance of civilization. But to draw from the great truths of science intelligible inferences and masterly deductions, and from these to advance to new and beautiful abstractions, is a mental exercise which tends to the refinement and elevation of every human feeling. ”

“ In various other ways, apart from the mutual influence of divergent group-customs, the progress of civilization tends to produce variations in ideals. The increase of knowledge, the development of science and philosophy, bring floods of new ideas to burst the old dams; deepening insight reveals the irrationality of old ideas to the leaders of thought. The progress of the arts gives new interests and valuations. ”

“ During the modern period of progressive life systematic education has forced the intellectual faculties through a more rapid course, giving predominance to intellectual life everywhere. The intellectual development of nations or the intellectual development of man in general is a theme of never-tiring interest, as it represents his noblest achievements. ”

“ Thus slow and gradual, but permanent, are the progressive steps in the growth and development of true human science, which is founded on experience—the internal as well as external, the higher as well as the lower—and on tradition, language, and revelation. ”

“ The Organic Series.—Man a Member of it.—His Position determined by Anatomical and Physiological Investigation of his Nervous System.—Its triple Forms: Automatic, Instinctive, Intellectual.
The same progressive Development is seen in individual Man, in the entire animal Series, and in the Life of the Globe.—They are all under the Control of an eternal, universal, irresistible Law.
The Aim of Nature is intellectual Development, and human Institutions must conform thereto. ”

“ He must study the nature of the effect that he is to produce, and of the materials upon which he is to work, and adopt, after mature deliberation, a plan to accomplish his purpose founded upon the principles which ought always to regulate the action of mind upon mind, and adapted to produce the intellectual effect which he wishes to accomplish. ”