The Intellectual Life

We have shared together many hours of study, and you have been willing, at the cost of much patient labor, to cheer the difficult paths of intellectual toil by the unfailing sweetness of your beloved companionship. It seems to me that all those things which we have learned together are doubly my own; whilst those other studies which I have pursued in solitude have never yielded me more than a maimed and imperfect satisfaction. The dream of my life would be to associate you with all I do if that were possible; but since the ideal can never be wholly realized, let me at least rejoice that we have been so little separated, and that the subtle influence of your finer taste and more delicate perception is ever, like some penetrating perfume, in the whole atmosphere around me.

PREFACE.

I propose, in the following pages, to consider the possibilities of a satisfactory intellectual life under various conditions of ordinary human existence. It will form a part of my plan to take into account favorable and unfavorable influences of many kinds; and my chief purpose, so far as any effect upon others may be hoped for, will be to guard some who may read the book alike against the loss of time caused by unnecessary discouragement, and the waste of effort which is the consequence of misdirected energies.

I have adopted the form of letters addressed to persons of very different position in order that every reader may have a chance of finding what concerns him. The letters, it is unnecessary to observe, are in one sense as fictitious as those we find in novels, for they have never been sent to anybody by the post, yet the persons to whom they are addressed are not imaginary. I made it a rule, from the beginning, to think of a real person when writing, from an apprehension that by dwelling in a world too exclusively ideal I might lose sight of many impediments which beset all actual lives, even the most exceptional and fortunate.

The essence of the book may be expressed in a few sentences, the rest being little more than evidence or illustration. First, it appears that all who are born with considerable intellectual faculties are urged towards the intellectual life by irresistible instincts, as water-fowl are urged to an aquatic life; but the lower animals have this advantage over man, that as their purposes are simpler, so they attain them more completely than he does. The life of a wild duck is in perfect accordance with its instincts, but the life of an intellectual man is never on all points perfectly in accordance with his instincts. Many of the best intellectual lives known to us have been hampered by vexatious impediments of the most various and complicated kinds; and when we come to have accurate and intimate knowledge of the lives led by our intellectual contemporaries, we are always quite sure to find that each of them has some great thwarting difficulty to contend against. Nor is it too much to say that if a man were so placed and endowed in every way that all his work should be made as easy as the ignorant imagine it to be, that man would find in that very facility itself a condition most unfavorable to his intellectual growth. So that, however circumstances may help us or hinder us, the intellectual life is always a contest or a discipline, and the art or skill of living intellectually does not so much consist in surrounding ourselves with what is reputed to be advantageous as in compelling every circumstance and condition of our lives to yield us some tribute of intellectual benefit and force. The needs of the intellect are as various as intellects themselves are various: and if a man has got high mental culture during his passage through life it is of little consequence where he acquired it, or how. The school of the intellectual man is the place where he happens to be, and his teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones, and earth round about him. The feeling almost always predominant in the minds of intellectual men as they grow older, is not so much one of regret that their opportunities were not more abundant, as of regret that they so often missed opportunities which they might have turned to better account.

I have written for all classes, in the conviction that the intellectual life is really within the reach of every one who earnestly desires it. The highest culture can never be within the reach of those who cannot give the years of labor which it costs; and if we cultivate ourselves to shine in the eyes of others, to become famous in literature or science, then of course we must give many more hours of labor than can be spared from a life of practical industry. But I am fully convinced of this, convinced by the observation of living instances in all classes, that any man or woman of large natural capacity may reach the tone of thinking which may justly be called intellectual, even though that thinking may not be expressed in the most perfect language. The essence of intellectual living does not reside in extent of science or in perfection of expression, but in a constant preference for higher thoughts over lower thoughts, and this preference may be the habit of a mind which has not any very considerable amount of information. This may be very easily demonstrated by a reference to men who lived intellectually in ages when science had scarcely begun to exist, and when there was but little literature that could be of use as an aid to culture. The humblest subscriber to a mechanics’ institute has easier access to sound learning than had either Solomon or Aristotle, yet both Solomon and Aristotle lived the intellectual life. Whoever reads English is richer in the aids to culture than Plato was, yet Plato thought intellectually. It is not erudition that makes the intellectual man, but a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct. Intellectual living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or condition of the mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and purest truth. It is the continual exercise of a firmly noble choice between the larger truth and the lesser, between that which is perfectly just and that which falls a little short of justice. The ideal life would be to choose thus firmly and delicately always, yet if we often blunder and fail for want of perfect wisdom and clear light, have we not the inward assurance that our aspiration has not been all in vain, that it has brought us a little nearer to the Supreme Intellect whose effulgence draws us whilst it dazzles? Here is the true secret of that fascination which belongs to intellectual pursuits, that they reveal to us a little more, and yet a little more, of the eternal order of the Universe, establishing us so firmly in what is known, that we acquire an unshakable confidence in the laws which govern what is not, and never can be, known.

