6. Efficient or Primary Cause-Cause-Proper (1) Everything Contingent has necessarily a Cause. 279 GRAMMAR OF PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION IMPORTANCE OF KNOWLEDGE "The lips of knowledge are a precious jewel."-PROV. xx. 15. Universality of Human Interests.-Man is a being whose interests are universal. Beginning with his own soul, they extend into the depths of Space, and include everything that comes within his ken. He investigates molecules, he surveys the solar system; he speculates upon atoms, he weighs the Globe; he peers at microbes with a microscope and has visions of angels and archangels; he is subject to death and yet believes in immortality: so wide is the range of human interests. Man is a Social Being.-Man is also a social being; and in obedience to the dictates of his nature, he delights to communicate with his fellow-beings on the things which engage his interest. As Reginald Scott long ago expressed it, "In mine own opinion, whosoever shall perform anything, or attain to any knowledge, or whosoever shall travel through all the nations of the world, or, if it were possible, should peep into the heavens, the consolation or admiration thereof were nothing pleasant to him unless he had liberty to impart his knowledge to his friends."1 So -"He that is incap 1 Discoverie of Witchcraft, Ep. xix. So Aristotle :-" able of society, or so complete in himself as not to want it, makes no part much does he delight in knowledge and in communicating knowledge, or even what he takes to be knowledge, that in this age of letters, myriads of people not contented with oral facilities of communication, seriously commit their thoughts, their observations, their fancies, their musings, their speculations, their guesses to writing and to the creation of books: which may be regarded as containing the written expression of man's interest in himself, his affairs and his surroundings. Knowledge is the food of the Mind.-We are all agreed with the pill-vendors and the sporting men as to the advantage of possessing healthy, well set-up bodies; but inasmuch as our minds are of higher significance than our bodies, it must, at a glance, be of still greater advantage to be the owners of healthy, well-poised minds, to obtain which, certain appropriate food and discipline will be necessary. "My son, get wisdom and with all thy getting, get understanding." No cant nor claptrap in that advice, but soundness and rosy health; for lack of following which, the world welters in misery, and will continue to welter in misery until it appreciates the Solomonic precept more fully, and gets itself improved and strengthened in knowledge and understanding. Leigh Hunt on the significance of knowledge.-In one of his papers, Leigh Hunt facetiously and happily brings out the significance of knowledge. A man, says he, "has no proof of his existence but in his consciousness of it and the return of that consciousness after sleep. He is therefore in amount of existence only so much as his consciousness, his thoughts and feelings amount to. The more of a state, but is either a beast or a god." Politics, Bk. i. c. 2 (Bohn tr.); and Cowper : : "Man in society is like a flower Blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone Shine out; there only reach their proper use.' The Task, Bk. iv. he knows the more he exists; and the pleasanter his knowledge, the happier his existence. One man in this sense of things, and it is a sense proved beyond a doubt (except with those merry philosophers of antiquity who doubted their very consciousness-nay, doubted doubt itself)" one man in this sense of things, "is infinitely little compared with another man. If we could see his mind we should see a pigmy; and it would be stuck perhaps into a pint of beer, or a scent-bottle, or a bottle of wine, as the monkey stuck Gulliver into the marrow bone. Another man's mind would show larger; another, larger still; till at length we should see minds of all shapes and sizes, from a microscopic body to that of a giant or a demigod, or a spirit that filled the world. . . . Many a 'great man' would become invisible, and many a little one suddenly astonish us with the overshadowing of his greatness. Men sometimes by the magic of their knowledge partake of a great many things which they do not possess ; others possess much which is lost upon them." To illustrate the status of a poor The dandy, he Poor rich-men and rich poor-men. case, he proceeds to contrast the mental rich-man, a dandy, and a rich poor-man. points out, would be "incapable of his own wealth; of his own furniture; of his own health, friends, books, gardens; nay, of his very hat and coat except in as much as they contributed to give him one single idea, to wit, that of his dandyism": which is to say that our dandy while having legal and corporeal possession of such things, would have no mental possession of them, knowing nothing even of his books but that they "were bound and that they cost a great deal";1 whilst the rich poor-man, though having scarcely any property at all, in the ordinary sense of the word, might be, as it were, in mental possession of all things. Such a one is in a position to say-I have the 1 Leigh Hunt's London Journal, April 2nd. |