The world of matter and the world of mind : an address / delivered by Sir George Reid to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

  • Reid, G. H. (George Houstoun), 1845-1918.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The world of matter and the world of mind : an address / delivered by Sir George Reid to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    18/24 (page 16)
    Our Ancestry of Ignorance. 1'or thousands of years the lamp of culture has been kept alight here and there. In one or two great universities, and by the church, the glories of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman literature have been faithfully preserved. Lut humanity in the mass has been reproduced age after age, strong in body but weak in mind, through a long and unbroken ancestry of ignorance. At last the chief of all the gifts of God, or of chance, if you will, is beginning to enjoy more widely the blessings of education. At last the neglected, unnourished, imprisoned, immortal Sovereign sitting upon the throne of the human mind is beginning to see closer visions of the eternal light, and to hear nearer whisperings of the eternal life, which are his rightful heritage. Some doubt the wisdom of imparting knowledge freely to the masses. They see signs, they think, that a little knowledge is indeed a very dangerous thing; that it leads to the letting loose of forces, the tendency of which is downwards to chaos, and not upwards to better states of society. That the masses of mankind have but little knowledge as yet may be true, but that misfortune is mainly the fault of others. The minds of newly taught masses, like that of the child, are more than likely, whilst in an infantile stage of culture, to be fonder of their toys than their lessons, and find it easier to pull down than to build up. Centuries of national ignorance cannot be redeemed all at once. But just as the child rapidly becomes the man, so will the national mind, far less rapidly, perhaps, but just as surely, attain the full measure of its strength. The Secret of Scottish Success. We Scotsmen reveal our pride of race, and our consciousness of success, in many ways, to the delight of our own people and the amuse- ment of people born elsewhere. Englishmen and Irishmen, while they can- not deny our success, laugh at the pretension that it is due to superiority of race. No one admires more than I do the valour of our ancestors, their indomitable spirit, or the wonderful success of their descendants all over the world. I believe, however, the secret of that success is best explained by the measures taken by our ancestors, several hundred years ago, to give the Scottish child the rudiments of a sound education. The rising generations of Scotia have been nourished in a mental as well as a physical atmosphere. Fired with admiration of intellectual culture, Scottish fathers and mothers have made heavy sacrifices of their own com- fort in order to open up for their bairns broader avenues to higher things.