The master of many a middle-school has frequent occasion to say with Horace;
——"At ingenium ingens
Inculto latet hoc sub corpore."—
And the schoolmaster, also, knows that a little spark will often light into fire some vast store of emotional as well as intellectual elements lying asleep within.[192]
We therefore speak (if we speak correctly), of educating an animal in a totally different sense from educating a boy. For, facts are as we have stated them, whatever theories may be.
There is one more point of contrast to stimulate and encourage the self-educating portion of Mankind; and this point is the most characteristic endowment essential to Humanity. A man is not creative by virtue of his ideals alone, however bright and beautiful those visions of his intellect may be. He calls into existence that, which as yet is not, by virtue of his Will. We know this, although inexplicable, to be true;—partly from the evidence of our own Consciousness,—which asserts that it is so, and partly from the evidence of Morality,—which says that it must necessarily be so. Were it otherwise, no amount of Criminality could make a Criminal responsible. And this truth of responsibility is one which may occasion serious reflection to us all; to some of us sad remembrances.
Man, considered as causal or creative mind, cannot but act upon the world without, as well as the world within himself. And perhaps the nearest idea we are able to form of the process of production, is the inter-action of power and function, evoked by a Will, (that is a Cause); and continuing operative by aid of ordinary laws and relativities of nature.[ar] One man resolves to construct a steam engine, and on steam-power he concentrates his thought. He conceives the relation between watery vapour and propulsion;—and by using arbitrary signs, formulates and measures it. Then, he considers the laws and properties of metals, fits each contrivance into place and produces his machine. Another determines to commit a murder. He wavers—debates—wills the deed, and says,—
"I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat."
Every reader of Macbeth sees displayed before his eyes the airy dagger; the human muscle strained to clutch the shadow first,—afterwards, the reality;—the time, place, circumstances, all combined, followed up—worked out, till the murderous man has chained all conditions of success to his behest;—fulfilled his slowly-matured purpose,—and become, as in Will, so in act, a murderer. A third human being endeavours to invent a method for teaching the deaf and dumb;—spends a life in labouring among his silent tomb-like pupils, and succeeds to his joy and their inestimable benefit at last. He awakens powers lost in the shadow of death, and incites them to the performance of those true and appropriate functions, from which they had been incapacitated by a dwarfed and thwarted development. Before he aroused them, all such powers were only possibilities, visible to his hopeful eye. Now, they are utilized and happy activities; and, like impulses down a long electric chain, perpetuate themselves for generations after the benevolent inventor is taken from the race he had loved and educated.