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just pretensions to superiority! What can be more shame. ful! The man of business may plead for his excuse, that he has wanted the necessary leisure for improving himself by study; the man of narrow fortune, that he could not go to the expense of education, books, and travel; but what can a lord plead in excuse for his ignorance, except that he thought himself in duty bound to waste his time and his fortune, upon wenches, horses, dogs, players, fiddlers, and flatterers?

The proper and peculiar study of a person of high rank is the knowledge of the interest of his country. But a man of condition ought to be ignorant of no part of useful or ornamental knowledge.

I will conclude what I have to say on the several ranks of life, and the peculiar and indispensable scientific accomplishments of each respectively, by adding, what cannot be too often repeated, That a perfect knowledge of morality and christianity is the noblest endowment of every man and woman of every rank and order. A

strong and thorough sense of the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only means of happiness, ought to be worked into the understanding, the will, and every faculty of every rational mind in the

universe.

SECTION VIII.

Miscellaneous Cautions and Directions for the Conduct of Study.

I WILL add to what I have said on that part of the Dignity of Life, which consists in the improvement of the mind by knowledge, a few brief remarks, chiefly on the errors which people commonly run into in study, which are the causes of their failing of the end they have in view.

First, reading, or rather running through a multitude of books, without choice or distinction, is not the way to acquire real improvement in knowledge. It is only what we digest, and understand clearly, that is ours. And it is not possible, that an insatiable devourer of books can have time to examine, recollect, and dispose in his head all be

reads. The judgment of reading is, to make one's self master of a few of the best books on a subject; in doing which, a man of a tolerable apprehension will have acquired clear notions of it, or at least of the great lines and principal heads of it.

Some men of abilities run into the error of grasping at too great an extent and variety of knowledge, without fixing upon one study, with a view to pursue it a competent length. Life is short and uncertain, and awful and important the work to be done in it. Every man has his proper business as a citizen, and his proper study as a man, to pursue. The knowledge more indispensably necessary to one's particular rank and profession, and that which every man ought to be completely master of, I mean, of his duty, and means of happiness, are absolutely to be made sure of. And this will not leave to any, but people of leisure and fortune, an opportunity of expatiating at large in pursuit of science. No man can hope to excel in a variety of ways. Few are able to excel in one single branch of knowledge. And by taking in too large a scope, it is no wonder that men can go but inconsiderable lengths in all, and accordingly become mere smatterers in every thing, knowing in nothing.

To avoid this error, the rule is easy. "Be sure that you understand one thing, before you proceed to another: And take care that you allow for forgetfulness. What you understand pretty well now, a few years hence (if you drop that study) will not stand so clear in your mind as at present. What apprehension can you therefore expect to have, at some distance of time hence, of what you do not now clearly understand. The view in education is very different from that of study in mature life. In education, the business is to open the mind to receive the first principles of various knowledge, to furnish it with the instrumental sciences, to habituate it to application, and accustom it to exert itself with ease upon all kinds of researches, rather than to carry any one branch of knowledge to perfection, which is not indeed practicable at an immature age. The intention, on the contrary, in the study of the more manly parts of science, in adult age, is to furnish the mind with a comprehensive and distinct knowledge of whatever may be useful or ornamental to the understand

ing. Therefore it is plain, quite different schemes are to be pursued in study at those two different periods of life. This necessary distinction is very little attended to. Accordingly the idea, which many educators of youth seem to have formed of their province, is, plunging a raw boy to a much greater depth in languages, than he will ever, at any period of life, be the better for, and neglecting the necessary work of laying an early foundation of general improvement. And on the other hand, the notion formed by many grown persons, of learning, is only the reading an infinite number of books; so that they may have it to say, they have read them, though they are nothing the wiser for it. As some readers are for grasping at all science, so others confine their researches to one single article. Yet it is certain, that to excel in any single art or science, being wholly ignorant of all others, is not the complete improvement of the mind. Besides, some of the different parts of knowledge are so connected together, and so necessary to one another, that they cannot be separated. In order to a thorough understanding of morality, and religion (a study which might the best pretend to exclude all others, as being of infinitely greater consequence than all others) several collateral helps are necessary, as languages, history, and natural philosophy.

