19–25 January 1824

Profound knowledge is good, but profound genius is better, because, though one obtains with greater ease all the thoughts of all wise men, which the other obtains slowly by adding, himself, conclusion to conclusion, yet in the end, when both Jiave arrived at the same amount of knowledge, the latter is much the richest. . . . They have not only a certain sum of intelligence to get, but a great expedition to perform. No petty, circumscribed offices to discharge, whose narrow details daily return ; no functions wherein mechanical adroitness avails more than acquaintance with prihciples, but im- mortal life in an unbounded universe. They are both to be shortly introduced into the immense storehouse of eternal truth. Their faculties are to be tasked to solve the secret enigmas of sci- ence by whose successive development the his- tory of Nature is to be explained. The universe, to the eyes of ignorance, is but a shining chaos. And when the veil of flesh is rent, and the eyes of the spirit open, human perception will shrink from the splendour of the spiritual world. But there will be no comparison between the fitness of one and the other of the pilgrims who are to go on that heavenly road, from knowledge to knowledge. He who has sharpened his faculties by long and painful thought enters, in a mighty sphere, but upon an accustomed task. Education has armed him in the panoply of thought. He moves gracefully, like one at home in that etherial country. But his companion, whose habits have not been similar, though he recognizes some bright forms in the scenery, is a stranger to the customs and the tongue of that glorious land, and must walk among its wonders in stupid amaze- ment long ere their order is seen, and must forever loiter at a distance from the other. Con- sidered with relation to our whole existence, that habits of thought are better than knowledge — was the original position of my rhetoric.