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Page 17
INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER.
The desire, the duty, the necessity of the age in which we live is
education, or that culture which developes, enlarges, and enriches each
individual intelligence, according to the measure of its capacity, by
familiarizing it with the facts and laws of nature and human life.
But, in this rage for information, we too often overlook the mental
constitution of the being we would inform,--detaching the apprehensive
from the active powers, weakening character by overloading memory, and
reaping a harvest of imbeciles after we may have flattered ourselves we
had sown a crop of geniuses. No person can be called educated, until he
has organized his knowledge into faculty, and wields it as a weapon.
We purpose, therefore, to invite the attention of our readers to some
remarks on Intellectual Character, the last and highest result of
intellectual education, and the indispensable condition of intellectual
success.
It is evident, that, when a young man leaves his school or college to
take his place in the world, it is indispensable that he be something
as well as know something; and it will require but little experience to
demonstrate to him that what he really knows is little more than what
he really is, and that his progress in intellectual manhood is not more
determined by the information he retains, than by that portion which, by
a benign provision of Providence, he is enabled to forget. Youth, to
be sure, is his,--youth, in virtue of which he is free of the
universe,--youth, with its elastic vigor, its far-darting hopes, its
generous impatience of prudent meanness, its grand denial of instituted
falsehood, its beautiful contempt of accredited baseness,--but youth
which must now concentrate its wayward energies, which must discourse
with facts and grapple with men, and through strife and struggle, and
the sad wisdom of experience, must pass from the vague delights of
generous impulses to the assured joy of manly principles. The moment he
comes in contact with the stern and stubborn realities which frown on
his entrance into practical life, he will find that power is the soul of
knowledge, and character the condition of intelligence. He will discover
that intellectual success depends primarily on qualities which are not
strictly intellectual, but personal and constitutional. The test
of success is influence,--that is, the power of shaping events by
informing, guiding, animating, controlling other minds. Whether this
influence be exerted directly in the world of practical affairs, or
indirectly in the world of ideas, its fundamental condition is still
force of individual being, and the amount of influence is the measure
of the degree of force, just as an effect measures a cause. The
characteristic of intellect is insight,--insight into things and their
relations; but then this insight is intense or languid, clear or
confused, comprehensive or narrow, exactly in proportion to the weight
and power of the individual who sees and combines. It is not so much the
intellect that makes the man, as the man the intellect; in every act of
earnest thinking, the reach of the thought depends on the pressure of
the will; and we would therefore emphasize and enforce, as the primitive
requirement of intellectual success, that discipline of the individual
which developes dim tendencies into positive sentiments, sentiments into
ideas, and ideas into abilities,--that discipline by which intellect
is penetrated through and through with the qualities of manhood, and
endowed with arms as well as eyes. This is Intellectual Character.
Now it should be thundered in the ears of every young man who has
passed through that course of instruction ironically styled education,
"What do you intend to be, and what do you intend to do? Do you purpose
to play at living, or do you purpose to live?--to be a memory, a
word-cistern, a feeble prater on illustrious themes, one of the world's
thousand chatterers, or a will, a power, a man?" No varnish and veneer
of scholarship, no command of the tricks of logic and rhetoric, can ever
make you a positive force in the world. Look around you in the community
of educated men, and see how many, who started on their career with
minds as bright and eager and hearts as hopeful as yours, have been
mysteriously arrested in their growth,--have lost all the kindling
sentiments which glorified their youthful studies, and dwindled into
complacent echoes of surrounding mediocrity,--have begun, indeed, to die
on the very threshold of manhood, and stand in society as tombs rather
than temples of immortal souls. See, too, the wide disconnection between
knowledge and life;--heaps of information piled upon little heads;
everybody speaking,--few who have earned the right to speak; maxims
enough to regenerate a universe,--a woful lack of great hearts, in
which reason, right, and truth, regal and militant, are fortified and
encamped! Now this disposition to skulk the austere requirements of
intellectual growth in an indolent surrender of the mind's power of
self-direction must be overcome at the outset, or, in spite of your
grand generalities, you will be at the mercy of every bullying lie,
and strike your colors to every mean truism, and shape your life
in accordance with every low motive, which the strength of genuine
wickedness or genuine stupidity can bring to bear upon you. There is no
escape from slavery, or the mere pretence of freedom, but in radical
individual power; and all solid intellectual culture is simply the right
development of individuality into its true intellectual form.
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