tion, or intellectual development, the power, acquired through exercise by the higher faculties, of a more varied, vigorous and protracted activity.

Not identical.

In the first place, then, it will be requisite, I conceive, to say but little to show that knowledge and intellectual development are not only not the same, but stand in no necessary proportion to each other. This is manifest if we consider the very different conditions under which these two qualities are acquired. The one condition under which all powers, and consequently the intellectual faculties, are developed, is exercise. The more intense and continuous the exercise, the more vigorously developed will be the power.

Is truth or mental exercise the superior end?

But a certain quantity of knowledge,-in other words, a certain amount of possessed truths,-does not suppose, as its condition, a corresponding sum of intellectual exercise. One truth requires much, another truth requires little, effort in acquisition; and, while the original discovery of a truth evolves perhaps a maximum of the highest quality of energy, the subsequent learning of that truth elicits probably but a minimum of the very lowest. But, as it is evident that the possession of truths, and the development of the mind in which they are deposited, are not identical, I proceed, in the second place, to show that, considered as ends, and in relation to each other, the knowledge of truths is not supreme, but subordinate to the cultivation of the knowing mind. The question-Is Truth, or is the Mental Exercise in the pursuit of truth, the superior end?-this is perhaps the most curious theoretical, and certainly the most important practical, problem in the whole compass of philosophy. For, according to the solution at which we ar rive, must we accord the higher or the lower rank to certain great departments of study; and, what is of more importance, the character of its solution, as it determines the aim, regulates from first to last the method, which an enlightened science of education must adopt.

Popular solution of this question.

But, however curious and important, this question has never, in so far as I am aware, been regularly discussed. Nay, what is still more remarkable, the erroneous alternative has been very generally assumed as true. The consequence of this has been, that sciences of far inferior, have been elevated above sciences of far superior, utility; while education has been systematically distorted,-though truth and nature have occasionally burst the shackles which a perverse theory had imposed. The reason of this is sufficiently obvious. At first

sight, it seems even absurd to doubt that truth is more valuable than its pursuit; for is this not to say that the end is less important than the mean?-and on this superficial view is the prevalent misapprehension founded. A slight consideration will, however, expose the fallacy.

Practical knowledge; its end.

The end of speculative knowledge.

Knowledge is either practical or speculative. In practical knowledge it is evident that truth is not the ultimate end; for, in that case, knowledge is, ex hypothesi, for the sake of application. The knowledge of a moral, of a political, of a religious truth, is of value only as it affords the preliminary or condition of its exercise. In speculative knowledge, on the other hand, there may indeed, at first sight, seem greater difficulty; but further reflection will prove that speculative truth is only pursued, and is only held of value, for the sake of intellectual activity: "Sordet cognita veritas" is a shrewd aphorism of Seneca. A truth, once known, falls into comparative insignificance. It is now prized, less on its own account than as opening up new ways to new activity, new suspense, new hopes, new discoveries, new self-gratulation. Every votary of science is wilfully ignorant of a thousand established facts, of a thousand which he might make his own more easily than he could attempt the discovery of even one. But it is not knowledge, it is not truth,that he principally seeks; he seeks the exercise of his faculties and feelings; and, as in following after the one he exerts a greater amount of pleasurable energy than in taking formal possession of the thousand, he disdains the certainty of the many, and prefers the chances of the one. Accordingly, the sciences always studied with keenest interest are those in a state of progress and uncertainty; absolute certainty and absolute completion would be the paralysis of any study; and the last worst calamity that could befall man, as he is at present constituted, would be that full and final possession of speculative truth, which he now vainly anticipates as the consummation of his intellectual happiness.

"Quæsivit cœlo lucem, ingemuitque reperta."1

But what is true of science is true, indeed, of all human activity. "In life," as the great Pascal observes, "we always believe that we are seeking repose, while, in reality, all that we ever seek is agitation." When Pyrrhus proposed to subdue a part of the

1 Virgil, En. iv. 692.- ED.

2 Pensées, partie i. art. vii. § 1, (vol. ii. p. 34,

ed. Faugère): "Ils croient chercher sincèrement le repos, et ne cherchent en effet que

world, and then to enjoy rest among his friends, he believed that what he sought was possession, not pursuit; and Alexander assuredly did not foresee that the conquest of one world would only leave him to weep for another world to conquer. It is ever the contest that pleases us, and not the victory. Thus it is in play; thus it is in hunting; thus it is in the search of truth; thus it is in life. The past does not interest, the present does not satisfy, the future alone is the object which engages us.

