Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1879 — Intellect. [ARTICLE]

Intellect.

laan essay by David Swing on this subject, be says : The heart responds to the intellect as a harg to thesweeping fingers. God made man a truth seeker, not simply that the seeker should know the more, but that . under the influence of wider kndwledgehis finer nature might grow as flowers under sunshine. .It is not probable that the Creator ordained the pufißuit of truth only that the passion of curiosity might be gratified, but rather that the mind and soul might grow upon such divine food. The bird and the beast seek daily food, and thus build up their organism or keep it in life, but man goes beyond, for, having fqund the food of his body, he must seek truth also, the daily bread of Ids soul. He whose body has been well fed is that noble being called Mau. The pursuit of truth is not, therefore, a simple pleasure, but it is Ebe high struggle 'or the spirit’s daily read. Hence the true man rises from the banquet table of a king not half so happy as he rises from the pages of a noble book, or from the banquet of men of science, of art, of philosophy. Children remember with delight the viands they have enjoyed, but maturerlife remembers the wise conversation that surrounded the table. In the recent “Life of Macaulay,” he expresses the experience of all his educated fellow-men when he tells how literature consoled him in his affliction. Of the letters of the Greeks, he speaks thus: “All the trlumplw of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been tlfe triumphs of Athens. • • • Her Kwer is, indeed, manifested' at the r, in the Senate, on the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy; but these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain, wherever it brings gladness to eyes which dkil with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep, there is exhibited in its noblest form the immortal influence of Athens.” When his sister died, he wrote back from India in similar strains: “Even now, when time has begun to do its healing office, I cannot write about her without being altogether unmanned. That I have not utterly sunk under this’ blow I owe chiefly to literature. What a blessing it is to love books as I love them, to be able to converse with the dead and to live amid the unreal.” In this one mortal we may read the. experience of all the throng which has ever drawn near the wells of truth. In such master spirit earth sets up no new and individual law,'but through those sensitive souls nature becomes visible, and by being enlarged and brought near shows what a spiritual scene lies outspread in humble hearts.