nd if the powers of
intellect decay, the powers of the body have decayed before them, and, as
an Hospital or an Almshouse, though its end be ephemeral, may be
sanctified to the service of religion, so surely may a University, even
were it nothing more than I have as yet described it. We attain to heaven
by using this world well, though it is to pass away; we perfect our
nature, not by undoing it, but by adding to it what is more than nature,
and directing it towards aims higher than its own.

Discourse VI.

Knowledge Viewed In Relation To Learning.

1.

It were well if the English, like the Greek language, possessed some
definite word to express, simply and generally, intellectual proficiency
or perfection, such as "health," as used with reference to the animal
frame, and "virtue," with reference to our moral nature. I am not able to
find such a term;--talent, ability, genius, belong distinctly to the raw
material, which is the subject-matter, not to that excellence which is the
result of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed, to the particular
kinds of intellectual perfection, words are forthcoming for our purpose,
as, for instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these belong, for
the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon practice or upon art, and
not to any perfect condition of the intellect, considered in itself.
Wisdom, again, is certainly a more comprehensive word than any other, but
it has a direct relation to conduct, and to human life. Knowledge, indeed,
and Science express purely intellectual ideas, but still not a state or
quality of the intellect; for knowledge, in its ordinary sense, is but one
of its circumstances, denoting a possession or a habit; and science has
been appropriated to the subject-matter of the intellect, instead of
belonging in English, as it ought to do, to the intellect itself. The
consequence is that, on an occasion like this, many words are necessary,
in order, first, to bring out and convey what surely is no difficult idea
in itself,--that of the cultivation of the intellect as an end; next, in
order to recommend what surely is no unreasonable object; and lastly, to
describe and make the mind realize the particular perfection in which that
object consists. Every one knows practically what are the constituents of
health or of virtue; and every one recognizes health and virtue as ends to
be pursued; it is otherwise with int