Thinking and learning to think by Nathan C. Schaeffer (ebooks that read to you .txt) đź“–
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Very much, therefore, depends upon the way in which nature is studied. The study may be pursued to beget habits of observation or to cultivate a sense of the beautiful. It may be studied for the sake of ascertaining the laws which govern the growth of plants, the changes of the seasons, the movements of the heavenly bodies, the forces which give us light, heat, and all else we need for body and mind. When it is studied for the sake of truth and beauty, the effort lifts us into the domain of the higher life.
Why should any portion of our life, as compared with another, be styled the higher life? Because a man’s life may abound in some of the activities which are essential to his existence and still fail to realize the end of his existence. Take life on the farm with all its splendid opportunities for the study of nature and of all that is attractive in God’s universe. Which should be of most account in the education of the farmer’s sons and daughters,—mind or money, light or lucre, the soul or the soil, character or capacity for getting riches? The curse of wealth, fame, office, and the like is that, if they become the chief object of one’s ambition, they drag the soul into the dust of dishonor, if not the dust of the street.
“If the farmer boy has only been taught how to raise better stock, what will he do when that better stock ranges his farm? Will he be a happier father and a nobler citizen? Will his home life be any less coarse and dull? Will the possession of blooded stock make him any more honest than common stock? If that is all you have taught him, will he not still be a brute among his brutes? Indeed, just so far as you increase his money-making without increasing his true culture and manliness, you increase the probability that he will die a drunkard, his son a spendthrift, and his grandson a pauper. The supreme need is character to guide these resources.”[56]
Whilst it is worth while to dignify labor in all the handicrafts by showing the need for intelligent thought on the part of those who follow them, it is of vastly more importance to emphasize the things of the mind, and to show how the ability to think conditions the activities of the higher life and is essential to the full realization of man’s being. The relation of thinking to the higher life will claim our attention in the concluding chapter.
XXIITHINKING AND THE HIGHER LIFE
How vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating and of the thinking man! indeed, as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash. Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an active and prevailing thought,—a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the object, and refreshing the soul with new discoveries and images of things, and thereby extending the bounds of apprehension, and enlarging the territories of reason.
Dr. South.
What is more pleasant than to read of strong-hearted youths, who, in the midst of want and hardships of many kinds, have clung to books, feeding, like bees to flowers? By the light of pine-logs, in dim-lit garrets, in the fields following the plough, in early dawns when others are asleep, they ply their blessed task, seeking nourishment for the mind, athirst for truth, yearning for full sight of the high worlds of which they have caught faint glimpses; happier now, lacking everything save faith and a great purpose, than in after-years when success shall shower on them applause and gold.
Bishop Spalding.
XXIITHINKING AND THE HIGHER LIFE
The preceding chapter pointed out the function of thinking in the arts, and the reciprocal influence of these upon the power of thought. It remains to point out the relation of thinking to the higher life. The best point of departure for such a discussion is the book which has done more to foster the higher life of the soul than all other books combined. From some points of view the best book on teaching ever made is the Book of books. In it we find not only practical examples and marvellous illustrations of the art of the teacher, but also the most significant maxims and statements bearing upon the development of the inner life. In the account of the Temptation in the Wilderness, we have an utterance from the lips of the Great Teacher, directing our attention towards the higher life. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. iv. 4.)
In the universities one hears a great deal about bread-studies. Knowledge for its own sake, culture for culture’s sake, education, not for the sake of its money-value, but for the mind’s sake, are the ideals held up before the minds of the students. A world-famous professor of mathematics demonstrated a new theorem, and closed the demonstration with the exclamation, “Now, that is true, and, thank God, nobody can use it!” Does knowledge increase in value as its utility diminishes? This professor was drawing an annual salary of five thousand dollars, and could well afford to ignore the money-value of an education. Lifted above the struggle for bread, he had no sympathy with the multitudes in whose experience the struggle for bread is the all-absorbing problem of life. The theory of life propounded by the Great Teacher is very different. He did not despise the arts that make bread and win bread. Twice He miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes, in order to feed the multitudes. For many years He worked at the carpenter’s bench, and after the death of His father helped to support His mother. When hanging upon the cross, He intrusted His mother to the care of John, the “disciple whom Jesus loved.”
