Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties |
|
Author:
| Craik, George Lillie |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-03879-9 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2009 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
|
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $19.99 |
Book Description:
|
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTELLECTUAL EXCELLENCE. 57 they themselves feel, their eminence, both disregard and despise all other sorts of knowledge and acquirement. This is pedantry in its most vulgar and offensive form; for it is not merely ignorant, but intolerant. It speaks highly in favour of the right constitution and the...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTELLECTUAL EXCELLENCE. 57 they themselves feel, their eminence, both disregard and despise all other sorts of knowledge and acquirement. This is pedantry in its most vulgar and offensive form; for it is not merely ignorant, but intolerant. It speaks highly in favour of the right constitution and the native power of Davy's understanding, that, educated as he was, he escaped every taint of this species of illiberality; and that while, like almost all those who have greatly distinguished themselves in a world of intellect, he selected and persevered in his one favourite path, he nevertheless revered wisdom and genius in all their manifestations. CHAPTER IV. Diversities of Intellectual Excellence.?Artists.?Benjamin West. The ambition of intellectual excellence is, in truth, the same passion, by whichsoever of the many roads that lie open to it it may choose to pursue its object. The thing that is interesting and valuable is the purity and enduring strength of the passion. These are the qualities that make it both so inestimable in the possession and so instructive in the exhibition. The mere department of study in which it displays itself is of inferior importance; for even if it should be contended that, of the various pursuits which demand the highest degree of intellectual application and devotion, one is yet better calculated than another to promote by its results the general improvement or happiness of mankind, it will scarcely be argued that even those of inferior value in this respect should not also have theirfollowers. The arrangements of Providence, by forming men at first in different moulds, and placing them afterward in different circumstances, regulate, doubtless, with more wisdom and success than could be attained by any artifice of human polity, the dist...