Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/93

Rh Another fruitful source of insanity is the irreverence of teachers for the process of Algebraization. Most children have more or less of that luminous transparency which enables the individual to perceive Laws of Thought reflected in the workings of his own soul. As was pointed out in a former Chapter, he who has thus perceived a Law of Thought may be (and often is) absolutely sure that he has seen a general Truth. Teachers, forgetting to discriminate between Laws of Thought and Laws of Things, assert that the individual is no standard for the community; and that no Law of Nature can be generalized from a single instance. Many intelligent young people are thus made ashamed of the divinest gift within them, the power of spontaneous perception of thought-laws; and destroy the faculty by not using it. In some, however, the tendency to Algebraization is too strong to be repressed. The lad or girl, being told that "common sense and logic oppose themselves to the practice of generalizing from a single instance," draws the conclusion that his teachers are the opponents of what he feels to be the most sacred portion of his mental life; therefore he sets up a course of life openly defiant of "common sense" as embodied in the advice of those around him. For some years he is only "eccentric" and perhaps "unmanageable"; but the strain is often too great for the brain to bear; he has never been taught to distinguish Laws of Thought from Laws of Things; he carries the practice of generalizing from one instance over into the domain of things; he reasons from analogy, or jumps to conclusions from mere association of ideas; and falls into a hopeless tangle of delusions;—victim to the wilful irreverence of his