" Culture, how indispensable! I cannot forgive you the
want of accomplishment; and yet, culture will instantly destroy that
chiefest beauty of spontaneousness. Excellent is culture for a savage;
but once let him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to
think of Plutarch's heroes. In short, since true fortitude of
understanding consists "in not letting what we know be embarrassed by
what we do not know," we ought to secure those advantages which we can
command, and not risk them by clutching after the airy and unattainable.
Come, no chimeras! Let us go abroad; let us mix in affairs; let us
learn, and get, and have, and climb. "Men are a sort of moving plants,
and, like trees, receive a great part of their nourishment from the
air. If they keep too much at home, they pine." Let us have a robust,
manly life; let us know what we know, for certain; what we have, let
it be solid, and seasonable, and our own. A world in the hand is worth
two in the bush. Let us have to do with real men and women, and not
with skipping ghosts.
This, then, is the right ground of the skeptic,--this of consideration,
of self-containing; not at all of unbelief; not at all of universal
denying, nor of universal doubting,--doubting even that he doubts;
least of all, of scoffing and profligate jeering at all that is stable
and good.
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