ページの画像
PDF
ePub

THE

PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

CHAPTER I.

CLASSIFICATION OF DIFFICULTIES: OUR NATURAL LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE: THE PHILOSOPHY THAT LIES IN COMMON THINGS: NEWTON; GRAVITATION: GALILEO; THE PENDULUM: TORRICELLI AND PASCAL; THE BAROMETER: PRINCE RUPERT ; MEZZOTINTO: MONTGOLFIER; BALLOON: SELF-TEACHING.

THE

THE various individuals who, in every age of the world, have distinguished themselves by their devotion to intellectual pursuits in the midst of more or less unfavourable circumstances, might perhaps be conveniently enough comprehended in four classes; to be designated, for shortness' sake, the Conquerors of Ignorance, the Conquerors of Adversity, the Conquerors of Business, and the Conquerors of Custom. Under the head of the Conquerors of Ignorance would come all who, by their own efforts, have emancipated themselves from ignorance, whether by partially or wholly educating themselves, or by seeking and finding instruction notwithstanding the discouragement or opposition of friends, the difficulties arising from scantiness of means, a neglected youth, or any of the other causes which usually produce permanent illiteracy. The Conquerors of Adversity would be those who have clung to the pursuit of knowledge in spite of menial, laborious, or other uncongenial employments, depressing poverty or dependence, confinement, persecution, disease, or deficiency of any of the ordinary corporeal senses. The Conquerors of Business would include all who have made themselves remarkable by their acquirements or achievements in literature or science, while beset by the usually engrossing demands of what is called active life. Finally, the title of the Conquerors of Custom would

B

take in all those who, in their pursuit of knowledge, have had to surmount impediments interposed by the habits, fashions, or prejudices of the society in which they moved.

But, although instances of all these different kinds of conquest will be found in the following pages, they will not be found arranged with any rigorous adherence to this classification. Our little work is not intended to be a scientific treatise, but only a sort of florilegium, so to speak, or selection of the examples and histories belonging to our subject which are likely to prove the most attractive and stimulating. The classification, therefore, having been once stated, need not further embarrass us.

It is a pity that, as we grow up towards the maturity of our faculties, we fall away in so many respects from what we were in our childhood; for the most beautiful and perfect character of all would be that in which the man, with his larger experience and full-grown powers, was still in heart and disposition a child. If we could but retain with us always the ingenuousness, the guilelessness, the docility, the simple but yet warm affections of opening life, unimpaired by the hardening influences of the world, we should not only be the happier for it, but should without doubt be gainers too, as to those things which most engage the ambition and flatter the pride of manhood. We should be wiser if we sought wisdom more like little children. SIR ISAAC NEWTON, of all men that ever lived, is the one who has most extended the territory of human knowledge; and he used to speak of himself as having been all

[graphic][merged small]

his life but "a child gathering pebbles on the sea-shore ; "-expressing by that similitude, probably, not only his modest conviction how mere an outskirt the field of his discoveries was, compared with the vastness of universal nature, but an allusion likewise to the spirit in which he had pursued his investigations, as having been that, not of selection and system-building, but of child-like alacrity in seizing upon whatever contributions of knowledge Nature threw at his feet, and of submission to all the intimations of observation and experiment. On other occasions he was wont to say, that, if there was any mental habit or endow

ment in which he excelled the generality of men, it was that of patience in the examination of the facts and phenomena of his subject. This was merely another form of that teachableness which constituted the character of the man. He loved Truth, and wooed her with the unwearying ardour of a lover. Other speculators had consulted the boo of Nature principally for the purpose of seeking in it the defence of some favourite theory; partially, therefore, and hastily, as one would consult a dictionary: Newton perused it as a volume altogether worthy of being studied for its own sake, and hence both the patience with which he traced its characters, and the rich and plentiful discoveries with which the search rewarded him. If he afterwards classified and systematized his knowledge like a philosopher, he had first, to use his own language, gathered it like a child.

It is in childhood that we may be said most to love knowledge for its own sake. We know none of its uses except the gratification which it gives, and receive it, like the light of heaven or the fragrance of the flowers, as an enjoyment that needs no ulterior utility to make it delightful to us. Curiosity awakens in the infant breast with thought itself; and at that most interesting period especially, when the mind, like a seedling that has just made its way through the ground, is pushing forth, as it were, its first leaves and buds of promise, this passion, for it is then truly such, seems to be almost master of all the rest, so that a lively child shall in general be easily seduced at any time from either his food or his rest, or a sport which merely gives occupation to his physical activities, by the attractions of anything which offers him intellectual excitement and exercise, provided it do not present itself to him in the shape of a task, or be made revolting to his imagination by the associations of task-work. For it is not merely an entertaining tale that arrests the ear at this period, but knowledge of whatever kind, if communicated simply as knowledge. You never stated a fact to a child, in language which he could comprehend, to which he did not listen with eager attention. The questions he asks, and he is ever asking questions, are not confined to subjects that engage and amuse the fancy, but are more commonly directed to points having something of a solid and philosophic importance. It is matter for reflection that he seeks something, not to divert the ennui of the moment, but to store up and grow wise upon. Savages, too, who are men in physical powers, but children in intellectual tastes and habits, bear a like attestation with children to the love which we naturally have for knowledge, by the eagerness with which, unless when brutified by vice or misery, they uniformly listen to whatever information may be imparted to them by their civilized visitors. Nothing is so intensely interesting, either to a child or to a savage, as a philosophical experiment-except the explanation of it. The excited curiosity in this case hungers for its aliment

in both, with a keenness which does indeed show strikingly how much might be done in the work of education, merely by appealing to this principle of our mental constitution, and tempting us to the pursuit of knowledge by the love which we naturally feel for it. When the sense of ignorance is once fairly awakened, it is almost too painful to be borne; and the instructor's easy and delightful task, therefore, if he would but give himself to it, is mainly to excite in his pupils this natural thirst for knowledge, and then to lead them to the fountain where they may drink and be satisfied.

