"Discourse on the Ends and Uses of a Liberal Education"

by Alexander Kinmont

(1836)


Excerpt from the digitized text published in the Hanover Historical Review.

Alexander Kinmont delivered this speech to the  Union Literary Society, a student organization founded six years before

"to promote friendship and good feeling among us, and cultivate literature and science in general and eloquence in particular."


N.B. Paragraph numbers provided are not part of the original document. Editorial explanations are in square brackets [ ].


{1} There are two kinds of Education  --  the liberal and the servile. I define a liberal education to be that which puts us in possession of the principles and reasons of actions and things, so far as they are capable of being known or investigated; a servile education, on the contrary, is that which stops short at the technical rules and methods, without attempting to understand the reasons or principles on which they are grounded. . . . "The planets are held in their orbits by the law of universal gravitation" [is]  a most sublime theory; but if you have no other illustrations of the truth of it, than such as may be found in the most popular works on astronomy; unless you have made yourself acquainted with those laws or facts, the grand discoveries of Kepler, and satisfied yourself by an examination of the evidence, that the ascertaining of these lies within the scope of observation and geometrical measurement, and after having settled that point to your satisfaction, followed up the mathematical reasonings of Newton, through all the principal theorems, by which steps, he at last demonstratively deduced, the grand law of universal gravitation, and established it on grounds that cannot be shaken; -- unless you have passed through this ordeal of investigation, your knowledge of astronomy is not liberal, not solid, but like the faith of the multitude in the Christian Religion, without either substance or evidence, -- whereas a true faith is possessed of both.

. . .

{2} Gentlemen of the Union Literary Society, I have pointed out some of the ends of a liberal education, and have shown that the pursuit of principles is its main business. . . . Let me recommend to you, gentlemen, in the most earnest manner, as you value the well-being and freedom of your own understandings (and I am sure my recommendation is seconded by the voice of your instructors) that you make it your constant endeavor to seek for these principles of truth, as for hidden treasure; and to seek diligently till you find them. They are sometimes near at hand  --  sometimes remote. They are not always couched in some set form of words; there are truths beyond the compass of delinition; the most precious truths are generally such. . . . There are truths, I say, gentlemen, of such a stamp, that they cannot be reduced to a verbal form: they are to be felt rather than seen; and yet they must be known, in order that we may act from them. How, then, are we to come at such truths as these? By a knowledge of men and things; not as presented in the abstract, but livingly and in the gross; these are the great hieroglyphics of nature, and they must be deciphered by everyone. But . . . where shall we find -- to read them? In our own age and country only? Gentlemen, that is one page of the book, and we ought to peruse it; but it is but one; and from its very nearness, we may magnify its importance, and take its partial views of truth and nature for the universal. This is the mistake which . . . [uneducated men]  so often fall into. They are often better acquainted with the single page before them than the educated; and take pride to themselves for their knowledge, and think they know all, because they know all that they see. And I would advise you, gentlemen, to gather their knowledge, and to gather it carefully; but it is not liberal education to be possessed of that merely, however practical; but you must peruse the other pages of the vast book of human history -- not the contemporary page merely -- nor look only at a single segment of humanity, but take in its wide circumference, and read its universal lessons of experience, and from an extensive and commanding circumduction of facts, and feelings, and sentiments of all known ages, arrive at something like a firm, and adequate, and just philosophy of Man. -- You may say, let others gather the facts for me -- I will be satisfied with the conclusions; they will serve my turn. Gentlemen, this is to enslave our minds: it is not the gathered faded facts that have the moral truths upon them, so really as the fresh contemporaneous ones. So, if you would read the genius of an age, peruse none but the writings of the time. . . .

{3} There is a prevailing delusion in this country, that because we have a large region, and a fine soil, and spontaneous productions, on that account there is less necessity for hard study or extended reading -- and that it will rather interfere with the bold originality of native genius, which, it is believed, would otherwise shoot up with the spontaneous exuberance of the wild forests. Gentlemen, the fancy would be a good one, if the fruitfulness of the mind sprung from the same causes with the fertility of the soil; but it is not so -- it is not so. Our minds and bodies are of different orders of being. . . ; and the well-being and strength of the mind are derived from one order of causes -- those of the body from another. But even to pursue the analogy taken up, what is the cause of this immense fertility of our lands? Is it not the decay and decomposition of many ages of vegetation, that have formed the soil. . . ? The first productions on the barren rock are but lichen and moss -- curious but not valuable; it is the accumulated mold of a long series of years of vegetation, that makes [rich soil].  And the analogy holds in mind; it is the accumulation of thought and sentiment of ages of history and experience that forms the right kind of soil, on which our minds must strike root, and grow downwards and upwards. . . . It is folly, then, to exclude ourselves from the benefit of a large mental experience, under the hope of being original, from the silly wish of producing the mere lichen and moss of intellect. No, gentlemen, let us transplant our minds into the best soils, whether these be Greek, or Latin, or English, or American. We intend not to exhibit a resurrection of ancient thoughts; that is far from our intention; but from this mixture of soil to produce fruits in our minds worthy of America -- to exhibit intellect, and power, and liberality, as near to the extended standard of the taste of our day, as were those to the standard of theirs. This is the object of a liberal education; this is that consummation so devoutly to be wished for. . . .

{4} But, gentlemen, the task remains with you and your compeers in our happy seats of learning; with you it remains; for it is the privilege of academic learning, to re-assert the great Principles of Thought among your countrymen, as they have appeared from age to age. and in various lands, and now appear, and in this land. May the studies of a just and noble learning qualify you for this grand  --  this illustrious enterprise. May Wisdom be shed down upon you from above; --and may you have large and capacious minds to receive it. In you may Education prove a blessing to the commonwealth;  -- freely you have received, and freely may you give; -- and from such well-springs and fountains of pure and benevolent minds, may Knowledge, and Education, and Virtue, and Religion, circulate abundantly into every corner of the land.


 

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