My Novel Part 41

RICCABOCCA.--"Yes; but your knowledge-mongers at present call upon us to discard military discipline, and the qualities that produce it, from the list of the useful arts. And in your own Essay, you insist upon knowledge as the great disbander of armies, and the foe of all military discipline!"

PARSON.--"Let the young man proceed. Nations, you say, may be beaten by other nations less learned and civilized?"

LEONARD.--"But knowledge elevates a cla.s.s. I invite the members of my own humble order to knowledge, because knowledge will lift them into power."

RICCABOCCA.--"What do you say to that, Mr. Dale?"

PARSON.--"In the first place, is it true that the cla.s.s which has the most knowledge gets the most power? I suppose philosophers, like my friend Dr. Riccabocca, think they have the most knowledge. And pray, in what age have philosophers governed the world? Are they not always grumbling that n.o.body attends to them?"

RICCABOCCA.--"Per Bacco, if people had attended to us, it would have been a droll sort of world by this time!"

PARSON.--"Very likely. But, as a general rule, those have the most knowledge who give themselves up to it the most. Let us put out of the question philosophers (who are often but ingenious lunatics), and speak only of erudite scholars, men of letters and practical science, professors, tutors, and fellows of colleges. I fancy any member of parliament would tell us that there is no cla.s.s of men which has less actual influence on public affairs. These scholars have more knowledge than manufacturers and s.h.i.+powners, squires and farmers; but do you find that they have more power over the Government and the votes of the House of Parliament?"

"They ought to have," said Leonard.

"Ought they?" said the parson; "we'll consider that later. Meanwhile, you must not escape from your own proposition, which is, that knowledge is power,--not that it ought to be. Now, even granting your corollary, that the power of a cla.s.s is therefore proportioned to its knowledge, pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a standstill? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and apt.i.tude for learning will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appet.i.te for knowledge, the more the increased compet.i.tion will favour those most adapted to excel by circ.u.mstance and nature. At this day, there is a vast increase of knowledge spread over all society, compared with that in the Middle Ages; but is there not a still greater distinction between the highly educated gentleman and the intelligent mechanic, than there was then between the baron who could not sign his name and the churl at the plough; between the accomplished statesman, versed in all historical lore, and the voter whose politics are formed by his newspaper, than there was between the legislator who pa.s.sed laws against witches and the burgher who defended his guild from some feudal aggression; between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the blockhead of yesterday? Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite as favourable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of old. As the progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever do.

"Knowledge is like capital: the more there is in a country, the greater the disparities in wealth between one man and another. Therefore, if the working cla.s.s increase in knowledge, so do the other cla.s.ses; and if the working cla.s.s rise peaceably and legitimately into power, it is not in proportion to their own knowledge alone, but rather according as it seems to the knowledge of the other orders of the community, that such augmentation of proportional power is just and safe and wise."

Placed between the parson and the philosopher, Leonard felt that his position was not favourable to the display of his forces. Insensibly he edged his chair somewhat away, and said mournfully,--

"Then, according to you, the reign of knowledge would be no great advance in the aggregate freedom and welfare of man?"

PARSON.--"Let us define. By knowledge, do you mean intellectual cultivation; by the reign of knowledge, the ascendency of the most cultivated minds?"

LEONARD (after a pause).--"Yes."

RICCABOCCA.--"Oh, indiscreet young man! that is an unfortunate concession of yours; for the ascendency of the most cultivated minds would be a terrible oligarchy!"

PARSON.--"Perfectly true; and we now reply to your a.s.sertion that men who, by profession, have most learning, ought to have more influence than squires and merchants, farmers and mechanics. Observe, all the knowledge that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive and perfect, but knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and pa.s.sions of humanity. And suppose that you could establish, as the sole regulators of affairs, those who had the most mental cultivation, do you think they would not like that power well enough to take all means which their superior intelligence could devise to keep it to themselves? The experiment was tried of old by the priests of Egypt; and in the empire of China, at this day, the aristocracy are elected from those who have most distinguished themselves in learned colleges. If I may call myself a member of that body, 'the people,' I would rather be an Englishman, however much displeased with dull ministers and blundering parliaments, than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and the greatest practical ministers, who, like Themistocles, have made small States great, and the most dominant races, who, like the Romans, have stretched their rule from a village half over the universe, have been distinguished by various qualities which a philosopher would sneer at, and a knowledge-monger would call 'sad prejudices' and 'lamentable errors of reason.'"

LEONARD (bitterly).--"Sir, you make use of knowledge itself to argue against knowledge."

PARSON.--"I make use of the little I know to prove the foolishness of idolatry. I do not argue against knowledge; I argue against knowledge-wors.h.i.+p. For here, I see in your Essay, that you are not contented with raising human knowledge into something like divine omnipotence,--you must also confound her with virtue. According to you, it is but to diffuse the intelligence of the few among the many, and all at which we preachers aim is accomplished. Nay, more; for, whereas we humble preachers have never presumed to say, with the heathen Stoic, that even virtue is sure of happiness below (though it be the best road to it), you tell us plainly that this knowledge of yours gives not only the virtue of a saint, but bestows the bliss of a G.o.d. Before the steps of your idol, the evils of life disappear. To hear you, one has but 'to know,' in order to be exempt from the sins and sorrows of the ignorant.

