I KNOW the mighty bards, I listen when they sing, The secret store Which these explore When they with torch of genius pierce The tenfold clouds that cover The riches of the universe From God's adoring lover. And know the sparkle of its ore, Know Heaven's truths from lies that shine Explored, they teach us to explore. THE CELEBRATION OF INTELLECT CANNOT consent to wander from the duties of this day into the fracas of politics. The brute noise of cannon has, I know, a most poetic echo in these days when it is an instrument of freedom and the primal sentiments of humanity. Yet it is but representative and a far-off means and servant: but here in the college we are in the presence of the constituency and the principle itself. Here is, or should be, the majesty of reason and the creative cause; and it were a compounding of all gradation and reverence to suffer the flash of swords and the boyish strife of passion and the feebleness of military strength to intrude on this sanctity and omnipotence of Intellectual Law. Against the heroism of soldiers I set the heroism of scholars, which consists in ignoring the other. You shall not put up in your Academy the statue of Cæsar or Pompey, of Nelson or Wellington, of Washington or Napoleon, of Garibaldi, but of Archimedes, of Milton, of Newton. Archimedes disdained to apply himself to the useful arts, only to the liberal or the causal arts. Hiero the king reproached him with his barren studies. Like Thales, he was willing to show him that he was quite able in rude matters, if he could condescend to them, and he conducted the defence of Syracuse against the Romans. Then he returned to his geometry; and when the Roman soldier, at the sack of Syracuse, broke into his study, the philosopher could not rise from his chair and his diagram, and took his death without resistance. Michael Angelo gave himself to art, despising all meaner pursuits. When the war came to his own city, he lent his genius, and defended Florence as long as he was obeyed. Milton congratulates the Parliament that, whilst London is besieged and blocked, the Thames infested, inroads and excursions round, and battle oft rumored to be marching up to her walls and suburb trenches, then are the people, or the greater part, more than at other times wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed, they reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before discoursed or written, and the fact argues a just confidence in the grandeur and self-subsistency of the cause of religious liberty which made all material war an impertinence. yet For either science and literature is a hypocrisy, or it is not. If it be, then resign your charter to the Legislature, turn your college into barracks and warehouses, and divert the funds of your founders into the stock of a rope-walk or a candle-factory, a tan-yard or some other undoubted conveniency for the surrounding population. But if the intellectual interest be, as I hold, no hypocrisy, but the only reality, then it behooves us to enthrone it, obey it; and give it possession of us and ours; to give, among other possessions, the college into its hand casting down every idol, every pretender, every hoary lie, every dignified blunder that has crept into its administration. At this season, the colleges keep their anniversaries, and in this country where education is a primary interest, every family has a representative in their halls, a son, a brother, or one of our own kindred is there for his training. But even if we had no son or friend therein, yet the college is part of the community, and it is there for us, is training our teachers, civilizers and inspirers. It is essentially the most radiating and public of agencies, like, but better than, the light-house, or the alarm-bell, or the sentinel who fires a signal-cannon, or the telegraph |