Marat was hungry for knowledge and thirsty for truth, and in his daily life he was as abstemious as was Benjamin Franklin, whom he was to meet, know, and reverence shortly afterward.
Jean Paul was studying medicine at the same place where Oliver Goldsmith, another exile, studied some years before. Each got his doctor's degree—just how we do not know. No one ever saw Goldsmith's diploma—Doctor Johnson once hinted that it was an astral one—but Marat's is still with us, yellow with age, but plain and legible with all of its signatures and the big seal with a ribbon that surely might impress the chance sufferers waiting in an outer room to see the doctor, who is busy enjoying his siesta on the other side of the partition.
If it is ever your sweet privilege to clap eyes upon a diploma issued by the ancient and honorable University of Saint Andrews, Edinburgh, you will see that it reads thus:
"Whereas: Since it is just and reasonable that one who has diligently attained a high degree of knowledge in some great and useful science, should be distinguished from the ignorant-vulgar," etc., etc.
The intent of the document, it will be observed, is to certify that the holder is not one of the "ignorant-vulgar," and the inference is that those who are not possessed of like certificates probably are.
A copy of the diploma issued to Doctor Jean Paul Marat is before me, wherein, in most flattering phrase, is set forth the attainments of the holder, in the science of medicine. And even before the ink was dry upon that diploma, the "science" of which it boasted had been discarded as inept and puerile, and a new one inaugurated. And in our day, within the last twenty-five years, the entire science of healing has shifted ground and the materia medica of the "Centennial" is now considered obsolete.
In view of these things, how vain is a college degree that certifies, as the diplomas of Saint Andrews still certify, that the holder is not one of the "ignorant-vulgar"! Isn't a man who prides himself on not belonging to the "ignorant-vulgar" apt to be atrociously ignorant and outrageously vulgar?
Wisdom is a point of view, and knowledge, for the most part, is a shifting product depending upon environment, atmosphere and condition. The eternal verities are plain and simple, known to babes and sucklings, but often unseen by men of learning, who focus on the difficult, soar high and dive deep, but seldom pay cash. In the sky of truth the fixed stars are few, and the shepherds who tend their flocks by night are quite as apt to know them as are the professed and professional Wise Men of the East—and Edinburgh.
But never mind our little digression—the value of study lies in study. The reward of thinking is the ability to think—whether one comes to right conclusions or wrong matters little, says John Stuart Mill in his essay, "On Liberty."