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'Horses are tied by the head, dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins, and men by the legs'; and having ransacked his memory to such good purpose, and produced such a pile of learned precedents, he appears disposed to rest the case with these; for it is a part of the play to get man into his place in the scale of nature, and to draw the line between him and the brutes, if there be any such thing possible; and the Fool seems to be particularly inclined to assist the author in this process, though when we last heard of him he was, indeed, proposing to send the principal man of his time 'to school to an ant, to improve his sagacity; intimating, also, that another department of natural science, even conchology itself, might furnish him with some rather more prudent and fortunate suggestions than those which his own brain had appeared to generate; and it is to be remarked, that in his views on this point, as on some others of importance, he has the happiness to agree remarkably with that illustrious yoke-fellow of his in philosophy, who was just then turning his attention to the 'practic part of life' and its 'theoric, and who indulges himself in some satires on this point not any less severe, though his pleasantries are somewhat more covert.
For he is one who would make 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to his theoric. And as to that other mysterious object of his inquiries, Mr. Macaulay is not the only person who appears to think, that that does not come within the range of anything human.
They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to children, until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at once the most powerful and the most tractable agents, in subservience to the great views and designs of men.
They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to children; until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at once the most powerful and the most tractable agents, in subservience to the great views and designs of men.
It is life that we have here, the 'theoric' on the one side, the 'practic' on the other. The height of the books on the one side, the lowness, the unvisited, 'unlettered' lowness of the life on the other. That which exhibits the defect in learning that the new learning is to remedy, the new uncultured, unbroken ground of science must be exhibited here also. But that is man's life.
The whole play tells, indeed, its own story, and scarcely needs interpreting, when once the spectator has gained the true dramatic stand-point; when once he understands that there is a teacher here, a new one, one who will not undertake to work with the instrumentalities that his time offered to him, who begins by rejecting the abstractions which lie at the foundation of all the learning of his time, which are not scientific, but vague, loose, popular notions, that have been collected without art, or scientific rule of rejection, and are, therefore, inefficacious in nature, and unavailable for 'the art and practic part of life; a teacher who will build up his philosophy anew, from the beginning, a teacher who will begin with history and particulars, who will abstract his definitions from nature, and have powers of them, and not words only, and make them the basis of his science and the material and instrument of his reform.
A reviewer so discriminating, then, so far from that disposition to scorn and censure, which he reprehends, so careful to conserve that which is good in his scientific constructions and reformations, so pure in judgment in discovering and severing that which is corrupt, a reporter so clearly scientific, who is able to maintain through all this astounding report of the deficiences in human learning, a tone so quiet, so undemonstrative, such a one deserves the more attention when he comes now to 'the art and practic part' of this great science, to which all other sciences are subordinate, and declares to us that he finds it, as a part of science, 'WANTING! not defective, but wanting.
'He had obtained, by his long service, some knowledge of the practic part of an engineer. Preface to the Memoirs. Nearly 200 pages in Bohn's edition. See ante, i. 71, for Johnson's rapid reading. Eliot: 'Imitate that application of his, which has made him know all thoroughly, and to the bottom.
But the fact, that in the very rudest and most faulty plays in this collection of plays, which form so important a department of the works of this school, which make indeed the noblest tradition, the only adequate tradition, the 'illustrated tradition' of its noblest doctrine the fact that in the very earliest germ of this new union of 'practic and theoric, of art and learning, from which we pluck at last Advancements of Learning, and Hamlets, and Lears, and Tempests, and the Novum Organum, already the perilous secret of this union is infolded, already the entire organism that these great fruits and flowers will unfold in such perfection is contained, and clearly traceable, this is a fact which appeared to require insertion in this history, and not, perhaps, without some illustration.
'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an identity between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling upon abstractions, it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division, and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical. Something like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke of making 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to its theoric; 'let that mark out and limit the theoretical.
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