LECTURE IV.

THE VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR.

I haveto-day to speak of the Vocation of the Scholar. I stand in a peculiar relation to this subject. All, or most of you, have chosen knowledge as the business of your lives; and I have made the same choice:—all of you, I presume, apply your whole energies, to fill honourably the station to which you aspire; and I too have done and do the like. I have to speak as a Scholar, before future Scholars, of the Scholar’s vocation. I must examine the subject to its foundation; exhaust it, if I can; hold back nothing in my representation of the truth. And if I discover for the Scholar a vocation most honourable, most lofty, and distinguished above that of all other classes of men, how is it possible for me to lay it before you without exceeding the limits of modest expression, without seeming to undervalue other vocations, without being apparently blinded by self-conceit? But I speak as a philosopher, whose duty it is strictly to define all his ideas. I cannot exclude this idea from the system of which it is a necessary part. I dare not keep back any part of the truth which I recognise. It still remains true; and modesty itself is subordinate to it:—it is a false modesty which is violated by truth. Let us then consider our subject in the first place with indifference, as if it had no relation to ourselves: let us treat it as an idea belonging to a world quite foreign to our own. Let us on that account look with the greater strictness to our arguments. Let us never forget, what I hope I have already impressed upon you with some success, that every station in life is necessary; that each deserves our respect; that not the station itself, but the worthy fulfilment of its duties, does honour to a man; and that we only merit esteem the nearer we approach to the perfect performance of the duties assigned to us in the order of things; that therefore the Scholar has reason to be of all others the most modest, because an aim is set before him of which he must continually fall far short, because he has a most elevated ideal to reach, which commonly he approaches only at the greatest distance.

There are many tendencies and powers in man, and it is the vocation of each individual to cultivate allhis powers, so far as he is able to do so. Among others is the social impulse; which offers him a new and peculiar form of cultivation, that for society, and affords an unusual facility for culture in general There is nothing prescribed to man on this subject; whether he shall cultivate all his faculties as a whole, unaided and by nature alone, or mediately through society. The first is difficult, and in no wise advances society; hence in the social state each individual rightfully selects his own part of the common culture, leaves the rest to his fellows, and expects that they will allow him to share the benefits of their culture, as he permits them to participate in the advantages of his own: and this is the origin and ground of the distinction of classes in society.

Such are the results arrived at in our previous discourses. For an arrangement of these different classes according to the ideas of Pure Reason, which is quite possible, a foundation must be sought in a complete enumeration of all the natural capacities and wants of man; not, however, of his merely artificial wants. A particular class in society may be devoted to the cultivation of each faculty, or, what is the same thing, to the satisfaction of each want founded on an original impulse in human nature. We reserve this inquiry for another occasion, that we may now enter upon one which lies nearer to us.

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