744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and bounded knowledge, 

 is the tone I would wish to take and not to depart from. At present 

 it seems to me that those who are for giving to natural knowledge, as 

 they call it, the chief place in the education of the majority of man- 

 kind leave one important thing out of their account the constitution 

 of human nature. But I put this forward on the strength of some 

 facts not at all recondite, very far from it ; facts capable of being 

 stated in the simplest possible fashion, and to which, if I so state 

 them, the man of science will, I am sure, be willing to allow their due 

 weight. 



Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can. He can hardly 

 deny that, when we set ourselves to enumerate the powers which go 

 to the building up of human life, and say that they are the power of 

 conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, 

 and the power of social life and manners he can hardly deny that 

 this scheme, though drawn in rough and plain lines, and not pretend- 

 ing to scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true account of the 

 matter. Human nature is built up by these powers ; we have the 

 need for them all. This is evident enough, and the friends of physical 

 science will admit it. But, perhaps, they may not have sufficiently 

 observed another thing, namely, that these powers just mentioned 

 are not isolated, but there is in the generality of mankind a perpetual 

 tendency to relate them one to another in divers ways. With one 

 such way of relating them I am particularly concerned here. Follow- 

 ing our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we acquire pieces of 

 knowledge ; and presently, in the generality of men, there arises the 

 desire to relate these pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to 

 our sense for beauty, and there are weariness and dissatisfaction if the 

 desire is balked. Now, in this desire lies, I think, the strength of that 

 hold which letters have upon us. 



All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting ; and even items 

 of knowledge which from the nature of the case can not well be 

 related, but must stand isolated in our thoughts, have their interest. 

 Even lists of exceptions have their interest. If we are studying 

 Greek accents, it is interesting to know that pais and pas, and some 

 other monosyllables of the same form of declension, do not take the 

 circumflex upon the last syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in 

 this respect, from the common rule. If we are studying physiology, 

 it is interesting to know that the pulmonary artery carries dark blood, 

 and the pulmonary vein carries bright blood, departing in this respect 

 from the common rule for the division of labor between the veins and 

 the arteries. But every one knows how we seek naturally to combine 

 the pieces of our knowledge together, to bring them under general 

 rules, to relate them to principles ; and how unsatisfactory and tire- 

 some it would be to go on for ever learning lists of exceptions, or 

 accumulating items of fact which must stand isolated. 



