For
instance, a great memory, as I have already said, does not make a
philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called a grammar. There
are men who embrace in their minds a vast multitude of ideas, but with
little sensibility about their real relations towards each other. These
may be antiquarians, annalists, naturalists; they may be learned in the
law; they may be versed in statistics; they are most useful in their own
place; I should shrink from speaking disrespectfully of them; still,
there is nothing in such attainments to guarantee the absence of
narrowness of mind. If they are nothing more than well-read men, or men
of information, they have not what specially deserves the name of
culture of mind, or fulfils the type of liberal education.
In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons who have seen much of
the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played a conspicuous
part in it, but who generalise, nothing, and have no observation, in the
true sense of the word. They abound in information in detail, curious
and entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived under the
influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious or
political, they speak of every one and every thing, only as so many
phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and lead to nothing, not
discussing them, or teaching any truth, or instructing the hearer, but
simply talking.
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