100 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



discuss the whole matter with him, and receive every 

 explanation from him which I could possibly desire. We 

 next went to the Menai Straits, and saw the stupendous 

 works there. He is indeed a very interesting as well as 

 able man, this Robert Stephenson, and I have formed 

 quite a friendship for him. He appears to be a most 

 liberal man in point of money, no grasping, no pretension, 

 candid, and most affable ; often acknowledges mistakes, 

 and is ready to listen to what everyone has to say. I 

 was really delighted with him. We parted on Saturday 

 morning, when I went round Snowdou, passing Sunday 

 at Bethgelert.' 



o 



When Forbes met his class at the opening of the 

 session 1848-49, he devoted two lectures to the refuta- 

 tion of a view of knowledge which he regarded as 

 sophistical and mischievous, but which had recently been 

 recommended to an Edinburgh audience by a high 

 authority. 



Some time before this Mr., afterwards Lord, Macaulay 

 had come from London, for the special purpose of deliver- 

 ing an oration at the opening of a large public library 

 and lecturing Institution in Edinburgh. 



Macaulay took occasion to ventilate one of those 

 startling but not very profound paradoxes which he 

 knew so well how to set forth in pointed and brilliant 

 epigrams. He maintained that ' a little knowledge is 

 not a dangerous thing,' that there is no line by which 

 superficial knowledge is separated from profound. He 

 said that he never could prevail on any one of those 

 persons who talk of the danger of shallow knowledge to 

 let him know what was their standard of profundity. 

 When we talk of deep and shallow, we are comparing 

 human knowledge with the vast mass of truth that is 

 capable of being known, and, tried by this standard, 

 the most learned and profound are almost as shallow as 

 the most ignorant. The sage of three centuries ago 

 is not equal in knowledge to the child, of to-day ; the 

 intellectual giants of one age become the intellectual 