But when Satan came to him and suggested the making of bread by unlawful means, He repelled the tempter, saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Bread here stands for more than physical food. It is symbolic of the life that turns upon what we eat and drink, the garments we wear, and the houses we live in.
The best of French kings cherished it as the ambition of his life to make every one of his subjects so well off as to be able on Sunday to have roast fowl for dinner. Had he lived in our day, he would have included among the objects of his ambition a new bonnet for every woman at least twice a year. Roast fowl and new bonnets cost money; and money indicates the plane from which very many people look at every question of government and education. Money stands for what we eat and drink, for the garments we wear and the houses we live in, for the thousands of creature comforts which we deem essential to our well-being and happiness. Perhaps the school has not done all it is destined to accomplish in fitting the pupils to win these, but there is abundant evidence to show that a good school increases the earning power of the individual, and thereby makes possible the higher life of mind, or of the soul. The untutored red man eked out a scanty existence in spite of unparalleled advantages in soil and stream and climate; the intelligence begotten by the modern school has enabled our people to utilize and develop the material resources of the New World to such an extent that Carlyle sneeringly said, “America means roast turkey every day for everybody.” Let us accept the remark as an acknowledgment that the American people are better fed than those of England or Continental Europe; and yet Carlyle was right in hinting that there is a life higher than that which turns upon what we eat and drink and wear, for this is in accord with the view of life taught by the greatest Teacher of all the ages.
It is worth while to pause a moment for the purpose of pointing out the relation of the higher life to the side of life symbolized by bread. In a word, the higher life rests upon the other as a basis. Where the vital energies of a people are exhausted in the struggle for bread, the very mention of education is a mockery. The school lays the foundation for the higher life when it increases the average earning power of the industrial classes, and thereby makes it easier for them to gain a livelihood. Here is the first point of contact between the school and the higher life. There is no language sufficiently strong to condemn the spirit of the professor who, when he had demonstrated a new theorem in higher mathematics, thanked God that nobody could use it.
Only professors filling well-endowed chairs at our universities can afford to speak disparagingly of Brot-studien and to advocate theories of education which would sunder the school from practical life. An education that unfits the pupil for bread-winning in case of necessity cannot be too severely condemned; among other reasons, because it fails to lay a proper foundation for the higher life. On the other hand, the school that does not aim at something higher than dollars and cents deserves equally severe condemnation; for that which makes life worth living cannot be bought with money. If you are rich, you may buy a fine house, but you cannot buy a happy home; that must be made,—made by you and by those who occupy it with you. With money you may rent a pew in some fashionable church, but you cannot rent a good conscience,—that depends upon your manner of living and dealing with others. Money will enable you to buy a fine copy of Shakespeare, but it cannot purchase for you the ability to appreciate a play of Shakespeare,—that is the result of education. Wealth will enable you to cover the walls of your costly mansion with beautiful pictures; and the sewing-girl, if she has been properly taught in a public school, will get more enjoyment out of them than can possibly be gotten by the sons and daughters of wealth and luxury whose proper education has been neglected.
Plato wrote above the door of the academy, “Let no one enter here who is destitute of geometry.” Why did he value geometry so highly? Not merely as an introduction to the study of philosophy, for in one of his dialogues he says, “God geometrizes.” He had an idea that a youth in thinking the theorems of geometry is thinking divine thoughts. When Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion, he exclaimed, in ecstasy, “O God, I think thy thoughts after thee!” When a pupil learns to think the thoughts which the Creator has put into the starry heavens above us and into all nature about us, he is thinking God’s thoughts and tasting the enjoyments of the higher life. When he is taught the right use of books, and given access to a public library, he may acquire the power to think the best thoughts of the best men at their best moments. In nature study, in the
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