The end of knowledge is not that a man may appear learned, any
more than the end of eating is that a man may seem to have a full
stomach; but the end of it is that a man may be wise, see and
understand things as they are; be able to adjust himself to the
universe in which he is placed, and judge and reason with the
celerity of instinct, and that without any conscious exercise of
his knowledge. When we feel the food we have eaten, something is
wrong; so when a man is forever conscious of his learning, he has
not digested it, and it is an encumbrance. . . .
The evolution of this author in his use of titles is interesting.
Compare the crudity of "Vagaries vs. Spiritualism," and "Deep," for
example, with those he selects when he begins to publish his books.
"Wake-Robin," "Winter Sunshine," "Locusts and Wild Honey," "Leaf
and Tendril,"--how much they connote! Then how felicitous are the
titles of most of his essays! "Birch Browsings," "The Snow-Walkers,"
"Mellow England," "Our Rural Divinity" (the cow), "The Flight of
the Eagle" (for one of his early essays on Whitman), "A Bunch of
Herbs," "A Pinch of Salt," "The Divine Soil," "The Long Road" (on
evolution)--these and many others will occur to the reader.
Following "A Thought on Culture" was a short essay on poetry, the
drift of which is that poetry as contrasted with science must give
us things, not as they are in themselves, but as they stand related
to our experience.
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