The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People - Sir John George Bourinot (best book recommendations TXT) 📗

And mental physic the diseased in mind.

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With awe, around these silent walks we tread;
These are the lasting mansions of the dead:--
"The dead!" Methinks a thousand tongues reply:
"These are the tombs of such as cannot die!
"Crowned with eternal fame, they sit sublime
"And laugh at all the little strife of time."


But whilst we pay this tribute to its architectural grace, one wonders at the same time at the shortsightedness which has sacrificed everything to appearance, and given us a building not even equal to existing demands--as if a library was a thing of the present, not to increase with the intellectual requirements of the country. As it is now, the library contains only some 100,000 volumes, many of which have no particular value. The American and Canadian department is confessedly inferior in many respects, although we ought to excel in that particular. Of late years, the annual grant has been extremely small, and chiefly devoted to the purchase of books for the law branch, for the especial benefit of lawyers engaged in the Supreme Court. But we have as yet no Free Libraries like those in the United States, of which the Boston Library is a notable illustration. [Footnote: Boston, twenty years ago, spent and spent well, in founding her great free library, more than two dollars for each man, woman, and child within her limits, and she has sustained it to this day with great spirit and liberality. That library has now more than 360,000 volumes, and her citizens in 1879 took to their homes more than 1,160,000 volumes. Many smaller places in New England and elsewhere, not without careful investigation, have followed her example, finding in the practical results of her 20 years' work, proof satisfactory to their tax-payers, that a free library is a profitable investment of public money, while in the West the great cities of Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, with Western free-handed energy, have already free libraries on such a scale that one at least of them bids fair to rank among the greatest in the world--_Scribner's Monthly_ for September, 1880, where the advantages of a free library are very tersely shown.] But, nevertheless, the reading facilities of the people generally have increased very largely within two decades. At the present time, as far as we can estimate from the information within reach, there are some 130,000 volumes in the Parliamentary Libraries of the Dominion, 700,000 in the Universities, Colleges and Schools--all of which are necessarily of a limited professional class--and 140,000 in Mechanics' Institutes and Literary Societies. The grand total of library and prize books despatched to the Public Schools of the Province of Ontario alone within twenty-five years is over one million and a quarter of volumes--comprising of course books of an educational character, but nevertheless valuable in laying the foundation of general culture, and bringing the means of acquiring knowledge to sections where otherwise such facilities would be wanting. Last year, the value of the books imported into Canada amounted to about a million of dollars, or an increase of about 30 per cent. in ten years. Literary and Scientific Institutes are increasing in number, and some are doing a useful, if not a national work: the Quebec Historical Society, referred to on a previous page, the Toronto Canadian Institute, which has made not a few useful contributions to science and literature, and the Institut Canadien which has erected in Ottawa one of the handsomest structures yet raised in Canada by a literary association. In Ontario there are also some 100 Mechanics Institutes, including nearly 11,000 members, with an aggregate of 118,000 volumes in the libraries; [Footnote: 'Address of Mr. James Young, President of Mechanics' Institutes Association of Ontario (_Globe_, Sept. 24th, 1880).] and it is satisfactory to learn that institutions which may have an important influence on the industrial classes are to be placed on a more efficient basis. These facts illustrate that we are making progress in the right direction; but what we want, above all things, are public libraries, to which all classes may have free access, in the principal centres of population. The rich men of this country can devote a part of their surplus wealth to no more patriotic purpose than the establishment of such libraries in the places where they live, and in that way erect a monument for themselves far more honourable than any that may be achieved by expenditures on purely selfish objects. All through the New England and Central States we meet with such illustrations of private generosity, but there are few similar examples in Canada. Perhaps the handsome contribution recently made by Mr. Redpath towards the establishment of a museum in connection with McGill College--itself a memorial of private generosity--is a favourable augury of what we may often look for in the future, as the number of our wealthy men increase and they become more alive to the intellectual wants of those around them.

