INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION ON OBSERVATION. 359 



clling away of those among you who are the inheritors of free institutions 

 and best adapted to them then there will come a further difficulty 

 in the working out of that great future which lies before the Ameri- 

 can nation. To my anxiety on this account you must please ascribe 

 the unusual character of my remarks. 



And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by the Germanic 

 on Saturday, I shall bear with me pleasant remembrances of my inter- 

 course with many Americans, joined with regrets that my state of 

 health has prevented me from seeing a larger number. 



THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION ON OBSERVATION. 



IT was lately remarked in these columns that one of the dangers 

 attendant on education was that it might lessen men's powers of 

 observation. There is no doubt, we apprehend, that this possibility 

 does exist. Bookishness and absence of mind are no new faults among 

 students. Among the more cultivated classes they have, indeed, been 

 for a considerable time in process of diminution, and the last half- 

 century more particularly has seen a great change in this respect. 

 Physical science has roused students, who in former ages would have 

 been abstract thinkers and nothing more, to careful and steady obser- 

 vation of external things. Facilities of traveling have acted as another 

 stimulus in the same direction ; and the love of nature has been a 

 power over sentimental minds, and has led them insensibly from a 

 quiet enjoyment of their surroundings to more active investigation. 

 So that altogether the classes which at the present day have the ad- 

 vantage of the hig-her education are far more observant than were 

 their forerunners of three or four centuries ago ; and, though even 

 now many of the mathematicians and philosophers who walk the 

 streets of our universities live largely in a mood of abstract thought, 

 we must be careful of finding undue fault with this, for the inward 

 eye has some claims not lightly to be despised. But, with respect to 

 the mass of the nation, the question we have raised is one that deserves 

 a good deal of attention. Popular education is still in the bookish 

 stage ; and, without complaining of what is inevitable, we may and 

 ought to inquire whether literary study does now in the lower ranks 

 promote that vice of inobservance which it certainly promoted in 

 the higher ranks a century or two ago. Equally we have to inquire 

 whether the virtue which is the converse of this error may be fos- 

 tered ; whether and how the study of books may be made to minister 

 to powers of direct observation, instead of being adverse to them, and 

 to assist in the general business of life. 



Litei'ary study may conceivably impede our observant faculties, 



