When we next meet, therefore, I purpose to examine what it is which wisdom, by preference, contemplates; what choice she makes among the thoughts and sciences open to her, and to what purpose she employs whatever science she may possess.
And I will briefly tell you, beforehand, that the result of the inquiry will be, that instead of regarding none of the sources of happiness, she regards nothing else; that she measures all worthiness by pure felicity; that we are permitted to conceive her as the cause even of gladness to God—“I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him,”—and that we are commanded to know her as queen of the populous world, “rejoicing in the habitable parts of the Earth, and whose delights are with the sons of Men.”
LECTURE II.
OF WISDOM AND FOLLY IN SCIENCE
20. In my last lecture I asserted the positive and negative powers of literature, art, and science; and endeavoured to show you some of the relations of wise art to foolish art. To-day we are to examine the nature of these positive and negative powers in science; it being the object of every true school to teach the positive or constructive power, and by all means to discourage, reprove, and extinguish the negative power.
It is very possible that you may not often have thought of, or clearly defined to yourselves, this destructive or deadly character of some elements of science. You may indeed have recognized with Pope that a little knowledge was dangerous, and you have therefore striven to drink deep; you may have recognized with Bacon, that knowledge might partially become venomous; and you may have sought, in modesty and sincerity, antidote to the inflating poison. But that there is a ruling spirit or σοφία, under whose authority you are placed, to determine for you, first the choice, and then the use of all knowledge whatsoever; and that if you do not appeal to that ruler, much more if you disobey her, all science becomes to you ruinous in proportion to its accumulation, and as a net to your soul, fatal in proportion to the fineness of its thread,—this, I imagine, few of you, in the zeal of learning, have suspected, and fewer still have pressed their suspicion so far as to recognize or believe.
21. You must have nearly all heard of, many must have seen, the singular paintings; some also may have read the poems, of William Blake. The impression that his drawings once made is fast, and justly, fading away, though they are not without noble merit. But his poems have much more than merit; they are written with absolute sincerity, with infinite tenderness, and, though in the manner of them diseased and wild, are in verity the words of a great and wise mind, disturbed, but not deceived, by its sickness; nay, partly exalted by it, and sometimes giving forth in fiery aphorism some of the most precious words of existing literature. One of these passages I will ask you to remember; it will often be serviceable to you—
“Doth the Eagle know what is in the pit,
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?”
It would be impossible to express to you in briefer terms the great truth that there is a different kind of knowledge good for every different creature, and that the glory of the higher creatures is in ignorance of what is known to the lower.
22. And, above all, this is true of man; for every other creature is compelled by its instinct to learn its own appointed lesson, and must centralize its perception in its own being. But man has the choice of stooping in science beneath himself, and striving in science beyond himself; and the “Know thyself” is, for him, not a law to which he must in peace submit; but a precept which of all others is the most painful to understand, and the most difficult to fulfil. Most painful to understand, and humiliating; and this alike, whether it be held to refer to the knowledge beneath us, or above. For, singularly enough, men are always most conceited of the meanest science:—
“Doth the Eagle know what is in the pit,
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?”
It is just those who grope with the mole, and cling with the bat, who are vainest of their sight and of their wings.
23. “Know thyself;” but can it indeed be sophia,—can it be the noble wisdom, which thus speaks to science? Is not this rather, you will ask, the voice of the lower virtue of prudence, concerning itself with right conduct, whether for the interests of this world or of the future? Does not sophia regard all that is above and greater than man; and by so much as we are forbidden to bury ourselves in the mole’s earth-heap, by so much also, are we not urged to raise ourselves towards the stars?
Indeed, it would at first seem so; nay, in the passage of the Ethics, which I proposed to you to-day for question, you are distinctly told so. There are, it is said, many different kinds of phronesis, by which every animal recognizes what is for its own good: and man, like any other creature, has his own separate phronesis telling him what he is to seek, and to do, for the preservation of his life: but above all these forms of prudence, the Greek sage tells you, is the sophia of which the objects are unchangeable and eternal, the methods consistent, and the conclusions universal: and this wisdom has no regard whatever to the things in which the happiness of man consists, but acquaints itself only with the things that are most honourable; so that “we call Anaxagoras and Thales, and such others, wise indeed, but not prudent, in that they know nothing of what is for their own advantage, but know surpassing things, marvellous things, difficult things, and divine things.”
24. Now here is a question which evidently touches us closely. We profess at this day to be an especially prudent nation;—to regard only the things which are for our own advantage; to leave to other races the knowledge of surpassing things, marvellous things, divine things, or beautiful things; and in our exceeding prudence we are, at this moment, refusing the purchase of, perhaps, the most interesting picture by Raphael in the world, and, certainly, one of the most beautiful works ever produced by the art-wisdom of man, for five-and-twenty thousand pounds, while we are debating whether we shall not pay three hundred millions to the Americans, as a fine for selling a small frigate to Captain Semmes. Let me reduce these sums from thousands of pounds, to single pounds; you will then see the facts more clearly; (there is not one person in a million who knows what a “million” means; and that is one reason the nation is always ready to let its ministers spend a million or two in cannon, if they can show they have saved twopence-halfpenny in tape). These are the facts then, stating pounds for thousands of pounds; you are offered a Nativity, by Raphael, for five-and-twenty pounds, and cannot afford it; but it is thought you may be bullied into paying three hundred thousand pounds, for having sold a ship to Captain Semmes. I do not say you will pay it. Still your present position is one of deprecation and humility, and that is the kind of result which you bring about by acting with what you call “practical common sense,” instead of Divine wisdom.
25. Perhaps you think I am losing Aristotle’s notion of common sense, by confusing it with our vulgar English one; and that selling ships or ammunition to people whom we have not courage to fight either for or against, would not by Aristotle have been held a phronetic, or prudent proceeding. Be it so; let us be certain then, if we can, what Aristotle does mean. Take the instance I gave you in the last lecture, of the various modes of feeling in which a master of literature, of science, and of art, would severally regard the storm round the temples of Pæstum.
The man of science, we said, thought of the origin of the electricity; the artist of its light in the clouds, and the scholar, of its relation to the power of Zeus and Poseidon. There you have Episteme; Techne; and Nous; well, now what does Phronesis do?
Phronesis puts up his umbrella, and goes home as fast as he can. Aristotle’s Phronesis at least does; having no regard for marvellous things. But are you sure that Aristotle’s Phronesis is indeed the right sort of Phronesis? May there not be a commonsense, as well as an art, and a science, under the command of sophia? Let us take an instance of a more subtle kind.
26. Suppose that two young ladies, (I assume in my present lectures, that none are present, and that we may say among ourselves what we like; and we do like, do we not, to suppose that young ladies excel us only in prudence, and not in wisdom?) let us suppose that two young ladies go to the observatory on a