When treating of the Greek Nose, we stated that the Nose of Milton expanded into the Cogitative form when, in the latter part of his life, he was compelled to turn his thoughts anxiously and seriously to the condition of his unhappy country, and when, with a holy and unswerving determination he devoted his whole soul to the composition of a poem, whose fame should be co-extensive with the world whose creation it described. We then claimed this instance of change of form coincident with change of character, as a proof of the correctness of the hypothesis. It was however a superfluous precaution, for the coincident change is equally true in almost every instance of the Cogitative Nose. No man can alter the profile of his Nose, but he may increase its latitudinal diameter. As to the former, he must submit to have it what shape God pleases; as to the latter, he may make it almost any shape he himself pleases—for the one indicates acquired habits, the other inherent properties.
The Cogitative Nose expands with expanding thoughts and is therefore rarely, if ever, much developed in youth; neither, on the other hand, is the very sharp or Noncogitative Nose frequently visible in early life, for there are few to whom God has not given the elements of thought. It is our own faults, therefore, if we throw away the talents bestowed upon us, and suffer our minds to degenerate into inanity and our Noses into sharpness.
For this reason, it is a laudable ambition in a young man to cultivate a Cogitative Nose, for he can only do so by cultivating his mind. And, forasmuch as it is the only part of the Nose which is under the controul of the owner, so it is that which can be most distinctly judged of and its expansion watched; for, though the owner can never see the perfect profile of his Nose, he may always form a correct estimate of its breadth. We should be quite justified in adding this to the numerous proofs of design in the adaptation of the human body to the soul, but as many persons cannot surmount a certain sense of the ridiculous in the subject before us, we forbear. Those who are impressed with the truth of our system, will at once admit the inference, and perceive its value in Natural Theology.[[24]]
As it has been deemed unnecessary to extend the present chapter with any biographical or critical sketches of the examples adduced in corroboration of Class III, we will devote the next to the more useful task of inquiring how a Cogitative Mind and its certain accompaniment, a Cogitative Nose, may be acquired.
CHAPTER V.
HOW TO GET A COGITATIVE NOSE.
It is a great and prevalent mistake to imagine that a Cogitative mind (and Nose) is to be acquired by reading alone. It is almost certain that, as books multiply, Cogitative Minds decrease, for how is a man to think, if all his thinking is done for him? The mind, when constantly supplied with extraneous thoughts must, without great care, lose the habit of generating internal ones. All the greatest thinkers have been the first in their department of thought. Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspere, Bacon, &c. These men, as compared with even mediocre men in our day, had very little learning,—but they had vast wisdom.
Read Bacon’s Novum Organum and Sylva for instance, and see how few facts there are in them but such as are either now known to, or laughed at, by every school-boy; yet direct your attention to the train of thought, to the generalizations from these simple facts, to the originality of the deductions, and behold how the dwarf in Knowledge becomes a giant in Wisdom! It is even true that Bacon was behind his cotemporaries in many matters of mere knowledge; yet the majesty of his wisdom was so vast that it still rules, and ever must rule, the world of science.
So, as on the one hand, a man may have wisdom and yet want knowledge; on the other, he may have all knowledge and be able to discourse of all things, from the hyssop to the cedar, and yet want wisdom. It is of no use to read and accumulate facts if we do not also think. Better indeed to think and never read, than read and not think. If a man does not think for himself, if he does not originate ideas, if books are not to him only the elements of thought, if he is not fully and immoveably impressed with the conviction that two and two make five, or any greater number which the Cogitative Mind can evolve, he has no chance of becoming a wise man, whatever his learning, and however profound his acquaintance with the thoughts of other men.
But you reply, two and two do not, and cannot make five, &c. We rejoin, they as certainly and unquestionably do in metaphysics, as they certainly and unquestionably do not in physics. True, in physics, two and two things, two and two facts make four, and only four; but if the mind, when in possession of those four, can generate nothing more from them, it is a hopeless case with that mind. If, upon the recipience of such four facts the mind remains contented with the arithmetical fact that, from four units it has segregated four, it is, and for ever will, remain stationary; it has gained nothing, and might as well have left those four facts in their original units, for their addition has not added to it one particle of wisdom.
Facts are, or ought to be, only the generators of ideas. Facts in themselves are utterly worthless; it is in their associations, in their consequences, their bearings on each other; it is as they support or refute systems, theories and other mind-born facts, that they are of value. Now, it is only by the action of mind upon them that they have associations, consequences, &c. Without mind, facts must for ever remain units; even though added together, ad infinitum, they have no natural co-unity, no cohesion, no affinity for each other. A thousand facts added together are still but a thousand units, unless mind has cohered them into a system. This done, you clearly have the thousand facts still, but you have also something infinitely more valuable, you have a mind-born fact, a deduction, a system, hypothesis, theory, axiom, or whatever you please to call it.