triumph or joy in what it knows, but of joy rather in the
continual discovery of new ignorance, continual self-abasement,
continual astonishment. Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to
give us pleasure. It may be practically useful to us, it may be good for
others, or good for usury to obtain more; but, in itself, once let it be
thoroughly familiar, and it is dead. The wonder is gone from it, and all
the fine color which it had when first we drew it up out of the infinite
sea. And what does it matter how much or how little of it we have laid
aside, when our only enjoyment is still in the casting of that deep sea
line? What does it matter? Nay, in one respect, it matters much, and not
to our advantage. For one effect of knowledge is to deaden the force of
the imagination and the original energy of the whole man: under the
weight of his knowledge he cannot move so lightly as in the days of his
simplicity. The pack-horse is furnished for the journey, the war-horse
is armed for war; but the freedom of the field and the lightness of the
limb are lost for both. Knowledge is, at best, the pilgrim's burden or
the soldier's panoply, often a weariness to them both: and the
Renaissance knowledge is like the Renaissance armor of plate, binding
and cramping the human form; while all good knowledge is like the
crusader's chain mail, which throws itself into folds with the body, yet
it is rarely so forged as that the clasps and rivets do not gall us. All
men feel this, though they do not think of it, nor reason out its
consequences. They look back to the days of childhood as of greatest
happiness, because those were the days of greatest wonder, greatest
simplicity, and most vigorous imagination. And the whole difference
between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand
times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child,
seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not
conscious of much knowledge,--conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance,
and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and
creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable
things around him.

That is what we have to make men, so far as we may. All are to be men of
genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that
the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of
things known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilde