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Updated: May 13, 2025
Escape from death! ... alas, there is no escape, . . 'tis evident we all must die, . . die, and with dust-quenched eyes unlearn our knowledge of the sun, the stars, the marvels of the universe, for us no more shall the flowers bloom or the sweet birds sing; the poem of the world will write itself anew in every roseate flushing of the dawn, but we, we who have joyed therein, we who have sung the praises of the light, the harmonies of wind and sea, the tunefulness of woods and fields, we whose ambitious thoughts have soared archangel-like through unseen empyreans of space, there to drink in a honeyed hope of Heaven, we shall be but DEAD! ... mute, cold, and stirless as deep, undug stones, . . dead! ... Ah God, thou Utmost Cruelty!" and in a sudden access of grief and passion he raised one hand and shook it aloft with a menacing gesture "Would I might look upon Thee face to face, and rebuke Thee for Thy merciless injustice!"
Here is a portion of a later letter to the same friend. "I am very much concerned to hear you have given up going out to dinner; for it is depriving yourself of a great source of enjoyment and gratification. Then, again, I am afraid for it is as well to speak honestly lest you should unlearn certain old habits of yours, and forget to give your own little dinners.
She was a plain young woman of about thirty, tolerably decently dressed, and with a quiet, simple manner. She said her husband was a house-paperer in a small way, and when he was out of employment she used to go out in the evening and see what her singing would bring her. Poor thing! it was impossible to do anything for her; she was too old to learn or unlearn anything.
Now, reader, allow me to screw up a little philosophy here, and try to show you the why and the wherefore of the particular direction of our bottle's voyage. Man has been defined by some lexicographer as a "cooking animal." I think it would be more appropriate to call him a learning animal, for man does not always cook, but he never ceases to learn also to unlearn.
For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things.
Therefore suffer me, while I try to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats, which it has been our blessedness hitherto to enjoy, to contemplate the condition and prospects of our Holy Mother in a practical way; so that one and all may unlearn that idle habit, which has grown upon us, of owning the state of things to be bad, yet doing nothing to remedy it. Consider a moment.
I know this perfectly well; but I know likewise, that a man looking for real and lasting reputation must unlearn much of the common-place method so observable in the works of the artists whom I have named.
No wonder that he did not unlearn in an hour his whole way of thinking of religion! The reliance on externals is too natural to us all, even with all our training in a better faith, to allow of our wondering at or severely blaming him.
The girl looked at her friend questioningly. "I'm spending this week at his house." "And you know about Jewel? He has told you?" "Certainly. The one person of his acquaintance who hasn't to unlearn anything." "You mean he talked to you of Christian Science?" Bonnell's hands were clasping his knees. His hat lay on the bank beside him and the thick hair tossed away from his brow.
But an oak, as Mr. Grattan finely said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who, having left England when a boy, returns to it after thirty or forty years passed in India, will find, be his talents what they may, that he has much both to learn and to unlearn before he can take a place among English statesmen.
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