though the useful is not always good, the
good is always useful. Good is not only good, but reproductive of good;
this is one of its attributes; nothing is excellent, beautiful, perfect,
desirable for its own sake, but it overflows, and spreads the likeness of
itself all around it. Good is prolific; it is not only good to the eye,
but to the taste; it not only attracts us, but it communicates itself; it
excites first our admiration and love, then our desire and our gratitude,
and that, in proportion to its intenseness and fulness in particular
instances. A great good will impart great good. If then the intellect is
so excellent a portion of us, and its cultivation so excellent, it is not
only beautiful, perfect, admirable, and noble in itself, but in a true and
high sense it must be useful to the possessor and to all around him; not
useful in any low, mechanical, mercantile sense, but as diffusing good, or
as a blessing, or a gift, or power, or a treasure, first to the owner,
then through him to the world. I say then, if a liberal education be good,
it must necessarily be useful too.

6.

You will see what I mean by the parallel of bodily health. Health is a
good in itself, though nothing came of it, and is especially worth seeking
and cherishing; yet, after all, the blessings which attend its presence
are so great, while they are so close to it and so redound back upon it
and encircle it, that we never think of it except as useful as well as
good, and praise and prize it for what it does, as well as for what it is,
though at the same time we cannot point out any definite and distinct work
or production which it can be said to effect. And so as regards
intellectual culture, I am far from denying utility in this large sense as
the end of Education, when I lay it down, that the culture of the
intellect is a good in itself and its own end; I do not exclude from the
idea of intellectual culture what it cannot but be, from the very nature
of things; I only deny that we must be able to point out, before we have
any right to call it useful, some art, or business, or profession, or
trade, or work, as resulting from it, and as its real and complete end.
The parallel is exact:--As the body may be sacrificed to some manual or
other toil, whether moderate or oppressive, so may the intellect be
devoted to some specific profession; and I do not call _this_ the culture
of the intellect. Again, as some member or organ of the bod