Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/580

564 I think, incline the mind ultimately to that which is the just and true decision.

There is just one other point I could mention in connection with this subject: the manner in which the conscious direction and discipline of the mind will tend to remove those unconscious prejudices that we all have more or less from education, from the circumstances in which we were brought up; and from which it is excessively difficult for us to free ourselves entirely. I have known a great many instances, in public and in private life, in which the most right-minded men have every now and then shown the trammelling, as it were, of their early education and early associations, and were not able to think clearly upon the subject in consequence of this. These early prejudices and associations dinar around us and influence the thoughts and feelings of the honestest [sic] men in the world unconsciously; and it is sometimes surprising, to those who do not know the force of these early associations, to see how differently matters which are to them perfectly plain and obvious are viewed by men whom we feel we must respect and esteem. Now, I believe that it is the earnest habit of looking at a subject from first principles, and, as I have said over and over again, looking honestly and steadily at the true and the right, which gives the mind that direction that ultimately overcomes the force of these early prejudices and these early associations, and brings us into that condition which approaches the nearest of any thing that I think we have the opportunity of witnessing in our earthly life, to that direct insight, which many of us believe will be the condition of our minds in that future state in which they are released from all the trammels of our corporeal existence.



N October, 1842, the Falls of Niagara were made the subject of careful study by the New York State Geologists. Under their direction a trigonometrical survey was made, and the river-banks—ancient and recent—the contours of Goat and Luna and Bath Islands, and the periphery of the Falls, were mapped with the utmost precision. The map is preserved in the archives of the State, at Albany, and the copper bolts and little stone monuments, which were placed to mark the trigonometrical points, remain—all, except those which fell with Table Rock. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its session last summer, petitioned the New York Legislature to provide for another survey. The expense would have been a mere trifle, but gentlemen of "the Reform Legislature" would not even consider the 