But so it is always. A genius, an original man
appears. He puts himself boldly in contact with facts, asks them what
they mean, and writes down their answer for the world's use. And then
his disciples must needs form a school, and a system; and fancy that
they do honour to their master by refusing to follow in his steps; by
making his book a fixed dogmatic canon; attaching to it some magical
infallibility; declaring the very lie which he disproved by his whole
existence, that discovery is henceforth impossible, and the sum of
knowledge complete: instead of going on to discover as he discovered
before them, and in following his method, show that they honour him, not
in the letter, but in spirit and in truth.
For this, if you will consider, is the true meaning of that great
command, "Honour thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the
land." On reverence for the authority of bygone generations depends the
permanence of every form of thought or belief, as much as of all social,
national, and family life: but on reverence of the spirit, not merely
of the letter; of the methods of our ancestors, not merely of their
conclusions. Ay, and we shall not be able to preserve their
conclusions, not even to understand them; they will die away on our lips
into skeleton notions, and soulless phrases, unless we see that the
greatness of the mighty dead has always consisted in this, that they
were seekers, improvers, inventors, endued with that divine power and
right of discovery which has been bestowed on us, even as on them;
unless we become such men as they were, and go on to cultivate and
develop the precious heritage which they have bequeathed to us, instead
of hiding their talent in a napkin and burying it in the earth; making
their greatness an excuse for our own littleness, their industry for our
laziness, their faith for our despair; and prating about the old paths,
while we forget that paths were made that men might walk in them, and
not stand still, and try in vain to stop the way.
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