nowledge Viewed In Relation To Religion.

1.

We shall be brought, Gentlemen, to-day, to the termination of the
investigation which I commenced three Discourses back, and which, I was
well aware, from its length, if for no other reason, would make demands
upon the patience even of indulgent hearers.

First I employed myself in establishing the principle that Knowledge is
its own reward; and I showed that, when considered in this light, it is
called Liberal Knowledge, and is the scope of Academical Institutions.

Next, I examined what is meant by Knowledge, when it is said to be pursued
for its own sake; and I showed that, in order satisfactorily to fulfil
this idea, Philosophy must be its _form_; or, in other words, that its
matter must not be admitted into the mind passively, as so much
acquirement, but must be mastered and appropriated as a system consisting
of parts, related one to the other, and interpretative of one another in
the unity of a whole.

Further, I showed that such a philosophical contemplation of the field of
Knowledge as a whole, leading, as it did, to an understanding of its
separate departments, and an appreciation of them respectively, might in
consequence be rightly called an illumination; also, it was rightly called
an enlargement of mind, because it was a distinct location of things one
with another, as if in space; while it was moreover its proper cultivation
and its best condition, both because it secured to the intellect the sight
of things as they are, or of truth, in opposition to fancy, opinion, and
theory; and again, because it presupposed and involved the perfection of
its various powers.

Such, I said, was that Knowledge, which deserves to be sought for its own
sake, even though it promised no ulterior advantage. But, when I had got
as far as this, I went farther, and observed that, from the nature of the
case, what was so good in itself could not but have a number of external
uses, though it did not promise them, simply because it _was_ good; and
that it was necessarily the source of benefits to society, great and
diversified in proportion to its own intrinsic excellence. Just as in
morals, honesty is the best policy, as being profitable in a secular
aspect, though such profit is not the measure of its worth, so too as
regards what may be called the virtues of the Intellect, their very
possession indeed is a substantial good, and is enough, yet still that
substance has a sh