The Growth of Thought as Affecting the Progress of Society

by William Withington

More particularly we are taught in the same school, that the good thus contemplated must cost something at least on the score of that best of physical enjoyments—health. If it were duly appreciated, how high this stands among life's goods, and how much its perfection depends on freedom to the mind from the anxieties of hazardous speculation, and a goodly amount of manly labor, of which the varied occupations of agriculture are the most favorable of all; this consideration would check the prevalent ambition to make the contrivance of the brain supply the place of the labor of the hands.

Health is commended to us, not only as among the first of present goods, but as one, the security of which is placed very much in our own power; if we will but study and practise the means. It is remarkable, that, while the healing art is proverbial for its sects and uncertainties—amid the disputes of homoeopaths and allopaths, mineralists and herbalists, stimulators and depletors—there is a pretty general agreement of parties on the laws of hygiene, or the art of preserving health. We might find here a law, taught by the constitution of nature, that its Author never intended healing to hold an important place in the cause of human welfare. He meant it should be well nigh dispensed with, by the obedience men should pay to laws, which they may understand.

The full appreciation of these considerations would tend greatly to establish friendly relations in society; because, first, the good contemplated is such, that the success of one in seeking, facilitates the success of all. Secondly, it would abate the strife for luxuries,—amassing without producing, and cultivating artificial wants,—most fertile sources of discord. And, thirdly, it would establish between physicians and their employers, relations the most agreeable.

Another most unmanageable misconception of life's good, makes one of its choicest items to be, the possession of power and superiority. To what depths of degradation will man depress his fellows, just to contemplate the distance between his might and their weakness! If this ambition seems less general than the desire of accumulating, or of substituting contrivance for productiveness, it may be, because the necessity of the case more limits the number who can bear rule; otherwise, the passion for power might find as ready an entrance to as many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor. We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust of dominion—the passion for power and superiority. To manage this passion is the heaviest charge of policy—to provide that the offices which must be intrusted to human hands, be filled peaceably and worthily.

Philosophy explodes this notion of good (as claiming to be eminently such), in that it cannot stand the general test: It is a good, which a few must share by detracting so much from the happiness of others.

And further, to the love of power is submitted the consideration, that knowledge is power. It may be feared, this maxim oft suggests scarce other sense, that that deeper insight into the tricks of trade or politics enables the possessor to outwit competitors for riches or honors in the game. It is still a low understanding, that knowledge of nature's laws multiplies the means of physical enjoyment. Knowledge is power in a higher sense, in that it empowers the possessor to call forth stores of enjoyment form objects, which seem to vulgar apprehension most barren of utility. But knowledge—taken for the round of mental cultivation—is power, in that it is competent to yield to all more than the delightful sense of conscious superiority, which vulgar ambition may afford to a few of its successful votaries; a store, from which each in taking does but multiply the remainder.

But to find it so one must look well, that he apprehend knowledge to be a good of itself, independently of the distinction it confers. For a vain ambition often takes this direction; and then it matters little to one whether himself advance, or others be kept back—since, in either case, the difference between him and them, the distinction chiefly enjoyed, is the same.

Now, the love of knowledge is prior in time to the love of distinction; it should seem then, that, with proper care, it might maintain the mastery over its rival. The child is delighted with the acquisition of new ideas, before it thinks of turning them to a vain-glorious account. It deserves to be considered, whether our modes of education, offering prizes and honors of scholarship, do not train into the ascendancy that love of distinction, which education ought and might keep subordinate; which in fact is one of the greatest hinderances to progress;—for when one's immediate aim is not truth itself, but the glory which attends the acquisition, he meets a thousand sidelong impulses from the straightforward search.

That knowledge is a good which grows by being shared, is a truth more fully apprehended, as the idea of knowledge is enlarged. It is measurably so, while taken for eminence in common studies and the received sciences. One's advance is facilitated by the advance of others.

Much more does this hold, when the distinction between intellectual culture and intellectual life is made, and the preference due to the latter apprehended.