he found no peace. Every sound convulsed him with anguish. All that he ate, except his black crust, produced violent retchings. All that gives pleasure to our educated senses gave him pain through those very senses, trained in an opposite direction.
The point for each one to decide is, whether it is mortal mind which is causative, or immortal Useful knowledge. Mind. We should forsake the basis of material belief, for the facts of Science and their Principle.
Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea, governed by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics, thought passes naturally from effect to cause.
Learning is useful if it is of the right sort. Historic study, observation, invention, philosophic research, and original thought are requisite for the expansion of mortal mind, and essential to its growth out of itself, error.
It is the tangled barbarisms of learning which we deplore, — the mere dogma, the speculative theory, the nauseous fiction. Novels, remarkable only for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity, fill our young readers with wrong tastes and sentiments. Literary arrangements are lowering the intellectual standard to accommodate the purse, and to meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of instruction. Incorrect teaching lowers the standard of Truth.
If materialistic knowledge is power, it is not wisdom. It is but a blind force. Man has sought out many inventions, but he has not yet found that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of knowledge. The power of mortal mind over its own body is little understood.