There is no part of knowledge, that has been singly set up for the whole improvement of the mind so much s classical learning. Time was when Latin, Greek, and Logic were the whole of education, and they are by some few narrow minds, which have had little culture of any other kind, thought so still. But it is to be hoped, that people will at last be wise enough to see, that, in order to the full improvement of the mind, it is not sufficient that one enter the porch of knowledge, but that he proceed from the study of words to that of things.

The pursuit of too many different and inconsistent studies at once is very prejudicial to thorough improvement. The human mind is so formed, that, without distinction, method, and order, nothing can be clearly apprehended by it. Many readers take a delight in heaping up in their minds a cumbrous mass of mere unconnected truths, as if a man should get together a quantity of stones, bricks, mortar, timbers, boards, and other materials, without any

design of ever putting them together into a regular building.

Some read by fits and starts, and, leaving off in the middle of a particular study or inquiry, lose all the labour they had bestowed, and never pursuing any one subject to a period, have their head filled only with incoherent bits and scraps.

To prevent a turn to rambling and sauntering, without being able to collect your thoughts, or fix them on any one subject, the studies of arithmetic, mathematics, and logic, in youth, ought to have been pursued. But, if you have missed of that advantage, you may constrain yourself at times to study hard for some hours, with a fixed resolution, upon no account whatever to give over, till the time is out. By this means you will come at length to be able to bear the fatigue of close application. But after forty years of age, never think of going on with study, when it goes against the grain; nature at that time of life, will not be thwarted.

With some men, study is mere inquiry, no matter about what. And a discovery is to them the same, whether it be of an important truth, or of somewhat merely curious, or perhaps not even entertaining to any but such dull imaginations as their own. Such readers resemble that species of people, which the Spectator distinguishes by the title of Quidnuncs, who pass their lives in inquiring after news, with no view to any thing, but merely hearing somewhat new.

Were the works of the learned to be retrenched of all their superfluities and specious trifling, learning would soon be reduced into a much narrower compass. The voluminous verbal critics, laborious commentators, polemical writers, whose works have, for several centuries, made the presses groan, would then shrink into sixpenny pamphlets, and pocket volumes.

Such a degree of laziness as will not allow one to inquire carefully into the sense of an author; impatience, inattention, rambling, are dispositions in a reader, which effectually prevent his improvement, even though he should upon the whole spend as much time over his books, as another, who shall actually become extensively learned. Some consider reading as a mere amusement, so that,

to them, the most diverting book is the best. Such readers having no view to the cultivation of their understanding, there is no need to offer them any directions for the conduct of study. The very great number of novels and tales, which are continually publishing, encourage in people a trifling and idle turn of mind, for which the present age is eminently remarkable, which makes any direct address to their understandings unacceptable; and nothing can please or gain their attention, that is not seasoned with some amusement, set off in some quaint or artificial manner, or does not serve to execute some silly passion.

There is nothing more difficult, than to come at a right judgment of our own abilities. It is commonly observed, that ignorant people are often extremely conceited of their own fancied knowledge. An ignorant person, having no manner of notion of the vast extensiveness of science, concludes he has mastered the whole, because he knows not, that there is any thing to be learned beyond the little he has learned. But it will take many years study only to know how much there is to be studied and inquired into, and to go through what is already known; and the most learned, best know, how much beyond all that is known, is quite out of reach of human sagacity. There is indeed an infinity of things, in the strictest sense of the word, of which we cannot even know our own ignorance, not being at all within the reach of our ideas in our present state.

That a young person may not run into the egregious, though common error, at the time of life, of fancying himself the most knowing person in the world, before he has gone half way through the first principles, or rudiments of knowledge, let him converse with a person eminent in each branch of science, and learn from him what labour he must bestow, what books he must read, what experiments he must try, what calculations he must go through, what controversies he must examine, what errors he must avoid, what collections he must make, what analogical reasonings he must pursue, what close resemblance in subjects he must distinguish from one another, and so forth. And after he has gone through all that an able master in each science has prescribed, and has learned all that is to be learned, and seen that all our learning is but ignorance, then let him be proud of his knowledge, if he can.

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