“To
learn is the proper business of youth; and whether we increase our knowledge by
books or by conversation, we are equally indebted to foreign assistance.
“The
greater part of students are not born with abilities to construct systems, or
advance knowledge; nor can have any hope beyond that of becoming intelligent
hearers in the schools of art, of being able to comprehend what others
discover, and to remember what others teach. Even those to whom Providence has
allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single
science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow
opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they
claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of
knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the
collective labour of a thousand intellects.”
[Samuel
Johnson, The Rambler #121; May 14,
1751.]
1 comment:
We live in times where the dismantling of cultural memory is the goal of contemporary intellects. The collective labour of a thousand intellects chipped to rubble by the thousand hammers of a zombie army.
Here in Canada, one of the few Johnsonian voices of reason is Rex Murphy whose graceful erudition continues to remind his readership of what we have lost.
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