I agree with you that amateurship, as generally practised, may be a waste of time, but the common distinction between amateur pursuits and serious studies is inconsistent. A painter whose art is imperfect and who does not work for money is called an amateur; a scholar who writes imperfect Latin, not for money, escapes the imputation of amateurship, and is called a learned man. Surely we have been blinded by custom in these things. Ideas of frivolity are attached to imperfect acquirement in certain directions, and ideas of gravity to equally imperfect acquirement in others. To write bad Latin poetry is not thought to be frivolous, but it is considered frivolous to compose imperfectly and unprofessionally in other fine arts.
Yet are we not all of us amateurs in those pursuits which constituted our education—amateurs at the best, if we loved them, and even inferior to amateurs if we disliked them? We have not sounder knowledge or more perfect skill in the ancient languages than Prince Albert had in music. We know something of them, yet in comparison with perfect mastery such as that of a cultivated old Greek or Roman, our scholarship is at the best on a level with the musical scholarship of a cultivated amateur like the Prince Consort.
If the essence of dilettantism is to be contented with imperfect attainment, I fear that all educated people must be considered dilettants.
It is narrated of the Emperor Napoleon III. that in answer to some one who inquired of his Majesty whether the Prince Imperial was a musician, he replied that he discouraged dilettantism, and “did not wish his son to be a Coburg.” But the Emperor himself was quite as much a dilettant as Prince Albert; though their dilettantism did not lie in the same directions. The Prince was an amateur musician and artist; the Emperor was an amateur historian, an amateur scholar, and antiquary. It may be added that Napoleon III. indulged in another and more dangerous kind of amateurship. He had a taste for amateur generalship, and the consequences of his indulgence of this taste are known to every one.
The variety of modern education encourages a scattered dilettantism. It is only in professional life that the energies of young men are powerfully concentrated. There is a steadying effect in thorough professional training which school education does not supply. Our boys receive praise and prizes for doing many things most imperfectly, and it is not their fault if they remain ignorant of what perfection really is, and of the immensity of the labor which it costs. I think that you would do well, perhaps, without discouraging your son too much by chillingly accurate estimates of the value of what he has done, to make him on all proper occasions feel and see the difference between half-knowledge and thorough mastery. It would be a good thing for a youth to be made clearly aware how enormous a price of labor Nature has set upon high accomplishment in everything that is really worthy of his pursuit. It is this persuasion, which men usually arrive at only in their maturity, that operates as the most effectual tranquillizer of frivolous activities.
LETTER VI.
TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE.
The Author’s dread of protection in intellectual pursuits—Example from the Fine Arts—Prize poems—Governmental encouragement of learning—The bad effects of it—Pet pursuits—Objection to the interference of Ministers—A project for separate examinations.
What I am going to say will seem very strange to you, and is not unlikely to arouse as much professional animosity as you are capable of feeling against an old friend. You who are a dignitary of the University, and have earned your various titles in a fair field, as a soldier wins his epaulettes before the enemy, are not the likeliest person to hear with patience the unauthorized theories of an innovator. Take them, then, as mere speculations, if you will—not altogether unworthy of consideration, for they are suggested by a sincere anxiety for the best interests of learning, and yet not very dangerous to vested interests of any kind, since they can have little influence on the practice or opinion of the world.