nt, and the sense
of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always
true, that as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy
days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his
volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato[36] or Shakespeare,
only that least part,--only the authentic utterances of the
oracle;--all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's
and Shakespeare's.

Of course there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise
man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading.
Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach
elements. But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to
drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various
genius to their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires set
the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures
in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns[37] and
pecuniary foundations,[38] though of towns of gold, can never
countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit.[39] Forget this,
and our American colleges will recede in their public importance,
whilst they grow richer every year.

* * * * *

III. There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a
recluse, a valetudinarian,[40]--as unfit for any handiwork or public
labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" sneer at
speculative men, as if, because they speculate or _see_, they could do
nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy--who are always, more
universally than any other class, the scholars of their day--are
addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men
they do not hear, but only a mincing[41] and diluted speech. They are
often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there are advocates for
their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is
not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is
essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never
ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of
beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but
there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble[42] of
thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious
to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived.
Instantly we know whose words are