APHORISMS, MAXIMS, &c. ]. APHORISMS representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to enquire farther; whereas methods carrying the show of a total, do secure men, as if they were at farthest.-Bacon. 2. Exclusively of the Abstract Sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of Aphorisms and the greatest and best of men is but an Aphorism. : Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors. There is one way of giving freshness and importance to the most common-place maxims-that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being.-S. T. Coleridge. 3. Mature and sedate wisdom has been fond of summing up the results of its experience in weighty sentences. Solomon did so the wise men of India and Greece did so: Bacon did so: Goethe in his old age took delight in doing so.... They who cannot weave an uniform web, may at least produce a piece of patchwork; which may be useful, and not without a charm of its own. The very sharpness and abruptness with which truths must be asserted, A when they are to stand singly, is not ill-fitted to startle and rouse sluggish and drowsy minds. Nor is the present shattered and disjointed state of the intellectual world unaptly represented by a collection of fragments.-Guesses at Truth. 4. A collection of good sentences resembles a string of pearls.-Chinese saying. 5. Nor do Apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use: as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.-Bacon. 6. I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war....But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them [the learners] with lectures and explanations upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with a study of learning, and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.-John Milton. 7. I hesitate not to assert, as a Christian, that religion is the first rational object of Education. Whatever may be the fate of my children in this transitory world, about which I hope I am as solicitous as I ought to be, I would, if possible, secure a happy meeting with them in a future and everlasting life. I can well enough bear their reproaches for not enabling them to attain to worldly honours and distinctions; but to have been in any measure accessary, by my neglect, to their final perdition, would be the occasion of such reproach and blame, as would be absolutely insupportable.-Dr Priestley. |
