Therefore, when I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love coeval with life, what do I say but love innocence; lovevirtue; love purity of conduct; love that which, if you are rich and great, will sanctify the providence which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you-which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the outer world-that which will make your motives habitually great and honourable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud?
Therefore, if any young man have embarked his life in the pursuit of Knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event: let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of Knowledge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life. She will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows in all the relations and in all the offices of life.
- SYDNEY SMITH
NOTES
① To mark, &c.-The different sciences and arts referred to in the successive clauses of the sentence are-history, physics, meteorology and geology, chemistry, astronomy, poetry, oratory, and theology.
② The democracies of the Old World.-Such were Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece,and such were Rome and Carthage in their palmiest days. The "eloquence" referred to is that of Demosthenes, the Athenian, and of Cicero, the Roman, orator.
③ Laborious days.-This effect of the love of knowledge has evidently been suggested bywhat Milton says of the love of fame:-"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise(That last infirmity of noble mind)To scorn delights, and live laborious days."-Lycidas , 70-72.
④ The fire which the Persians burn.-The dominant religion in Persia was fire-worship, or Parseeism, down to the seventh century, when the country was conquered by the Arabs, and Mohammedanism took its place. Many of the Parsees then fled to India, and their descendants have still their head-quarters at Bombay. Many, at the same time, submitted to the conquerors, and their descendants are called Guebres (Gwebers ).