also observed in a conversation held with Lord Monboddo, that learning had
much decreased in England, since his remembrance; to which his lordship
remarked, "you have lived to see its decrease in England; I, its
extinction in Scotland." The fallacy of views like these consists in
taking it for granted that there is always just about the same aggregate
amount of knowledge in the world, and that only the ratio of distribution
is changed. But there is no such analogy between learning and material
substances. The wealth of the mind is not like gold, which must be beaten
out the finer, as the surface to be covered by it is more extensive. As
to the alleged superiority of past ages, in anything essential, I am more
than skeptical. I hold rather that of all good things, learning included,
there is as much in the world now as there ever was--not to say more. The
great scholars of Europe in our time are not inferior to the greatest of
their predecessors. Even in classical literature and antiquities, the
searching, analyzing and investigating spirit of our age has poured new
light upon the remote past, and rendered the labors of former generations
useless. By elevating the general standard, it is true that there is less
distance between the common mind and the deeply learned. The scholars of
the middle ages seem the higher, from the low level of ignorance from
which they rise. They are like mountains shooting abruptly from the plain.
Our scholars seem to have reached an inferior point of elevation, because
the level of the general mind has come nearer to them, as mountain peaks
lose somewhat of their apparent height when they spring from a raised
table land.




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