Has it ever been so? Grant that you diffuse amongst the many all the knowledge ever attained by the few. Have the wise few been so unerring and so happy? You supposed that your motto was accurately cited from Bacon. What was Bacon himself? The poet tells you

"'The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind!'

"Can you hope to bestow upon the vast ma.s.s of your order the luminous intelligence of this 'Lord Chancellor of Nature'? Grant that you do so, and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which you a.s.sume as the concomitants of the gift? See Bacon himself: what black ingrat.i.tude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling servility! what abject and pitiful spirit! So far from intellectual knowledge, in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with great moral corruption." (Aside to Riccabocca.--"Push on, will you?")

RICCASOCCA.--"A combination remarkable in eras as in individuals.

Petronius shows us a state of morals at which a commonplace devil would blush, in the midst of a society more intellectually cultivated than certainly was that which produced Regulus or the Horatii. And the most learned eras in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the vices into the most ghastly refinement."

LEONARD (rising in great agitation, and clasping his hands).--"I cannot contend with you, who produce against information so slender and crude as mine the stores which have been locked from my reach; but I feel that there must be another side to this s.h.i.+eld,--a s.h.i.+eld that you will not even allow to be silver. And, oh, if you thus speak of knowledge, why have you encouraged me to know?"

CHAPTER XX.

"Ah, my son!" said the parson, "if I wished to prove the value of religion, would you think I served it much if I took as my motto, 'Religion is power'? Would not that be a base and sordid view of its advantages? And would you not say, He who regards religion as a power intends to abuse it as a priestcraft?"

"Well put!" said Riccabocca.

"Wait a moment--let me think! Ah, I see, Sir!" said Leonard.

PARSON.--"If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales of the market; if its objects be peaceful, do not seek to arm it with the weapons of strife; if it is to be the cement of society, do not vaunt it as the triumph of cla.s.s against cla.s.s."

LEONARD (ingenuously).--"You correct me n.o.bly, sir. Knowledge is power, but not in the sense in which I have interpreted the saying."

PARSON.--"Knowledge is one of the powers in the moral world, but one that, in its immediate result, is not always of the most worldly advantage to the possessor. It is one of the slowest, because one of the most durable, of agencies. It may take a thousand years for a thought to come into power; and the thinker who originated it might have died in rags or in chains."

RICCABOCCA.--"Our Italian proverb saith that 'the teacher is like the candle, which lights others in consuming itself.'"

PARSON.--"Therefore he who has the true ambition of knowledge should entertain it for the power of his idea, not for the power it may bestow on himself: it should be lodged in the conscience, and, like the conscience, look for no certain reward on this side the grave. And since knowledge is compatible with good and with evil, would not it be better to say, 'Knowledge is a trust'?"

"You are right, sir," said Leonard, cheerfully; "pray proceed."

PARSON.--"You ask me why we encourage you to KNOW. First, because (as you say yourself in your Essay) knowledge, irrespective of gain, is in itself a delight, and ought to be something far more. Like liberty, like religion, it may be abused; but I have no more right to say that the poor shall be ignorant than I have to say that the rich only shall be free, and that the clergy alone shall learn the truths of redemption.

You truly observe in your treatise that knowledge opens to us other excitements than those of the senses, and another life than that of the moment. The difference between us is this,--that you forget that the same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains; the h.o.r.n.y hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine skin of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of the desires opens to them also new temptations. Vanity, the desire of applause, pride, the sense of superiority, gnawing discontent where that superiority is not recognized, morbid susceptibility, which comes with all new feelings, the underrating of simple pleasures apart from the intellectual, the chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for things unattainable below,--all these are surely amongst the first temptations that beset the entrance into knowledge." Leonard shaded his face with his hand.

"Hence," continued the parson, benignantly,--"hence, so far from considering that we do all that is needful to accomplish ourselves as men, when we cultivate only the intellect, we should remember that we thereby continually increase the range of our desires, and therefore of our temptations; and we should endeavour, simultaneously, to cultivate both those affections of the heart which prove the ignorant to be G.o.d's children no less than the wise, and those moral qualities which have made men great and good when reading and writing were scarcely known: to wit,--patience and fort.i.tude under poverty and distress; humility and beneficence amidst grandeur and wealth, and, in counteraction to that egotism which all superiority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire, Justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity, which is their loving mother. Thus accompanied, knowledge indeed becomes the magnificent crown of humanity,--not the imperious despot, but the checked and tempered sovereign of the soul."

The parson paused, and Leonard, coming near him, timidly took his hand, with a child's affectionate and grateful impulse.

