Scientific Culture, and Other Essays / Second Edition; with Additions

by Jr. Josiah P. Cooke

"Knowledge is power." "Knowledge is wealth." These trite maxims are sufficiently esteemed in our community, and need not that they be enforced by any one. So far as knowledge will yield immediate distinction or gain, it is sought and fostered by multitudes. But, when the aim is low, the attainment is low, and too many of our students are satisfied with superficiality, if it only glitters, and with charlatanry, if it only brings gold.

Let me not be understood to depreciate the material advantages of learning. I rejoice that in this world knowledge frequently yields wealth and fame, and I should have little hope for human progress were the prizes of scholarship less than they are. Power and wealth are noble aims, and when rightly used may be the means of conferring unmeasured blessings on mankind; but I desire at this time to impress upon you, my friends, the fact that knowledge has nobler fruits than these, and that the worth of your knowledge is to be measured not by the credits it will add to your account in the ledger, or the position it may give you among men, but by the extent to which it educates your higher nature, and elevates you in the scale of manhood.

I address young men who are just entering on life, who are at an age when the mystery of our being usually presses most closely upon the soul, and whose aspirations for higher culture and clearer vision have not been deadened by the sordid damps of the world. Trust no croakers who tell you that your youthful visions are illusions, which a little contact with the real business of the world will dispel.

It is only too true that these visions will become fainter and fainter, if you allow the cares of the world to engross your thoughts; but, unless your higher nature becomes wholly deadened, you will look back to the time when the visions were brightest, as the golden period of your life, and let me assure you that, if you only are true to the aspirations of your youth, the visions will become clearer and clearer to the last, and, as we firmly believe, will prove to be the dawn of the perfect day.

My friends, if you have seen these visions, "the nobility of knowledge" has been a reality of your experience. You know that there is a life lived in communion with the thoughts of great men or with the thoughts of God as we can read them in Nature and Revelation, which is purer and nobler than a life of money-making or political intrigue, and I would that I could so bring you to appreciate not only the nobility, but also the happiness, of such a life as to induce you to try to live it.

Do you tell me that it is only granted to a few men to become scholars, and that you have been educated for some industrial pursuit? Remember, as I said before, that it is your special privilege to have been educated, to have added knowledge to your handicraft, and that this very knowledge, if kept alive so far as you are able, will ennoble your life. Knowledge, like the fairy's wand, ennobles whatever it touches. The humblest occupations are adorned by it, and without it the most exalted positions appear to true men mean and low.

Nor is it the extent of the knowledge alone which ennobles, but much more the spirit and aim with which it is cultivated, and that spirit and aim you may carry into any occupation, however engrossing, and into any condition of life, however obscure.

And let me add that what I have said is true not only of the individual, but also, and to an even greater degree, of the nation. Our people, for the most part, look upon universities and other higher institutions of learning as merely schools for recruiting the learned professions, and estimate their efficiency solely by the amount of teaching work which they perform. But, however important the teaching function of the university may be, I need not tell you that this is not its only or chief value to a community. The university should be the center of scientific investigation and literary culture, the nursery of lofty aspirations and noble thoughts, and thus should become the soul of the higher life of the nation. For this and this chiefly it should be sustained and honored, and no cost and no sacrifice can be too great which are required to maintain its efficiency; and its success should be measured by the amount of knowledge it produces rather than by the amount of instruction it imparts.

Harvard College, by cherishing and honoring the great naturalist she has recently lost, has done more for Massachusetts than by educating hosts of commonplace professional men. The simple title of teacher, which in his last will Louis Agassiz wrote after his name, was a nobler distinction than any earthly authority could confer; but remember he was a teacher not of boys, but of men, and his influence depended not on the instruction in natural history which he gave in his lecture-room, but on his great discoveries, his far-reaching generalization, and his noble thoughts. Although that man died poor, as the world counts poverty, yet the bequest which he left to this people can not be estimated in coin.

It is a sorry confession to make, but it is nevertheless the truth, that, if we compare our American universities, in point of literary or scientific productiveness, with those of the Old World, they will appear lamentably deficient. Let me add, however, that this deficiency arises not from any want of proper aims in our scholars, but simply from the circumstance that our people do not sufficiently appreciate the value of the higher forms of literary and scientific work to bear the burden which the production necessary entails. Scholars must live, as well as other men, and in a style which is in harmony with their surroundings and cultivated tastes, and their best efforts can not be devoted to the extension of knowledge unless they are relieved from anxiety in regard to their daily bread.