Shut the two in a dungeon and the owner of the starved, empty brain will go mad. The other will find hope in her heart, and in her brain, the children of her thoughts will troop in, bringing solace and cheer and courage.
From a practical standpoint the study habit has an economic value. It preserves health and peace of mind, it enhances efficiency, it broadens our sympathies and charities, and it unifies the home circle. It is an easy habit to acquire, and it sustains its interest: it is inexpensive. The Carnegie libraries, correspondence schools, the university extension plan of lectures, etc., contribute in a large measure to its easy acquirement, and to the success with which it may be pursued.
Two Ways of Gaining Knowledge.—We gain knowledge in two ways. First, by experience, which means mingling with people, exchanging ideas, discussing topics, listening to lectures, sermons, talks, etc. Second, by reading and studying. We must read and study in order to really understand and assimilate what we learn from experience, and what we hear discussed in lectures, sermons and talks. As soon as we become interested in a study we begin to rise above what we may call the everyday plane. We desire to know more, and when we know a good deal about one subject, we want to know something about kindred subjects, so we extend the latitude of our knowledge. It is marvelous how the habit grows. It is not work, it is pleasure. We long for spare moments to renew the study, and as we experience the pleasure the growth of our mind affords, we improve in all directions. Every cell in the brain sends out vibrant impulses, new life, new hope. Health means more, life has a meaning. We find happiness in the company of those who are striving for higher ideals. We perform even our menial tasks with more care and with more interest, because we grasp their true meaning, and we know that we cannot aspire to higher ideals if we are dishonest in little things. So the study habit makes better men and better women of us, and it adds to the pleasure of life all the real pleasure there is in living. The power to analyze, to conceive, and to create are the highest pleasures mankind possesses, and they can only be attained in any degree by education and cultivation.
It is not easy to explain to the average superficially educated person the satisfaction to be derived from original or creative thinking. One must progress far enough in mental self-culture before it becomes a pleasure, almost an intoxication. Up to a certain point the acquirement of knowledge is a task, an effort, a seeming self-sacrifice; beyond that point it is a labor of love, a pleasure, a consecration. The crude, discordant efforts of a child, when it first begins to acquire a musical education, very convincingly illustrates the condition of mind of the beginner in self-culture. The task is a toil and the results do not stimulate further spontaneous effort. The same child, however, may successfully pass through the various gradations of a musical career and arrive at a time when effort will submerge itself; when the result of the knowledge acquired will be so gratifying that it will no longer be a toil; when the study will be pursued because of the actual pleasure it affords.
The only worthwhile thing in life is mind. If one does not develop the mind, it is possible to live an entire lifetime and not really live at all. To exist is not to live. All the amenities of life contribute to existence, not to life itself. To live is to create, to give, to endow.
If a book contains one original thought, it will live. Few books contain more than one thought, one inspiration. If it, however, suffuses that one thought into the hearts of men its existence will have been justified. We have no criterion or standard by which to judge the ethical value of a thought. If a thought conveys an inspiration to another and is productive of moral growth it has life and value because it creates.
To exist is to blindly follow the primal instincts. To live is to think, to reason, to grow mentally. Consequently we must have ideals, we must cling tenaciously to these ideals, and, "We must know what we want."
The Young Wife's Incentive to Self-Culture.—A young wife has a real incentive to self-culture if she hopes to maintain her position in the home and in the affection of her husband. A man has always the advantage of being actively engaged in one of the two ways of acquiring knowledge. He mingles with people. He gains considerable knowledge and frequently cultivation unwittingly. He grows with his business, and as it increases he becomes more important in the community. He mingles with keener, wide-awake business men, his wits are sharpened, his brain must be alert and virile. A healthy active brain grows, it is responsive, it absorbs knowledge. As he climbs higher, he wears off the crude corners and assumes a worldly cultivation, which men of sound business sense can adapt to suit any social exigency. The wife does not have these advantages, and, unless she appreciates this point, she is very apt to remain where she was when she married, so far as mental culture is concerned. Now to be wife in a true sense, she must be companion. She must keep pace with his prosperity on the one hand and with his intelligence on the other. The more culture and knowledge a man attains the more critical he becomes, the more cultivated his tastes, the more cultivation he demands. Qualities that did not always grate upon his sensibilities become acutely objectionable in his higher mental state. A man may be loyal at heart, but he resents the inaptitude of a wife who fails to keep the mental pace. He is willing to give his wife the benefits of his material prosperity, but he cannot give her the finer evidences of his higher mentality, because, while she may have proved true as a wife, she failed as a companion. She fell behind in culture. He cannot give that which she cannot receive. The young wife should appreciate the difference between moral disloyalty on the part of her husband, and mental disloyalty. He is the transgressor in the first, and she is the culprit in the second delinquency. We must meet a situation as it exists. Moralizing does not change the conditions. A man and woman may be temperamentally suited to each other to-day, and in a few years may be wholly dissimilar in tastes. If being a wife simply implied more loyalty and domestic efficiency there could be no just cause for complaint if she failed in every other respect, but it does not. To be a wife more than in name, one must be friend, companion, confidant. No one, much less a husband, selects as a friend, companion, and confidant, an individual whose tastes are not in sympathy with his own, who does not understand the viewpoint, one in whom he cannot confide, or one whose intelligence is crude. A man can obtain a housekeeper anywhere, but he cannot buy a home-maker, a companion, a friend, or a confidant.
The study habit will create the interest. If you once get it, only death can take it from you. If you become interested, no man can grow away from you, and no man can take from you the worlds it will open up. You must, however, begin the study habit with the determination to acquire knowledge. You must want intensely to succeed, and you must be willing to sacrifice self, and to work diligently. "If you quit, it simply shows you did not want an education, you only thought you did,—you are not willing to pay the price."
Nosophobia, or the Dread of Disease.—There is one disease I would warn the young wife not to acquire. It is called nosophobia. It is without doubt the most serious sickness with which any member of the human family may be afflicted.