Useless knowledge! For everything that may, with any kind of propriety, be comprehended under this honored term, knowledge, we usually cherish a profound and reverent respect. The highest conception of scholarship, on the part of many, consists in being possessed of encyclopedic information concerning the details of almost every conceivable matter.
According to this idea learning consists in an intimate acquaintance, at once and quite indiscriminately, with all the results of the latest scientific research, the facts of universal history, the mysteries of theology and subtleties of metaphysics; with all the institutes of law and politics; with all the literature of poetry and art.
To one entertaining such an idea of scholarship as this how positively depressing must be the monstrous and obviously ever-accumulating mass of facts heaping up around him. He quite envies the great men of the olden time who, in consequence of the then comparatively narrow range of knowledge, found it not impracticable to maintain a creditable standing at once as statesmen, soldiers, poets, philosophers, and artists; while he, in his day, can serve, at best, only as an infinitesimal wheel in a machinery of boundless complication.
Even were it desirable to burden the mind with boundless mental acquisitions, one certainly has not long to live to discover the utter futility of even the most capacious memory ever being able to compass any such result—to learn that the human mind, whatever its capabilities, is yet finite; that it is, therefore, the part of wisdom to select some one department of study and devote one’s energies mainly to the mastery of the same; and that, finally, one essential condition of usefulness depends on one’s thus wisely restricting himself to a comparatively narrow and limited field of inquiry and of attainment.
In the meantime it should be distinctly understood that true scholarship does not, by any means, consist in thus knowing absolutely everything. The popular idea that learning consists in being a walking repository of all sorts of curious and of more or less ill-assorted erudition, is a most childish error. Scholarship may, perhaps, be properly defined as knowing something about almost everything; but more especially every thing about some one thing. This is the true university idea. Some one has defined the university as being the school where something could be learned about everything, and everything about some one thing. In other words, true scholarship consists in having just so much learning as one can not only digest and master but effectively use in connection with his own special work, or mission in life; in having the keys, if you please, that shall unlock and open up to one at will all the varied stores of knowledge; and more especially in being the undisputed master of just so much and of just such knowledge as he can himself best utilize. Just as no mechanic cares to encumber himself with more tools, or the soldier with more weapons, than he can advantageously use, so no true scholar, in our judgment, will covet more knowledge than he can render properly, wisely, available for service. Why, indeed, may not too much of a good thing, as well as too little—l’embarrassment de richesse as well as the embarrassment of poverty—prove not a help but a burden, not a source of power but an occasion of weakness and a cause of stumbling?
Let no one, therefore, be tempted to envy the attainments of certain knowing ones in those walks of literature, or of science, to which he is for the most a stranger; and, because of his ignorance comparatively on certain special lines of study and intellectual inquiry, to depreciate himself as a scholar. Rather, on the other hand, while thankful that, in your own chosen sphere, you have been enabled to give a good account of yourself and to render some service, however humble, to your kind, you should also rejoice that others have been called to explore fields of thought and inquiry by your feet as yet untrod.
Who that, a few years ago, at the great Exposition at Philadelphia, walked through those acres of textile fabrics, miles of most ingenious machinery, and thousands of square yards of painting, but must have been profoundly impressed with the narrow limits of his own knowledge and attainments. And yet who, if really a sensible person, instead of feeling mortified and chagrined at all on this account, but was moved rather, at every step, silently to give thanks that here was presented another, and yet another branch of knowledge or industry concerning which it was his privilege to remain in profound and most contented ignorance? Why, indeed, should it be deemed specially important that, in order richly and intelligently to enjoy that marvellous display of the products of all nations, one should be altogether conversant with the Chinese puzzle, or versed in all the arts of sub-soiling, top-dressing, tile-draining, or stock-raising?
Let the dictionaries, therefore, and the encyclopædias, the archives and the libraries, for the most part, serve as the treasure-houses of the materials of knowledge—especially of all more strictly technical and curious lore, properly classified, indexed, assorted, accessible. Let it be the part of scholarship, if you please, exhaustively to explore certain departments of learning as specialties; but to be content, meantime, as a general thing, to know where, and how readily to find, and to be able wisely to appropriate, and effectually to employ, as occasion may require, this accumulated and duly sifted and organized learning of the ages.
