, not fed upon or enjoyed,
but in store. And by all it is to be remembered, that knowledge in this
form may be kept without air till it rots, or in such unthreshed
disorder that it is of no use; and that, however good or orderly, it is
still only in being tasted that it becomes of use; and that men may
easily starve in their own granaries, men of science, perhaps, most of
all, for they are likely to seek accumulation of their store, rather
than nourishment from it. Yet let it not be thought that I would
undervalue them. The good and great among them are like Joseph, to whom
all nations sought to buy corn; or like the sower going forth to sow
beside all waters, sending forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass:
only let us remember that this is not all men's work. We are not
intended to be all keepers of granaries, nor all to be measured by the
filling of a storehouse; but many, nay, most of us, are to receive day
by day our daily bread, and shall be as well nourished and as fit for
our labor, and often, also, fit for nobler and more divine labor, in
feeding from the barrel of meal that does not waste, and from the cruse
of oil that does not fail, than if our barns were filled with plenty,
and our presses bursting out with new wine.

Sec. XXVIII. It is for each man to find his own measure in this matter;
in great part, also, for others to find it for him, while he is yet a
youth. And the desperate evil of the whole Renaissance system is, that
all idea of measure is therein forgotten, that knowledge is thought the
one and the only good, and it is never inquired whether men are vivified
by it or paralyzed. Let us leave figures. The reader may not believe the
analogy I have been pressing so far; but let him consider the subject in
itself, let him examine the effect of knowledge in his own heart, and
see whether the trees of knowledge and of life are one now, any more
than in Paradise. He must feel that the real animating power of
knowledge is only in the moment of its being first received, when it
fills us with wonder and joy; a joy for which, observe, the previous
ignorance is just as necessary as the present knowledge. That man is
always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to
the full, which he is always going on to know. This is the necessary
condition of a finite creature with divinely rooted and divinely
directed intelligence; this, therefore, its happy state,--but observe, a
state, not of