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PASSAGES FOR COMPARISON WITH THE METHOD OF AGASSIZ

BOECKH ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY AND LITERATURE

[Footnote: August Boeckh; Encyclopadie und Methodobgie der Philologischen Wissenschaften, pp. 46-47.]

The person who first seeks to acquire a general survey of a science, and then gradually to descend to details, will never attain to sound and exact knowledge, but will for ever dissipate his energies, and, knowing many things, will yet know nothing. In his lectures on the Method of Academical Study, Schelling remarks with great justice that, in history, to begin with a survey of the entire past is in the highest degree useless and injurious, since it gives one mere compartments for knowledge, without anything to fill them. In history, his advice is, first study one period in detail, and from this broaden out in all directions. For the study of language and literature (which corresponds with history in its most general sense) a similar procedure is the only right one. Everything in science is related; although science itself is endless, yet the whole system is pervaded with sympathies and correspondences. Let the student place himself where he will—so long as he selects something significant and worth while,—and he will be compelled to broaden out from this point of departure in every direction in order to reach a complete understanding of his subject. From each and every detail one is driven to consider the whole; the only thing that matters is that one go to work in the right way, with strength, intelligence, and avidity. Let one choose several different points of departure, working through from each of them to the whole, and one will grasp the whole all the more surely, and comprehend the wealth of detail all the more fully. Accordingly, by sinking deep into the particular, one most easily avoids the danger of becoming narrow.

PASSAGES FOR COMPARISON

FROM THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO

[The passage is thus summarized by Jowett: 'He who would be truly initiated should pass from the concrete to the abstract, from the individual to the universal, from the universal to the universe of truth and beauty. [Footnote: Plato, Symposium. _The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Jowett, New York, Oxford University Press, 1892, 1. 580-582.]]

Diotima…. These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. He who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only—out of that he should create fair thoughts. And soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then, if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this, he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms. In the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle. And after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not, like a servant, in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave, mean and narrow- minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere….

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as, for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love is to begin from the beauties of earth, and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.