"(Nullo votorum fine beati)

Victuros agimus semper, nec vivimus unquam.” 2

"Man never is, but always to be, blest." 3

resolved by

How philosophers.

The question, I said, has never been regularly discussed, probably because it lay in too narrow a compass; but no philosopher appears to have ever seriously proposed it to himself, who did not resolve it in contradiction to the ordinary opinion. A contradiction of this opinion is even involved in the very term Philosophy; and the man who first declared, that he was not a σopòs, or possessor, but a pilóσopos, or seeker of truth, at once enounced the true end of human speculation, and embodied it in a significant name. Under the same conviction Plato defines man "the hunter of truth," for science is a chase, and in a chase the pursuit is always of greater value than the game.

"Our hopes, like towering falcons, aim

At objects in an airy height,

But all the pleasure of the game

Is afar off to view the flight." 6

"The intellect," says Aristotle, in one passage, "is perfected, not by knowledge but by activity;" and in another, "The arts

l'agitation." "Le conseil qu'on donnait à Pyrrhus, de prendre le repos qu'il allait chercher par tant de fatigues, recevait bien des difficultés." ED.

1 Rien ne nous plaît que le combat, mais non pas la victoire. . . Ainsi dans le jeu, ainsi dans la recherche de la vérité. On aime à voir dans les disputes le combat des opinions; mais de contempler la vérité trouvée, point du tout. . . Nous ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses "— Pascal, Pensées, vol. i. p. 205, ed. Faugère.-ED. 2 Manilius, Astronomicon, lib. iv. 4.-ED. 3 Pope, Essay on Man, i. 96. -ED.

4 Pythagoras, according to the ordinary account; see Cicero, Tusc. Quæst. v. 3. Sir

W. Hamilton, however, probably meant Socrates. See lecture III., p. 47.-ED.

5 This definition is not to be found in the Platonic Dialogues; a passage something like it occurs in the Euthydemus, p. 290. Cf. Diog. Laert., Jib. viii. Pythagoras, f 8.– Em Tập Bí, οἱ μὲν ἀνδραποδώδεις φύονται, δόξης καὶ πλεονεξίας θηραταί· οἱ δὲ φιλόσοφοι, τῆς ἀληθείας. - ED.

6 Prior, Lines to the Hon. C. Montague. British Poets, vol.vii. p. 393, (Anderson's ed.) — Ed.

7 Said of moral knowledge, Eth. Nic. i. 3: Τέλος οὐ γνῶσις, ἀλλὰ πρᾶξις. Cf. ibid. i. 7, 13; i 8, 9; ix. 7, 4; xi. 9, 7; x. 7, 1. Met., xi. 7: Ἡ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή. - ED.

5

and sciences are powers, but every power exists only for the sake of action; the end of philosophy, therefore, is not knowledge, but the energy conversant about knowledge." Descending to the schoolmen "The intellect," says Aquinas, "commences in operation, and in operation it ends;"2 and Scotus even declares that a man's knowledge is measured by the amount of his mental activity -"tantum scit homo, quantum operatur." The profoundest thinkers of modern times have emphatically testified to the same great principle. "If," says Mallebranche, "I held truth captive in my hand, I should open my hand and let it fly, in order that I might again pursue and capture it." "Did the Almighty," says Lessing, "holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left Search after Truth, deign to tender me the one I might prefer, in all humility, but without hesitation, I should request Search after Truth." "Truth," says Von Müller, "is the property of God, the pursuit of truth is what belongs to man;" and Jean Paul Richter: "It is not the goal, but the course, which makes us happy." But there would be no end of similar quotations." But if speculative truth itself be only valuable as a mean of intellectual activity, those studies which determine the faculties to a more vigorous exertion, will, in every liberal sense, be better entitled, absolutely, to the name of useful, than those which, with a greater complement of more certain facts, awaken them to a less intense, and consequently to a less improving exercise. On this ground I would rest one of the preeminent utilities of mental philosophy. That it comprehends all the sublimest objects of our theoretical and moral interest; that every (natural) conclusion concerning God, the soul, the present worth and the future destiny of man, is exclusively deduced from the philosophy

Philosophy best entitled to the appellation useful.

