Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

INTRODUCTION. 29
"Plato has profoundly defined man' the hunter of truth;' for in this
chase, as in others, the pursuit is all in all, the success comparatively nothing. We exist only as we energize; pleasure is the reflex of unimpaired
energy; energy is the vmeanz by which our faculties are developed; and a
higher energy, the end which their development proposes. In action is
thus contained the existence, happiness, improvement, and perfection of
our being; and knowledge is only precious, as it may afford a stimulus to
the exercise of our powers, and the condition of their more complete activity. Speculative truth is, therefore, subordinate to speculation itself; and its
value is directly measured by the quantity of energy which it occasions, -
immediately in its discovery, mediately through its consequences. Life
to Endymion was not preferable to death; aloof from practice, a waking
error is better than a sleeping truth. -Neither, in point of fact, is there
found any proportion between the possession of truths, and the development
of the mind in which they are deposited. Every learner in science is now
familiar with more truths than Aristotle or Plato ever dreamt of knowing; yet, compared with the Stagirite or the Athenian, how few, even of
our masters of modern science, rank higher than intellectual barbarians."
-lb. p. 40.
" All profitable study is a silent disputation - an intellectual gymnastic; and the most improving books are precisely those which most excite
the reader —to understand the author, to supply what he has omitted,
and to canvass his facts and reasonings. To read passively, to learnis, in reality, not to learn at all. In study, implicit faith, belief upon authority, is worse even than, for a time, erroneous speculation. To read
profitably, we should read the authors, not most in unison with, but most
adverse to, our opinions; for whatever may be the case in the cure of
bodies, enantiopathy, and not homeopathy, is the true medicine of minds.
Accordingly, such sciences and such authors, as present only unquestionable truths, [pure mathematics, for instance, when made a chief object
of pursuit,] determining a minimum of self-activity in the student, are, in
a rational education, subjectively, naught. Those [such] sciences and
authors, on the contrary, as constrain the student to independent thought,
[metaphysics, for example,] are, whatever be their objective certainty, subjectively, educationally, best."] -lb. p. 773.
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