8. Therefore, when I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love coeval[600] with life, what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you and never quit you,—which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conceptions, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the outer world,—that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud.
9. Therefore, if any young man have embarked his life in pursuit of knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event; let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowledge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life. She will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows in all the relations and in all the offices of his life.
[592] In-com-pat-i-bilˊ-i-ty, state or quality of a thing which prevents it from harmonizing with something else; inconsistency; disagreement.
[593] Col-lapsˊ-ed, fell together, as the sides of a hollow vessel; shrunk up; dwindled.
[594] Per-niˊ-cious, mischievous, hurtful, or evil, in a high degree.
[595] In-de-fatˊ-i-ga-ble, incapable of being exhausted or wearied; persevering.
[596] Pronounced Libˊnitz.
[597] In-cesˊ-sant, unceasing; continual.
[598] Mu-nifˊ-i-cent, bountiful; liberal; generous.
[599] Des-cantˊ-ing, discoursing; making remarks; commenting.