INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER.


The desire, the duty, the necessity of the age in which we live is
education, or that culture which developes, enlarges, and enriches each
individual intelligence, according to the measure of its capacity, by
familiarizing it with the facts and laws of nature and human life.
But, in this rage for information, we too often overlook the mental
constitution of the being we would inform,--detaching the apprehensive
from the active powers, weakening character by overloading memory, and
reaping a harvest of imbeciles after we may have flattered ourselves we
had sown a crop of geniuses. No person can be called educated, until he
has organized his knowledge into faculty, and wields it as a weapon.
We purpose, therefore, to invite the attention of our readers to some
remarks on Intellectual Character, the last and highest result of
intellectual education, and the indispensable condition of intellectual
success.

It is evident, that, when a young man leaves his school or college to
take his place in the world, it is indispensable that he be something
as well as know something; and it will require but little experience to
demonstrate to him that what he really knows is little more than what
he really is, and that his progress in intellectual manhood is not more
determined by the information he retains, than by that portion which, by
a benign provision of Providence, he is enabled to forget. Youth, to
be sure, is his,--youth, in virtue of which he is free of the
universe,--youth, with its elastic vigor, its far-darting hopes, its
generous impatience of prudent meanness, its grand denial of instituted