E UPON
LABOR.

[Lecture before the American Institute of Instruction.]

Words and terms have, to different minds, various significations; and we
often find definitions changing in the progress of events. Bailey says
learning is "skill in languages or sciences." To this, Walker adds what
he calls "literature," and "skill in anything, good or bad." Dr. Webster
enlarges the meaning of the word still more, and says, "Learning is the
knowledge of principles or facts received by instruction or study;
acquired knowledge or ideas in any branch of science or literature;
erudition; literature; science; knowledge acquired by experience,
experiment, or observation." Milton gives us a rhetorical definition in
a negative form, which is of equal value, at least, with any authority
yet cited. "And though a linguist," says Milton, "should pride himself
to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have
not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and
lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any
yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect
only."--"Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to
be known."

This is kindred to the saying of Locke, that "men of much reading are
greatly learned, but may be little knowing." We must give to the term
_learning_ a broad definition, if we accept Milton's statement that its
end "is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know
God aright;" for this necessarily implies that we are to study carefully
everything relating to the nature of our existence, to the spot and
scene of our existence, with its mysterious phenomena, and its
comparatively unexplained laws. And we must, moreover, always keep in
view the personal relations and duties which the Creator has imposed
upon the members of the human race. The knowledge of these relations and
duties is one form of learning; the disposition and the ability to
observe and practise these relations and duties, is another and a higher
form of learning. The first is the learning of the theologian, the
schoolman; the latter is the learning of the practical Christian. Both
ought to exist; but when they are separated, we place things above
signs, facts above forms, life above ideas. Law and justice ought always
to be united; but when by error, or fraud, or usurpation, they are
separated, we observe the forms of law, but we respect the principles of
jus