the arts and sciences, but of itself: yet relating to those it is a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and the common confounder of truth; with which a man goes groping in the dark, no otherwise than if he were blind. Great understandings are most racked and troubled with it; nay, sometimes they will rather choose to die than not to know the things they study for.[1] Think then what an evil it is, and what [a] good the contrary.
The ensuing note on knowledge has less depth of direct insight, less force of practical reason; but the definition which follows is singularly eloquent and refined, however scholastic and irrational in its casuistic and rhetorical subtlety.
Knowledge is the action of the soul, and is perfect without the senses,[2] as having the seeds of all science and virtue in itself; but not without the service of the senses; by these organs the soul works: she is a perpetual agent, prompt and subtle; but often flexible and erring, entangling herself like a silkworm: but her reason is a weapon with two edges, and cuts through.
I am inclined to suspect that we may discern in
- ↑ No modern reader of these lofty words can fail to call to mind the sublime pathos and the historic interest of Mr. Browning's glorious poem, A Grammarian's Funeral.
- ↑ It is a pity we are not told how; for to the ordinary intelligence of reasoning mankind it would appear that 'without the senses' not only could knowledge not be perfect, but it could not even exist in the most inchoate or embryonic phase of being.