In the columns of our ablest journals there is a growing tendency to devote more space to the discussion of literary, artistic and scientific topics which are engaging attention in the world of thought The publication of a periodical like the _Bystander_ may justly be considered an event in the political and literary annals of this country. It illustrates the desire that exists for independent political criticism amid the intense conflict of party opinion; and even those who cannot agree with the views of the eminent gentleman who conducts this work will frankly admit the originality and independence of thought in all he says. But it is not only as a political writer that Mr. Smith is doing good service to this country; every one who reads his reviews of current events cannot fail to profit by the study of his graceful style as well as by the versatility of his knowledge on all the social, political and economic questions that are engaging attention at home or abroad. The pages of the _Canadian Monthly_ have also for some time shown that there is coming to the front a number of writers of considerable intellectual power on the leading social and religious problems to which so many able thinkers are devoting themselves now-a-days. Herbert Spencer has his disciples and defenders, who prove themselves no contemptible adversaries of the orthodox school of religion. Very few of us probably sympathize with these modern iconoclasts who would destroy all motive for right doing in this world, by breaking down human faith in the existence of one Supreme Being; but, at the same time, no one can deny the earnestness and ability these writers bring to their work. It is quite obvious that such able thinkers as Mr. Spencer and his followers in Canada, with Mr. Le Sueur at their head, cannot be 'snubbed' cavalierly by the professed teachers of religion. The tendency of modern thought, a wave of which has reached us, is undoubtedly in the direction of bringing all subjects, however sacred, to the crucial test of argument, fact and experience, and our religious guides must not think they will prevail by the exhibit of mere contemptuous indifference to the free thought that prevails around them. If our great theological schools and seats of learning are to prove themselves equal to the demands of the present day, it will be by moving out of their grooves of worn-out tradition and routine, and by enlarging their teachings so that the men they send out into the world may be more equal than most of them appear now to meet in argument the Positivist, Rationalist and Materialist, or whatever the disciple of the modern schools of philosophy may call himself. The man of true liberality and faith in the truth of his religious principles must be fully prepared to allow the freest expression of opinion, however antagonistic it may appear to the true happiness of society. This very conflict of ideas and arguments between such opposite schools of opinion must, in the end, evolve the truth, and necessarily give additional stimulus to intellectual thought in this country, where, so far, there has been a great dearth of original thinkers to elevate us above purely selfish, material interests.

In the natural order of things, the next half century ought to witness a far larger development of the intellect of this country. We have already seen that, with the progress of the Dominion in population and wealth, education has been stimulated to a remarkable degree, journalism has become more of a profession, and not only have several books, of more than ordinary value and merit, been produced in various departments of knowledge, but there are already signs of a spirit of intellectual emulation which must, sooner or later, have its full fruition. If Canada makes the material progress within the next few decades that her people hope, and her statesmen are endeavouring to accomplish, in the face, no doubt, of many difficulties, we may confidently look forward to a corresponding intellectual development. So much practical work of immediate importance has to be performed in a comparatively new country like this, that native talent has naturally found chief expression in politics, the professions, and the press; but with greater wealth, and an older condition of society, literature, science, and art, will be cultivated to a far larger extent. 'It was amid the ruins of the Capitol,' says Gibbon, 'that I first conceived the idea of writing the "History of the Roman Empire."' Such a work could not have been written among the forests of Canada, while men were labouring with the many difficulties of a pioneer existence. But with the greater opportunities of leisure and culture necessarily opening up to us in the future, Canadians may yet have a literature, not merely imitative, as at present, but creative and original. It is stated somewhere in an old English review of American literature, that on this new continent we can hardly expect the rich fruition which springs from that deep, humanized soil of the old world, which has for ages been enriched by the ripe droppings of a fertile national life, where, in the words of an American poet,--


One half the soil has walked the rest,
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages.


It is certainly true that the beauty and grandeur of external nature alone will never inspire the highest and deepest writings; but human life with its manifold experiences, its glooms and glories, sorrows and rejoicings, pains, pleasures and aspirations. Every rood of ground in the old communities of Europe has its historic associations to point many a moral and adorn many a tale. Yet if this America of ours has a history only of yesterday, it, too, has its memories and associations to stimulate the genius of history, poetry and romance. Already in the first century of American literature have poets and historians and artists appeared to rival those of the older civilization of the world. The works of Parkman and Longfellow illustrate that there is, even in the early history and traditions of Canada, much to evoke the interest of the great world beyond us, when a writer brings to the task the genius of a true poet or the brilliancy of an accomplished historian. If our soil is new, yet it may produce fruits which will bear a rich flavour of their own, and may please the palate of even those surfeited with the hothouse growth of older lands. Hawthorne, Emerson, Howells, Bret Harte, Sam Slick, are among many writers who illustrate the raciness and freshness of American production. Nor let it be forgotten that American and Canadian, in