Intellectual living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or condition of the mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and purest truth. It is the continual exercise of a firmly noble choice between the larger truth and the lesser, between that which is perfectly just and that which falls a little short of justice. The ideal life would be to choose thus firmly and delicately always, yet if we often blunder and fail for want of perfect wisdom and clear light, have we not the inward assurance that our aspiration has not been all in vain, that it has brought us a little nearer to the Supreme Intellect whose effulgence draws us whilst it dazzles? Here is the true secret of that fascination which belongs to intellectual pursuits, that they reveal to us a little more, of the eternal order of the Universe, establishing us so firmly in what is known, that we acquire an unshakable confidence in the laws which govern what is not, and never can be, known.
It appears that all who are born with considerable intellectual faculties are urged towards the intellectual life by irresistible instincts. Many of the intellectual lives known have been hampered by vexatious impediments of the most various and complicated kinds, we are almost always quiet sure to find that they had some great Thwarting difficulty to contend against. An intellectual life is always a contest or a discipline, and the art or skill of living intellectually does not so much consists in surrounding ourselves with what is reputed to be advantageous as in compelling every circumstance and condition of our lives to yield us some tribute of intellectual benefit and force. The school of the intellectual man is the place where he happens to be, and his teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones and earth round about him.
The essence of intellectual living does not reside in the extent of science or in perfection of expression, but in a constant preference for higher thoughts over lower thoughts, and this preference may be the habit of a mind which has not any very considerable amount of information. Men have lived intellectually in ages when science had scarcely begun to exist, and when there was but little literature that could be of use as an aid to culture. for example whoever reads English is richer in the aids to culture than Plato was, yet Plato thought intellectually. It is not erudition that makes the intellectual man, but a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking. just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct.
It appears that all who are born with considerable intellectual faculties are urged towards the intellectual life by irresistible instincts. Many of the intellectual lives known have been hampered by vexatious impediments of the most various and complicated kinds, we are almost always quiet sure to find that they had some great Thwarting difficulty to contend against. An intellectual life is always a contest or a discipline, and the art or skill of living intellectually does not so much consists in surrounding ourselves with what is reputed to be advantageous as in compelling every circumstance and condition of our lives to yield us some tribute of intellectual benefit and force. The school of the intellectual man is the place where he happens to be, and his teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones and earth round about him.
The essence of intellectual living does not reside in the extent of science or in perfection of expression, but in a constant preference for higher thoughts over lower thoughts, and this preference may be the habit of a mind which has not any very considerable amount of information. Men have lived intellectually in ages when science had scarcely begun to exist, and when there was but little literature that could be of use as an aid to culture. for example whoever reads English is richer in the aids to culture than Plato was, yet Plato thought intellectually. It is not erudition that makes the intellectual man, but a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking. just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct.
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