1 This sentence seems to be made up from two separate passages in the Metaphysics, lib. viii. c. 2. Πᾶσαι αἱ τέχναι καὶ αἱ ποιητικαὶ καὶ ἐπιστῆμαι δυνάμεις εἰσίν. Lib. viii. c. 8: Τέλος δ' ἡ ἐνέργεια, καὶ τούτου χάριν ἡ δύναμις λαμβάνεται . . . καὶ τὴν θεωρητικὴν (ἔχουσιν) ἵνα θεωρῶσιν· ἀλλ ̓ οὐ θεωροῦσιν ἵνα θεωρητικὴν ἔχωσιν. - ED.

2 This is perhaps the substance of Summa, Pars i., Q. Ixxix., art. ii. and iii. - ED.

3 These words contain the substance of the

doctrine of Scotus regarding science, given in his Quæstiones in Aristotelis Logicam, p. 818 -Super. Lib. Post., Q. i. "Scire in actu," says the subtle doctor, "est quum aliquis cognoscit majorem et minorem, et, simul cum hoc, ap

plicat præmissas ad conclusionem. Sic igitur patet quod actualitas scientiæ est ex applicatione causæ ad effectum" Compare Quæst. ii., "An acquisitio scientiæ sit nobis per doctrinam ” — for his view of the end and means of education. - ED.

4 ["Malebranche disait avec une ingénieuse exagération, 'Si je tenais la vérité captive dans ma main, j'ouvrirais la main afin de poursuivre encore la vérité.'"-Mazure, Cours de Philosophie, tom. i. p. 20.]

5 Eine Duplik, § 1; Schriften, edit. Lachmann, x. p. 49. - Ed.

6["Die Wahrheit ist in Gott, uns bleibt das Forschen."]

7 Compare Discussions, p. 40.

of mind, will be at once admitted. But I do not at present found the importance on the paramount dignity of the pursuit. It is as the best gymnastic of the mind, as a mean, principally, and almost exclusively, conducive to the highest education of our noblest powers, that I would vindicate to these speculations the necessity which has too frequently been denied them. By no other intellectual application is the mind thus reflected on itself, and its faculties aroused to such independent, vigorous, unwonted, and continued energy;- by none, therefore, are its best capacities so variously and intensely evolved. "By turning," says Burke, "the soul inward on itself, its forces are concentred, and are fitted for greater and stronger flights of science; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service."1

Application of the foregoing principles to the conduct of a class of philosophy.

These principles being established, I have only now to offer a few observations in regard to their application, that is, in regard to the mode in which I conceive that this class ought to be conducted. From what has already been said, my views on this subject may be easily anticipated. Holding that the paramount end of liberal study is the development of the student's mind, and that knowledge is principally useful as a mean of determining the faculties to that exercise, through which this development is accomplished, it follows, that I must regard the main duty of a Professor to consist not simply in communicating information, but in doing this in such a manner, and with such an accompaniment of subsidiary means, that the information he conveys may be the occasion of awakening his pupils to a vigorous and varied exertion of their faculties. Self-activity is the indispensable condition of improvement; and education is only education, that is, accomplishes its purpose, only by affording objects and supplying incitements to this spontaneous exertion. Strictly speaking, every one must educate himself.

Universities; their main end.

But as the end of education is thus something more than the mere communication of knowledge, the communication of knowledge ought not to be all that academical education should attempt. Before printing was invented, Universities were of primary importance as organs of publication, and as centres of literary confluence: but since that invention, their utility as media of communication is superseded; consequently, to justify the continuance of

1 On the Sublime and Beautiful, p. 8.-ED.