Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/152

142 mix intellectual and sensational acts, not in their proper relations with each other, but in a jumble. Comprehension is brought to bear upon every thing that is easy; while a difficulty of any kind is committed to the safe keeping of the sense perceptions, and the explanation of it is only remembered. Hence arise a habit of resting upon imperfect knowledge, and a habit of loading the memory by the aid of faulty associations; and these habits, in their turn, are the sources of the lively superficial stupidity which is so common among the better classes. The sufferers from it form that great public to whom are addressed the Morisonian system of pathology and therapeutics, and the elaborately argued advertisements of Norton's Camomile Pills. Every thing that follows "because" is to their minds an explanation; every thing that has an antecedent is to their minds an effect. Their creed is, that all questions lie in a nutshell; and, according to Prof. Faraday, their shibboleth is "it stands to reason." On this ground they would placidly maintain against Owen the existence of the sea-serpent. For their especial behoof bubble companies are formed; and upon their weaknesses innumerable imposters thrive. Their deficiency is chiefly this that, having been permitted from childhood to do many things superficially and with inexactness, they have forfeited the power of arranging their ideas with precision, or of comparing them with caution. They can therefore scarcely be said to possess any assured convictions, or rooted principles of conduct; but, nevertheless, they are ready to decide in all controversies; and are "wiser in their own conceit than seven men who can render a reason."

The cause of such educational errors we should express in the single word—empiricism. For successive ages teachers had no guide but experience; and the results of this experience appeared to defy generalization. The almost self-evident proposition, that the training of the mind should be guided by an analysis of its powers, was brought into early disrepute by the conditions under which such analysis was attempted. The men engaged in it, learned, patient, laborious, profound, reached the limit of discovery by the method of reflection long before the method of observation was disclosed to them. Too exclusively metaphysical, they wanted a link to connect them with the material world. Like the children of Israel, they were wandering in a wilderness before they entered the promised land. Their advanced messengers had not yet returned, bringing of the fruits that were here-after to reward their labor. Foiled in their advance by a barrier that seemed impassable, they were tempted to waste their energies in the invention of technicalities and the multiplying of verbal distinctions. Under such circumstances the science and its professors were too broad a mark to escape the shafts of satire; and thus, even at the present day, there are scars to show the wounds which those shafts have made.

During the last few years, however, the dark portions of this