CONTENTS.

PART I.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS.
CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	To a young man of letters who worked excessively	17
II.	To the same	22
III.	To a student in uncertain health	27
IV.	To a muscular Christian	42
V.	To a student who neglected bodily exercise	47
VI.	To an author in mortal disease	53
VII.	To a young man of brilliant ability, who had just taken his degree	57
PART II.
THE MORAL BASIS.
I.	To a moralist who had said that there was a want of moral fibre in the intellectual, especially in poets and artists	67
II.	To an undisciplined writer	80
III.	To a friend who suggested the speculation “which of the moral virtues was most essential to the intellectual life”	91
IV.	To a moralist who said that intellectual culture was not conducive to sexual morality	98
PART III.
OF EDUCATION.
I.	To a friend who recommended the author to learn this thing and that	104
II.	To a friend who studied many things	110
III.	To the same	120
IV.	To a student of literature	130
V.	To a country gentleman who regretted that his son had the tendencies of a dilettant	134
VI.	To the principal of a French college	137
VII.	To the same	143
VIII.	To a student of modern languages	149
IX.	To the same	153
X.	To a student who lamented his defective memory	165
XI.	To a master of arts who said that a certain distinguished painter was half-educated	170
PART IV.
THE POWER OF TIME.
I.	To a man of leisure who complained of want of time	176
II.	To a young man of great talent and energy who had magnificent plans for the future	185
III.	To a man of business who desired to make himself better acquainted with literature, but whose time for reading was limited	200
IV.	To a student who felt hurried and driven	207
V.	To a friend who, though he had no profession, could not find time for his various intellectual pursuits	212
PART V.
THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY.
I.	To a very rich student	216
II.	To a genius careless in money matters	224
III.	To a student in great poverty	239
PART VI.
CUSTOM AND TRADITION.
I.	To a young gentleman who had firmly resolved never to wear anything but a gray coat	246
II.	To a conservative who had accused the author of a want of respect for tradition	254
III.	To a lady who lamented that her son had intellectual doubts concerning the dogmas of the church	263
IV.	To the son of the lady to whom the preceding letter was addressed	269
V.	To a friend who seemed to take credit to himself, intellectually, from the nature of his religious belief	276
VI.	To a Roman Catholic friend who accused the intellectual class of a want of reverence for authority	280
PART VII.
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE.
I.	To a young gentleman of intellectual tastes, who, without having as yet any particular lady in view, had expressed, in a general way, his determination to get married	285
II.	To a young gentleman who contemplated marriage	291
III.	To the same	299
IV.	To the same	306
V.	To the same	312
VI.	To a solitary student	322
VII.	To a lady of high culture who found it difficult to associate with persons of her own sex	325
VIII.	To a lady of high culture	330
IX.	To a young man of the middle class, well educated, who complained that it was difficult for him to live agreeably with his mother, a person of somewhat authoritative disposition, but uneducated	333
PART VIII.
ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY.
I.	To a young English nobleman	341
II.	To an English democrat	358
PART IX.
SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE.
I.	To a lady who doubted the reality of intellectual friendships	374
II.	To a young gentleman who lived much in fashionable society	379
III.	To the same	384
IV.	To the same	391
V.	To a young gentleman who kept entirely out of company	397
VI.	To a friend who kindly warned the author of the bad effects of solitude	402
PART X.
INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS.
I.	To a young author whilst he was writing his first book	415
II.	To a student in the first ardor of intellectual ambition	422
III.	To an intellectual man who desired an outlet for his energies	431
IV.	To the friend of a man of high culture who produced nothing	441
V.	To a student who felt hurried and driven	446
VI.	To an ardent friend who took no rest	451
VII.	To the same	456
VIII.	To a friend (highly cultivated) who congratulated himself on having entirely abandoned the habit of reading newspapers	466
IX.	To an author who appreciated contemporary literature	470
X.	To an author who kept very irregular hours	476
PART XI.
TRADES AND PROFESSIONS.
I.	To a young gentleman of ability and culture who had not decided about his profession	488
II.	To a young gentleman who had literary and artistic tastes, but no profession	499
III.	To a young gentleman who wished to devote himself to literature as a profession	504
IV.	To an energetic and successful cotton manufacturer	513
V.	To a young Etonian who thought of becoming a cotton-spinner	522
PART XII.
SURROUNDINGS.
I.	To a friend who often changed his place of residence	530
II.	To a friend who maintained that surroundings were a matter of indifference to a thoroughly occupied mind	539
III.	To an artist who was fitting up a magnificent new studio	546

THE

INTELLECTUAL LIFE.

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