has given a
capacity for using them. Further, I consider such innocent recreations
as science and literature are able to furnish will be a very fit
occupation of the thoughts and the leisure of young persons, and may be
made the means of keeping them from bad employments and bad companions.
Moreover, as to that superficial acquaintance with chemistry, and
geology, and astronomy, and political economy, and modern history, and
biography, and other branches of knowledge, which periodical literature
and occasional lectures and scientific institutions diffuse through the
community, I think it a graceful accomplishment, and a suitable, nay,
in this day a necessary accomplishment, in the case of educated men.
Nor, lastly, am I disparaging or discouraging the thorough acquisition
of any one of these studies, or denying that, as far as it goes, such
thorough acquisition is a real education of the mind. All I say is, call
things by their right names, and do not confuse together ideas which are
essentially different. A thorough knowledge of one science and a
superficial acquaintance with many, are not the same thing; a smattering
of a hundred things or a memory for detail, is not a philosophical or
comprehensive view. Recreations are not education; accomplishments are
not education. Do not say, the people must be educated, when, after all,
you only mean amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits and good
humour, or kept from vicious excesses. I do not say that such
amusements, such occupations of mind, are not a great gain; but they are
not education. You may as well call drawing and fencing education as a
general knowledge of botany or conchology. Stuffing birds or playing
stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle,
but it is not education; it does not form or cultivate the intellect.
Education is a high word; it is the preparation for knowledge, and it is
the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation. We require
intellectual eyes to know withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need both
objects and organs intellectual; we cannot gain them without setting
about it; we cannot gain them in our sleep, or by haphazard. The best
telescope does not dispense with eyes; the printing press or the lecture
room will assist us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must
be parties in the work. A university is, according to the usual
designation, an alma mater, knowing her children one by on