Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/182

170 for the case in hand, unless they were made under like circumstances, or unless they can be modified to suit the present conditions. Now, to judge what are the real circumstances and conditions of the case, the man must be able to observe these conditions, and to distinguish those that are essential from those that are merely accidental, to interpret his observations aright, and then to reason correctly from the results thus obtained.

But man does not exist wholly and solely to carry on some handicraft, business, or profession. Around him lies a world abounding with endless sources of health and happiness, if only he knows where to look for them and how to use them, but equally abounding with pitfalls of misery and distress to all who grope through life intellectually blind and deaf, who having eyes see not, and having ears hear not. Now, the securing of that health and happiness of which I have spoken, so far as it depends on the material world around a man, will depend on his ability to observe closely, to systematize his observations into related groups, and to connect these with the observations and experiences of other men, so as to obtain therefrom a living knowledge of the laws of his being and of the world around him. Here, again, power of observation is the first and most important requisite, and, as a natural gift or talent, this power is extremely rare; "for the observer," as John Stuart Mill has remarked, "is not he who merely sees the thing which is before his eyes, but he who sees what parts that thing is composed of. One person, from inattention or from attending only in the wrong place, overlooks half of what he sees; another sets down much more than he sees, confounding it with what he imagines, or with what he infers; another takes note of the kind of all the circumstances, but, being inexpert in estimating their degree, leaves the quantity of each vague and uncertain; another sees indeed the whole, but makes such an awkward division of it into parts, throwing things into one mass which require to be separated, and separating others which might more conveniently be considered as one, that the result is much the same as, sometimes even worse than, if no analysis had been attempted at all."

But if man does not exist solely for his profession, neither does he exist solely for and unto himself. He is under certain obligations to his family and to his fellow-men, he has domestic and social duties, and to fulfill these aright, amid the ever-shifting conditions of life, requires the keenest powers of observation, of interpretation, and of judgment. And although destruction as surely awaits the man who dwells in moral darkness as it does him who takes his way heedless of all the physical laws of his being, too often the evil he does dies not with him, but lives and works woe to those he loved and would fain have protected. Yet it is here, it is in what regards their social life (and under social I include domestic and political), that too many men seem to be unable to observe aright or to make any use of such