Intellectual cultivation

“ As the intellect of the men of this generation draws the food required for its development and cultivation from the products of the intellectual activity of former times, so may the constituents or elements of the bodies of a former generation pass into, and become parts of our own frames. ”

“ What should be aimed at is the cultivation of the mind so that it will broaden with enlarging experience, that it will be hospitable to new ideas and yet not be overwhelmed by them, that it will preserve inviolate its intellectual integrity and keep fresh the spirit of inquiry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In many ways is this curious analogy apparent.
Not only does the mind need development, but it also needs intelligent cultivation. For it may be developed by improper objects of thought just as well as by the proper ones. A rich field will grow tares and weeds as well as good grain or fruit. Thought-culture should not be confined to the development of a strong and active mind, but should be also extended to the cultivation of a wise and intelligent mind. Strength and Wisdom should be combined. Moreover there should be sought a harmonious and normal development. ”

“ If we neglect the proper cultivation of them, we shall come under the condemnation of the servant who hid his talent in the earth. But there is a very great difference between mental cultivation and the mere reception of knowledge. ”

“ And if any practical man ask, What is the use of the younger scholars learning anything about wild flowers, which the cultivation of the country may soon render extinct, and which are but weeds at best?—there are two sufficient answers ready: first, that all truth is divine, and that the workmanship of infinite skill is beautiful and worthy of the eyes which may behold it; secondly, that no mental discipline is better adapted for the young mind than this learning how to distinguish plants. ”

“ Culture and religion—here they meet in university life. Most of your time is given to culture. What are you doing? You are enriching and spading up the soil of life. That is the test of culture. Is it quickening, deepening, stimulating the mind? Is it opening the imagination and training the will? Then it is true culture and not that spurious cultivation which spreads over life gravel instead of fertilizers. Culture prepares the soil ”

“ The true education embraces the symmetrical development of mind, body and heart. An old and wise writer has said, "Cultivate the physical exclusively, and you have an athlete or a savage; the moral only, and you have an enthusiast or a maniac; the intellectual only, and you have a diseased oddity,—it may be a monster. It is only by wisely training all of them together that the complete man may be found."
To cultivate anything—be it a plant, an animal, or a mind—is to make it grow. Nothing admits of culture but that which has a principle of life capable of being expanded. ”

“ The world's cultivation, so slowly and painfully achieved, helps civilize him. He may then go further on, and cultivate himself; may transcend the development of mankind, adding new rounds to the ladder. ”

“ But it is likewise a general principle that powers or habits acquired by cultivation are transmitted to the next generation and exalted or perpetuated; the history of particular races of men affords distinct proofs of this. ”

“ As cultivation in agriculture improves the vegetable, so does education improve the moral world. The present mode, like every other part of the moral system, is measured and adjusted by the short standard of relative truth. ”

“ We all know the peculiar methods adopted in our own time of cultivating the sciences: we all know them, because they form a part of our lives. And, for this very reason, scarcely anybody seems to ask himself what the result of such a cultivation of the sciences will mean to culture in general, even supposing that everywhere the highest abilities and the most earnest will be available for the promotion of culture. ”

“ The cultivation of the mind is the superstructure of the moral, social and religious character, which will follow us into our every-day life, and make us 243 what God intended us to be—the noblest instruments of His creative power. ”

“ And does the intelligence consist, in degree or in kind, in nothing but a repetition of the same experiences as those through which his progenitors were carried, or is there a something in him to which his individual experiences contribute the mental food by which the mind is nourished and by the assimilation of which its individual intellectual growth becomes possible? ”

“ 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? ”

“ This process of Nature, so familiar to most of us, serves to illustrate exactly what should take place in intellectual growth. The mind hungers and feels out for and is impelled by a natural internal impulse to gather to itself the elements of knowledge; the wise teacher steps forward and becomes to the germinating intellect what the sun and dew and rain are to the plant. The mind must be fed in conformity with its longings, its wants, its desires. ”

“ In a word, we have been taught to regard education as creator, rather than helper, guide or cultivator. No one expects his gardener, however skillful, to supply a superior product from barren soil or defective seed. Now let it be given all possible emphasis that back of culture must be a capable brain; and that this element of capacity is rooted in the physical basis of life itself—the germ plasm. ”

