Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate/Volume 3/Number 5/Young Men of Kirtland
YOUNG MEN OF KIRTLAND,
Permit me, through the medium of the Messenger and Advocate, to address you in a familiar and friendly manner, upon a subject, which,-however much you may think to the contrary,-demands your most serious, candid and undivided attention; I mean the cultivation of the mind.
That ignorance is the foundation or source of much, if not all misery, the history of past ages most clearly evinces. Indeed, were each individual to consult his own experience, or extend his researches through the vast expanse of human intelligence for proof in point, he would only learn, that a knowledge of every fact possible, whether relating to occurrences in the moral or physical world, is essentially necessary to the happiness and enjoyment of mankind, and that in proportion as ignorance abounds, vice and wretchedness must increase also.
It is an error which perhaps may take years to eradicate from the minds of many that our present school systems are the only mediums through which instruction or education may be obtained; whereas it ought to be generally understood, that, though common schools are of vast utility, the man who would be wise, must be in a greater or less degree essentially and positively his own preceptor. There never yet existed a learned man who was not a prodigy of industry and economy in time saving.
You would esteem him a dull scholar indeed, who, although he might be capable of repeating every rule in arithmetic, should be unable to reduce them to practice in the common transactions of life; for you would say, and that correctly, that the senseless parrot might be taught as much: and yet, strange as it may appear, learning, in the present day, is made to consist of much the same materials.
Young men of Kirtland, this will not do. We must put in requisition our own powers of perception and reflection. We must improve our leisure moments in perusing good books, in calculating and extending the operations of our own minds, and in acquiring that intelligence which can alone fit us for acting with honor to ourselves and usefulness to our country, that our names may be hailed by posterity among those of the benefactors of mankind, where we now recognize that of a Franklin, a Jefferson, and a Fulton.
But perhaps some will say they have no time to devote to reading. I would recommend to such a careful inquiry into the various ways and means by which their time,-than which nothing can be more valuable,-is made to slip from them. Let them examine and see if hours, days, and even whole weeks are not consumed in worse than idleness-in parading the streets, or perhaps in lounging about the shop of some honest mechanic, perplexing the industrious, and deranging business.-Let them devote the time thus prodigally squandered, in poring over some valuable history or treatise on the natural sciences, and past experience proves that in a very few years they might be climbing the highest hills of fame, while those whose days have been spent in idleness, would be grovelling their way through the changing scenes of life, destitute of character to themselves or usefulness to their fellow men; and when death, the common leveller of all, has overtaken them, they will go down to the tomb "unhonored and unwept."
Young men of Kirtland, awake to intelligence, and slumber not. And as you expect to become useful to the world, arouse and brush away the cobwebs of slothful and degrading ignorance, improve your intellectual faculties by untiring research and investigation, and by so doing your light will ere long become extended like the spreading rays of the morning sun upon the mountains, and give guidance to the foot-steps of thousands of our race. Anon, by permission, you may hear from me again upon this subject. Till then, I am, as I shall ever be,
S. W. DENTON.