Again, we come to the type of the chief, and perhaps the finest class—many-hued and many-sided, difficult to define, more difficult to estimate. He is a chaos of misty beliefs and dubious doubtings—a striver after theories which would exercise a spell over mind and matter of almost alchemic potency—an open receiver for every new and quackish nostrum—a shallow scholar, with the pedantry and conceit of a ripe one—a denier of other men's attainments, without stopping to inquire whether he will ever be able to equal them—apt to give dogmatic advice, and slow to take any—lastly, and worst, he is sometimes a rash and unphilosophic would-be analyzer of the grounds of our most sacred belief. He may be—indeed, frequently is—of a genuine and earnest spirit, which he knows neither how to direct nor bound.
In judging of the frame of mind which generates and elaborates, or receives such impressions, it is necessary to remember and make due allowance for the rapid and real advances which we have made in the sifting of old and the ascertainment of new truth, within an almost infinitesimal portion of time. Men now think and act vehemently—with appliances at their elbow which, to those who know their power, are a true Aladdin's lamp, giving the key to thoughts and deeds, and the clew to facts, which erst had been deemed miraculous. When we now speak of the “rising generation,” it is seriously. We discard the class whose dress is apish, whose life is an inanity, whose thoughts are vapid, if not something fouler and worse. We would think of, and give credit for earnestness, to that large class whose ready reception and striving after the establishment of all things new, for novelty's sake, and the demolition of many things old and revered, has fixed upon them, half in jest, half in earnest, the sobriquet. Not only on matters of faith—on innovations on all established practice, do they take their stand. Education they understand in no limited sense. The acquisition of the circle of sciences, and nothing less, is the average of their contentment. We are to live in an age when every man, or, at least, every second, is to be an Admirable Crichton. Formerly, it was thought that the mind of man was, even in its strength, so feeble, that strict adherence to some single and well-defined line of study or path of action was necessary, if a moderate skill in its command were desired. He who loved and pursued his knowledge of ancient people, languages, customs, and laws, was not expected to be erudite except in classical lore. The philosopher and mathematician, if well acquainted in their respective spheres with the laws and processes of mind, matter, and number, were thought to have learned their part. The laborer in the field of active industry, who was skillful in the taste and knowledge of his craft and the use of its tools, was esteemed no cumberer of the ground. If, after this, he cultivated his mind by a scrutiny of the labors of others, so much the better. Under this régime, each man learned his own department, every one knew something, better than his neighbors—could follow or elucidate his special study or calling through ramifications the other could not trace, and thus knowledge progressed, and became the great power that it has grown.
But now the “rising generation” will have matters altered. Education is all wrong, and too limited. The spirit of unity, as the Germans call it—that hidden elf which haunts all knowledge, and is the same, however disguised—is not to be caught except by a search which involves the acquisition of every science, art, and philosophy. This, in addition to an insane and, we shrink not from saying, a blasphemous dallying with things sacred, is the grand error of the “rising generation”—the rock on which their bark will founder, if it has not already done so. Man can not be a “universal genius.” Let us by all means shake off the trammels under which education has groveled—under which she still groans. Let us seek by all means to make education so free, that, like the winds of heaven, and the light of the sun, no man shall want a reasonable—a full share of her benefits. Let us seek accurate and varied knowledge and scholarship, endeavoring (although it is a difficult and subtle process) to find out for what our youth are best fitted, by evoking the latent special talents with which their Maker has gifted them, and thus train them in the expert use of that weapon which will enable them to do yeoman service in the wide arena of the world. But, while we do all this, let us beware. We have before now been taunted as a nation of shopkeepers. This was no evil, if true; but who can calculate the direness of that calamity which shall turn us into a nation of smatterers. This is a looming evil of unparalleled magnitude. There can be no doubt that at the present moment there is a tendency to rest content with very superficial acquirements, if they be only heterogeneous enough. A man who can gabble the alphabet of any science or subject may, if he has sufficient [pg 480] presumption, gain credit for possessing a knowledge of its arcana—for the ability necessary to plumb its profounder depths and unravel its intricacies. The successful practice of this imposture, for it is nothing less, has led, and is still leading, many to sacrifice accuracy for variety, both in those departments which their circumstances, rightly considered, demand that they should thoroughly understand, and in those branches which tend only to add grace and finish to a liberal education.
