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 class against class."
LEONARD (ingenuously).--"You correct me nobly, 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 horny 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 God'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 fortitude 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 coxcombical 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 appetite; 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 titers 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 gods 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 establishing the
truth that, for the multitude, 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 circumstance of the man, rushing from him as
rays from the sun; borne through the air, and clothing it with light,
piercing under earth, and calling forth the harvest. Worship not
knowledge, worship not the sun, O my child! Let the sun but proclaim the
Creator; let the knowledge but illumine the worship!"
The good man, overcome by his own earnestness, paused; his head drooped
on the young student's breast, and all three were long silent.