RICCAROCCA.--"And if, Leonard, you are not satisfied with our parson's excellent definitions, you have only to read what Lord Bacon himself has said upon the true ends of knowledge to comprehend at once how angry the poor great man, whom Mr. Dale treats so harshly, would have been with those who have stinted his elaborate distinctions and provident cautions into that c.o.xcombical little aphorism, and then misconstrued all he designed to prove in favour of the commandment, and authority of learning. For," added the sage, looking up as a man does when he is tasking his memory, "I think it is thus that after saying the greatest error of all is the mistaking or misplacing the end of knowledge, and denouncing the various objects for which it is vulgarly sought,--I think it is thus that Lord Bacon proceeds: 'Knowledge is not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men's estate.'"

["But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appet.i.te; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession"--[that is, for most of those objects which are meant by the ordinary t.i.ters of the saying, "Knowledge is power"]--"and seldom sincerely to give a true account of these gifts of reason to the benefit and use of men, as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale,--and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men's estate."--Advancement of Learning, Book I.]

PARSON (remorsefully).--"Are those Lord Bacon's words? I am very sorry I spoke so uncharitably of his life. I must examine it again. I may find excuses for it now that I could not when I first formed my judgment.

I was then a raw lad at Oxford. But I see, Leonard, there is still something on your mind."

LEONARD.--"It is true, sir: I would but ask whether it is not by knowledge that we arrive at the qualities and virtues you so well describe, but which you seem to consider as coming to us through channels apart from knowledge?"

PARSON.--"If you mean by the word 'knowledge' something very different from what you express in your Essay--and which those contending for mental instruction, irrespective of religion and ethics, appear also to convey by the word--you are right; but, remember, we have already agreed that by the word' knowledge' we mean culture purely intellectual."

LEONARD.--"That is true,--we so understood it."

PARSON.--"Thus, when this great Lord Bacon erred, you may say that he erred from want of knowledge,--the knowledge which moralists and preachers would convey. But Lord Bacon had read all that moralists and preachers could say on such matters; and he certainly did not err from want of intellectual cultivation. Let me here, my child, invite you to observe, that He who knew most of our human hearts and our immortal destinies did not insist on this intellectual culture as essential to the virtues that form our well-being here, and conduce to our salvation hereafter. Had it been essential, the All-wise One would not have selected humble fishermen for the teachers of His doctrine, instead of culling His disciples from Roman portico or Athenian academe. And this, which distinguishes so remarkably the Gospel from the ethics of heathen philosophy, wherein knowledge is declared to be necessary to virtue, is a proof how slight was the heathen sage's insight into the nature of mankind, when compared with the Saviour's; for hard indeed would it be to men, whether high or low, rich or poor, if science and learning, or contemplative philosophy, were the sole avenues to peace and redemption; since, in this state of ordeal requiring active duties, very few in any age, whether they be high or low, rich or poor, ever are or can be devoted to pursuits merely mental. Christ does not represent Heaven as a college for the learned. Therefore the rules of the Celestial Legislator are rendered clear to the simplest understanding as to the deepest."

RICCABOCCA.--"And that which Plato and Zeno, Pythagoras and Socrates could not do, was done by men whose ignorance would have been a by-word in the schools of the Greek. The G.o.ds of the vulgar were dethroned; the face of the world was changed! This thought may make us allow, indeed, that there are agencies more powerful than mere knowledge, and ask, after all, what is the mission which knowledge should achieve?"

PARSON.--"The Sacred Book tells us even that; for after establis.h.i.+ng the truth that, for the mult.i.tude, knowledge is not essential to happiness and good, it accords still to knowledge its sublime part in the revelation prepared and announced. When an instrument of more than ordinary intelligence was required for a purpose divine; when the Gospel, recorded by the simple, was to be explained by the acute, enforced by the energetic, carried home to the doubts of the Gentile, the Supreme Will joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the learning and genius of Saint Paul,--not holier than the others, calling himself the least, yet labouring more abundantly than they all, making himself all things unto all men, so that some might be saved. The ignorant may be saved no less surely than the wise; but here comes the wise man who helps to save. And how the fulness and animation of this grand Presence, of this indomitable Energy, seem to vivify the toil, and to speed the work! 'In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils amongst false brethren.' Behold, my son! does not Heaven here seem to reveal the true type of Knowledge,--a sleepless activity, a pervading agency, a dauntless heroism, an all-supporting faith?--a power, a power indeed; a power apart from the aggrandizement of self; a power that brings to him who owns and transmits it but 'weariness and painfulness; in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness,'--but a power distinct from the mere circ.u.mstance of the man, rus.h.i.+ng from him as rays from the sun; borne through the air, and clothing it with light, piercing under earth, and calling forth the harvest. Wors.h.i.+p not knowledge, wors.h.i.+p not the sun, O my child! Let the sun but proclaim the Creator; let the knowledge but illumine the wors.h.i.+p!"

The good man, overcome by his own earnestness, paused; his head drooped on the young student's breast, and all three were long silent.