A New Standard
Of Value Was Introduced, And, After This, To Be Distinguished - Man Must
Be Intellectual.
Nor, indeed, am I surprised that this feeling has so
powerfully influenced our race; for the idea that human
Happiness is
dependent on the cultivation of the mind, and on the discovery of
truth, is, next to the conviction of our immortality, the idea the most
full of consolation to man; for the cultivation of the mind has no
limits, and truth is the only thing that is eternal. Indeed, when you
consider what a man is who knows only what is passing under his own
eyes, and what the condition of the same man must be who belongs to an
institution like the one which has assembled us together to-night, is
it - ought it to be - a matter of surprise that, from that moment to the
present, you have had a general feeling throughout the civilized world
in favour of the diffusion of knowledge? A man who knows nothing but
the history of the passing hour - who knows nothing of the history of
the past but that a certain person, whose brain was as vacant as his
own, occupied the same house as himself, who in a moment of despondency
or of gloom has no hope in the morrow because he has read nothing that
has taught him that to-morrow has any changes - that man, compared with
him who has read the most ordinary abridgment of history, or the most
common philosophical speculation, is as distinct and different an
animal as if he had fallen from some other planet, was influenced by a
different organization, working for a different end, and hoping for a
different result.
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