But to return to the teachableness preserved by such minds as those of Newton to the very end of life. It is indeed most interesting and instructive to consider the manner in which both this great man and many others, possessing a portion of his observant and inventive genius, have availed themselves, for the enlargement of the boundaries of philosophy, of such common occurrences as, from their very commonness, had escaped the attention of all less active and original minds. We are not now speaking of such lucky discoveries as mere chance has sometimes suggested, even to the most inattentive understanding. How far we are indebted to this source for many of those ordinary arts, the origin of which is lost in antiquity and fable, it would not be very easy to determine. The accounts relating to such subjects have been principally handed down to us by poetry and popular tradition, both which are lovers of the mysterious and the marvellous. Hence, there is reason to believe that they are much too full of those wonders which strike an unenlightened fancy; and that, instead of the slow and successive efforts by which the arts in question were actually discovered and improved, there has been substituted, in many cases, the more dramatic incident of a sudden inspiration, merely for the sake of effect. Nay, in those times, the discoverer himself might probably be not unfrequently the first to contrive and spread the fiction; preferring, as he would in all likelihood do, the credit of being the chosen transmitter of supernatural communications to his fellow-mortals, to that of excelling those around him in such mere human and unvalued attributes as philosophic sagacity and patience. Or he might be self-deceived by his own ardour. The legend of a mystical origin, besides, was not only the best recommendation by which any invention could, in the early ages of the world, be introduced to the notice of men, but perhaps, under the tyranny of a jealous and engrossing superstition, was almost a necessary passport tó its reception. However this may have been, it is worth remarking, that the current tales had probably some share in leading away the spirit of antiquity from that investigation and application of facts, whence chiefly has arisen the glory of the philosophy of modern times. Speculation and conjecture are now permitted to work only in association with observation and experiment.

But, of all sorts of observation, that which exhibits the most penetrating and watchful philosophy is, when, out of the facts and incidents of every-day experience, a gifted mind extracts new and important truths, simply by its new manner of looking at them, and, as it were, by the aid of a light of its own which it sheds upon their worn and obliterated lineaments. From one of these simple incidents Sir Isaac Newton is said to have read to the world, for the first time, the system of the universe. It appears to have been in the twenty-third year of his age, or the autumn of 1665, that this extraordinary man was sitting, as we are told, one day in his garden, when an apple fell from a tree beside him. His mind was perhaps occupied, at that fortunate moment, with one of those philosophical speculations on space and motion which are known to have, about this time, engaged much of his attention; and the little incident which interrupted him was instantly seized upon by his eager spirit, and, by that power which is in genius, assimilated with the substance of his thoughts. The existence of gravitation, or a tendency to fall towards the centre of the earth, was already known, as affecting all bodies in the immediate vicinity of our planet: and the great Galileo had even ascertained the law, or rate, according to which their motion is accelerated as they continue their descent. But no one had yet dreamed of the gravitation of the heavens,-till the idea now first dimly rose in the mind of Newton. The same power, he may be supposed to have said to himself, which has drawn this apple from its branch, would have drawn it from a position a thousand times as high. Wherever we go, we find this gravitation reigning over all things. If we ascend even to the top of the highest mountains, we discover no sensible diminution of its power. Why may not its influence extend far beyond any height to which we can make our way? Why may it not reach to the moon itself? Why may not this be the very power

1 It" was doubtless," writes Sir David Brewster," in the same remarkable year 1666, or perhaps in the autumn of 1665, that Newton's mind was first directed to the subject of gravity. He appears to have left Cambridge some time before the 8th of August, 1665, when the College was 'dismissed' on account of the plague, and it was therefore in the autumn of that year, and not in that of 1666, that the apple is said to have fallen from the tree at Woolsthorpe, and suggested to Newton the idea of gravity. Neither Pemberton nor Wiston, who received from Newton himself the history of his first ideas of gravity, records the story of the falling apple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catharine Barton, Newton's niece, and to Mr. Green by Martin Folkes, the President of the Royal Society. We saw the apple-tree in 1814, and brought away a portion of one of its roots. The tree was so much decayed that it was taken don in 1820, and the wood of it carefully pre

served by Mr. Turnor of Stoke Rocheford. See Voltaire's Philosophie de Newton, 3me part. chap. iii.; Green's Philosophy of Expansive and Contractive Forces, p. 972; and Rigaud's Hist. Essay, p. 2."- Memoirs of Life, Writings, and Di coveries of Sir Isaac Neuton, 1855. Vol. I., pp. 25, 26, 27. -All that Pemberton says is "The first thoughts which gave rise to his rincipia he had when he retired from Cambridge in 1666, on account of the plague. As he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power of gravity; that, as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reasonable to conclude that this power must extend much farther than was usually thought. Why not as high as the moon? said he to himself," &c.-- View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy; Preface.

« 前へ次へ »