“ Universal mental cultivation is the enduring basis and majestic pillar of their structure. As the effulgent life-giving orb of day brings forth the hidden beauties and treasures of nature, they draw out to the light the powers and faculties of every member of society. ”

“ It teaches us to set a just estimation on our own acquisitions, and encourages us to cherish that cultivation, which is so closely connected with the existence and the exercise of every social virtue. ”

“ And thus, while all admit that knowledge cannot thus descend from one generation to another, an increased aptitude for the acquirement, either of knowledge generally or of some particular kind of it, may be thus inherited. These tendencies and aptitudes will acquire additional strength, expansion, and permanence, in each new generation, from their habitual exercise upon the materials supplied by a continually-enlarged experience; and thus the acquired habitudes produced by the intellectual culture of ages will become "a second nature" to every one who inherits them. ”

“ From partial and one-sided cultivation of Human Nature, partial and one-sided results can alone ensue. The commencement of this glorious era will date from the first complete education of all the manifold nature of man. ”

“ Never, through training and cultivation, will the colocynth and the bitter tree38 change into the Tree of Blessedness.39 That is to say, education cannot alter the inner essence of a man, but it doth exert tremendous influence, and with this power it can bring forth from the individual whatever perfections and capacities are deposited within him. A grain of wheat, when cultivated by the farmer, will yield a whole harvest, and a seed, through the gardener’s care, will grow into a great tree. ”

“ And it would have been impossible to provide a lesson suited to every degree of cultivation and capacity, unless it were one framed after Nature's example, or rather a representation of Nature herself, employing her universal symbolism instead of technicalities of language, inviting endless research, yet rewarding the humblest inquirer, and disclosing its secrets to every one in Proportion to his preparatory training and power to comprehend them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is further admitted that such special qualities as literary or artistic taste, the mathematical or the historical sense, an aptitude for business or finance, are ready to evolve themselves, in response to the fostering influence of practical experience directed by skilful teaching. It is admitted, in other words, that there is much in human nature, apart from what is purely or mainly physical, which is both capable and worthy of cultivation, and which education ought therefore to try to cultivate. ”

“ Without its exercise there can be no progress or growth. It has its origin in a groping instinct, its final development in orderly activities capable of increasingly clear classification. Body, intellect, character, moral and religious, are under its influence and dependent upon its beneficent operations. ”

“ Nature intends, that the cultivation and strengthening of the powers of the mind shall in every case precede those exercises in which their strength is to be tried. In infants and young children we perceive this cultivation and invigorating of the mind going on, long before these powers are to be taxed even for their own preservation. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ But the formation of new intellectual habits in men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the hour-glass' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy and anticipation. ”

“ With the relief from anxiety and concern for immediate and temporary requirements, and an improvement in material sources of prosperity, came new wants, spontaneously arising, to a thriving, active, and reasoning people. The need of literary and scientific cultivation was fully understood, and incited to practical endeavors to meet its suggestions. ”

“ And I have not counted the ignorance which is fostered by a defective education and which causes the greater part of the cultivators to cling to the traditional processes of cultivation,—processes which demand far too much work and effort for the results. ”

“ In the meantime, education had become universal, and the technical terms of abstruse sciences familiar to the lowest mechanics; whilst questions of religion, politics, and metaphysics, agitated by them daily, supplied that stimulus, for which their minds, enervated by over cultivation, constantly craved. ”

“ And with reference to our individual cultivation, we may remember that we are not here to promote incalculable quantities of law, physic, or manufactured goods, but to become men—not narrow pedants, but wide-seeing, mind-travelled men. ”

“ 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 ”

“ All that has gone before, all that we have discussed of sound birth and physical growth and care, is no more than the making ready of the soil for the mind that is to grow therein. As we come to this matter of language, we come a step nearer to the intimate realities of our subject—we come to the mental plant that is to bear the flower and the ripe fruit of the individual life. ”

“ This increase, although on the whole both a cause and a consequence of the advancement of science, yet has in some respects lowered the high character of her cultivators by the competition it has necessarily engendered. Books tell us that the cultivation of science must elevate and expand the mind, by keeping it apart from the jangling of worldly interests. ”

“ What are to be the new means and appliances for mental culture? We have but to turn again to Nature as our teacher and our guide; her instincts are unerring. The seed germinates and pushes forth its root from within outward. The expansion or growth takes place by means of the elements which it attracts to itself, when these are placed within its reach, and towards which it stretches forth its organs. ”