While
Young Men At Universities Are Being Prepared For Their Entry Into
Life, Their Rivals Have Already Entered It.
The most university
and examination ridden people in the world are the Chinese, and
they are the least progressive.
Men should learn to draw as they learn conveyancing: they should
go into a painter's studio and paint on his pictures. I am told
that half the conveyances in the country are drawn by pupils; there
is no more mystery about painting than about conveyancing - not half
in fact, I should think, so much. One may ask, How can the
beginner paint, or draw conveyances, till he has learnt how to do
so? The answer is, How can he learn, without at any rate trying to
do? If he likes his subject, he will try: if he tries, he will
soon succeed in doing something which shall open a door. It does
not matter what a man does; so long as he does it with the
attention which affection engenders, he will come to see his way to
something else. After long waiting he will certainly find one door
open, and go through it. He will say to himself that he can never
find another. He has found this, more by luck than cunning, but
now he is done. Yet by and by he will see that there is ONE more
small, unimportant door which he had overlooked, and he proceeds
through this too. If he remains now for a long while and sees no
other, do not let him fret; doors are like the kingdom of heaven,
they come not by observation, least of all do they come by forcing:
let them just go on doing what comes nearest, but doing it
attentively, and a great wide door will one day spring into
existence where there had been no sign of one but a little time
previously. Only let him be always doing something, and let him
cross himself now and again, for belief in the wondrous efficacy of
crosses and crossing is the corner-stone of the creed of the
evolutionist. Then after years - but not probably till after a
great many - doors will open up all round, so many and so wide that
the difficulty will not be to find a door, but rather to obtain the
means of even hurriedly surveying a portion of those that stand
invitingly open.
I know that just as good a case can be made out for the other side.
It may be said as truly that unless a student is incessantly on the
watch for doors he will never see them, and that unless he is
incessantly pressing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will never
find it - so that the kingdom does come by observation. It is with
this as with everything else - there must be a harmonious fusing of
two principles which are in flat contradiction to one another.
The question whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantage
of opportunities that come, or to go further afield in search of
them, is one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal
with. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy arose
in what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The
schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects - animals
and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of prey
is formulated in animals; the other - that it is better on the whole
to stay at home and profit by what comes - in plants. Some
intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during
which the schism was not yet complete.
If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression further, I would
say that it is the plants and not we who are the heretics. There
can be no question about this; we are perfectly justified,
therefore, in devouring them. Ours is the original and orthodox
belief, for protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable; it is
much more true to say that plants have descended from animals than
animals from plants. Nevertheless, like many other heretics,
plants have thriven very fairly well. There are a great many of
them, and as regards beauty, if not wit - of a limited kind indeed,
but still wit - it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the
advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters
are narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the
details of their business sufficiently well - as well as though they
kept the most nicely-balanced system of accounts to show them their
position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our bigoted
and intolerant way of trying to convert them: eating is only a
violent mode of proselytising or converting; and we do convert
them - to good animal substance, of our own way of thinking. But
then, animals are eaten too. They convert one another, almost as
much as they convert plants. And an animal is no sooner dead than
a plant will convert it back again. It is obvious, however, that
no schism could have been so long successful, without having a good
deal to say for itself.
Neither party has been quite consistent. Who ever is or can be?
Every extreme - every opinion carried to its logical end - will prove
to be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves;
this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since
pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may be
called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at
a bough, a root, or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholy
and unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals are
sessile, and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in
the main liers-in-wait. It may appear, however, on the whole, like
reopening a settled question to uphold the principle of being busy
and attentive over a small area, rather than going to and fro over
a larger one, for a mammal like man, but I think most readers will
be with me in thinking that, at any rate as regards art and
literature, it is he who does his small immediate work most
carefully who will find doors open most certainly to him, that will
conduct him into the richest chambers.
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