In “those days,” the chance was that genius often passed away unnoticed or neglected. In “the good time come,” we fear that a similar injustice will be done, and in a larger measure. The modest, the sound-thinking, and really learned, will withdraw from a field where they find as companions or competitors only strutting jackdaws and noisy shallow smatterers, who have decided that they were born for other purposes than to tread in the work-a-day paths of life. A portion of the old as well as the “rising generation” would do well to look to the present state of things. There is too often a desire on the part of parents to push their children into positions for which they are totally unfitted. There is a sphere for all, which, when chosen with a due regard to ability, and not adopted through caprice or vanity, will lead to usefulness in society and comfort to the individual.
We have little fear of that audacious phase in the character of the “rising generation,” which devotes itself to a probing of those things which have to do with our eternal destiny. A well-conducted inquiry of this kind is a healthy symptom, and tends to fix good impressions: and, as for those whose temerity exceeds their judgment, the Christian knows that his bulwarks are too many and strong ever to be shaken by any blast of human breath or stroke of human hand. Still, let every stumbling-block be removed, and no safeguard neglected, which may be of service to those of feeble knees or weak and timorous mind.
The “rising generation” are those upon whom the hopes of the world will ere long rest, who are soon to have the reins of government in their own hands, and must play their part in the great drama of life, at a time when its stage affords more ample room for the development of true nobility, richer opportunities for distinguishing a life by action, and of signalizing it by discoveries almost magical—a time, in short, open to greater achievements than any that have been won since this globe was first spun into space. The greater the talent and the wealth of opportunity, so much more are the dangers increased, and the more wily the machinations of the Spirit of Evil. While the “rising generation” adopt as their motto “Excelsior,” and cultivate an inquiring spirit, let it always be an earnest and definite one, not “blown about by every wind of doctrine,” not falling into every quagmire of vain conceit, until the mental eye is so besmeared that it can no longer discern the true zenith. Yet, withal, it is not necessary to tread exclusively in the old paths, as they are somewhat contemptuously styled; there is need and verge enough for pioneering new ones. “Beat the bushes; there is still plenty of game to be raised.” But do not disdainfully discard the experience of those who have gone before. We do not insinuate by this that age and priority combined make an oracle. Yet there are comparatively few men who can not tell something that is worth hearing—communicate some bit of knowledge which may save you the disbursement of some of those high school fees which, as Thomas Carlyle keenly observes, must be paid for experience.
It has been iterated and reiterated, that there is no royal road to knowledge. This is true of knowledge, as it is true of any thing that is worth having. And this brings to our recollection a manifestation of spirit displayed by some portions of the “rising generation” to which we have not yet adverted. This is called the non-mercantile idea—a growing dislike to all manual and merely commercial pursuits, and an over-fondness for what are known as the learned, and more especially the literary professions. This desire, we fear, proceeds often from a wish to avoid labor; and, where this is the case, we can assure all such that literature is not the sphere for indolence.
We neither impugn the honesty nor ignore the talents of the “rising generation.” We would only tender them a parting advice: Think, learn, and act, reverently and cautiously, and in the spirit of that philosophy which has won for England her most enduring laurels—which taught her Newton to discard for years, until fact supported theory, what was perhaps the broadest glimpse of truth ever vouchsafed to the human mind. Do so, as they dread the realization of the outline drawn by the master-hand of Jean Paul Richter—“The new-year's night of an unhappy man.” His graphic picture we hold up to the gaze of the “rising generation.” The season is appropriate. We are all fond at this time of retrospection, and are full of resolves for the future. Perhaps we may strike some chord now in jarring dissonance, that may yet vibrate to divinest harmony.
“An old man stood on the new-year's midnight at the window, and gazed with a look of long despair, upward to the immovable, ever-blooming heaven, and down upon the still, pure, white earth, on which no one was then so joyless and sleepless as he. For his grave stood near him; it was covered over only with the snow of age, not with the green of youth; and he brought nothing with him out of the whole rich life, no thing with him, but errors, sins, and disease, a wasted body, a desolated soul, the breast full of poison, an old age full of remorse. The beautiful days of his youth turned round to-day, as spectres, and drew him back again to that bright morning on which his father first placed him at the cross-road of life, which, on the right hand, leads by the sun-path of virtue into a wide peaceful land full of light and of harvests, and full of angels, and which, on the left hand, descends [pg 481] into the mole-ways of vice, into a black cavern, full of down-dropping poison, full of aiming serpents, and of gloomy, sultry vapors.
“Ah! the serpents hung about his breast, and the drops of poison on his tongue. And he knew now where he was!