This belief is based on an old and very profound philosophy, that is not even yet understood as widely and as fully as it should be: the philosophy first expounded by Plato, and afterwards by Goethe and Ruskin, that ‘all evil springs from unused, or misused, good.’ Whatever element is highest in our lives will degrade us most if misused. The best in the lives of the idle sours and causes deterioration instead of development of character, and breeds discontent and unhappiness, so that days are ‘insipid, dull and tasteless,’ and nights are ‘unquiet, lang and restless.’
Burns showed that he understood this revealing philosophy in ‘The Vision.’ In this great poem he assumes that Coila, the genius of Kyle, his native district in Ayrshire, appeared to him in a vision, and revealed a clear understanding of the epoch events of his past life and their influence on his development, and gave him advice to guide him for the future. In one verse he says:
I saw thy pulse’s maddening play
Wild send thee pleasure’s devious way,
Misled by fancy’s meteor-ray,
By passion driven;
But yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven.
He was attacked and criticised severely for the statement contained in the last two lines. The statement is but philosophic truth that his critics did not understand. Fancy and passion are elements of power given from heaven. Properly used they become important elements in human happiness and development. Improperly used they produce unhappiness and degradation.
Burns understood clearly the philosophic basis of modern education, the importance of developing the individuality, or selfhood, or special power of each child. The poem he wrote to his friend Robert Graham of Fintry, beginning:
When Nature her great masterpiece designed
And framed her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She formed of various parts the various man,
is a philosophical description of how Nature produced various types of men, giving to each mind special powers and aptitudes. The thought of the poem is the basis of all modern educational thought: the value of the individuality of each child, and the importance of developing it.
He expresses very beautifully the philosophy of the ephemeral nature of certain forms of pleasure in eight lines of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’:
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or as the snowfall in the river,
A moment white, then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit e’er you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm.
Burns understood the philosophy of the simple life in the development of character and happiness.