Woe to that
mind which wants the love of truth! For want of this, genius has become
a scourge to the world, its breath a poisonous exhalation, its brightness
a seducer into paths of pestilence and death. Truth is the light of the
Infinite Mind, and the image of God in his creatures. Nothing endures
but truth. The dreams, fictions, theories, which men would substitute
for it, soon die. Without its guidance effort is vain, and hope
baseless. Accordingly, the love of truth, a deep thirst for it, a
deliberate purpose to seek it and hold it fast, may be considered as the
very foundation of human culture and dignity. Precious as thought is,
the love of truth is still more precious; for without it,
thought--thought wanders and wastes itself, and precipitates men into
guilt and misery. There is no greater defect in education and the pulpit
than that they inculcate so little an impartial, earnest, reverential
love of truth, a readiness to toil, to live and die for it. Let the
laboring man be imbued in a measure with this spirit; let him learn to
regard himself as endowed with the power of thought, for the very end of
acquiring truth; let him learn to regard truth as more precious than his
daily bread; and the spring of true and perpetual elevation is touched
within him. He has begun to be a man; he becomes one of the elect of his
race. Nor do I despair of this elevation of the laborer. Unhappily
little, almost nothing, has been done as yet to inspire either rich or
poor with the love of truth for its own sake, or for the life, and
inspiration, and dignity it gives to the soul. The prosperous have as
little of this principle as the laboring mass. I think, indeed, that the
spirit of luxurious, fashionable life, is more hostile to it than the
hardships of the poor. Under a wise culture, this principle may be
awakened in all classes, and wherever awakened, it will form
philosophers, successful and noble thinkers. These remarks seem to me
particularly important, as showing how intimate a union subsists between
the moral and intellectual nature, and how both must work together from
the beginning. All human culture rests on a moral foundation, on an
impartial, disinterested spirit, on a willingness to make sacrifices to
the truth. Without this moral power, mere force of thought avails
nothing towards our elevation.

I am aware that I shall be told that the work of thought which I have
insisted on is difficult,--that