Things themselves should lead to the science of them. If things are not interesting in themselves, how can any amount of knowledge about them be? To be sure, there is such a thing as a purely or abstractly intellectual interest—the pleasure of the mere operation of the intellect upon the signs of things; but this must spring from a highly exercised intellectual condition, and is not to be expected before the pleasures of intellectual motion have been experienced through the employment of its means for other ends. Whether this is a higher condition or not, is open to much disquisition.
One day Hugh was purposely engaged in taking the altitude of the highest turret of the house, with an old quadrant he had found in the library, when Harry came up.
“What are you doing, big brother?” said he; for now that he was quite at home with Hugh, there was a wonderful mixture of familiarity and respect in him, that was quite bewitching.
“Finding out how high your house is, little brother,” answered Hugh.
“How can you do it with that thing? Will it measure the height of other things besides the house?”
“Yes, the height of a mountain, or anything you like.”
“Do show me how.”
Hugh showed him as much of it as he could.
“But I don’t understand it.”
“Oh! that is quite another thing. To do that, you must learn a great many things—Euclid to begin with.”