EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 663 



nearly all the purposes of the teacher to know the best means of over- 

 coming the repugnance and the abstruseness of general knowledge. 



Waiving for a time the niceties of the abstract idea, and the obsta- 

 cles in the way of its being readily comprehended, we may here adduce 

 certain motives that cooperate with the teacher's endeavors to impress 

 it. A little attention, however, must first be given to the various kinds 

 of interest that attach to individual or particular facts. 



Any kind of knowledge, whether particular or more or less general, 

 that is obviously involved in any of the strong feelings or emotions 

 that we have passed in review, is by that very fact interesting. Now, 

 a great many kinds of knowledge are implicated with those various 

 feelings. To avoid pains, and obtain pleasures, it is often necessary to 

 know certain things, and we willingly apply our minds to learn those 

 things ; and the more so, the more evident their bearing upon the grati- 

 fication of our desires. A vast quantity of information respecting the 

 world, and respecting human beings, is gained in this way ; and it con- 

 stitutes an important basis of even the highest acquisitions. 



The readiness to imbibe this immediately fructifying knowledge is 

 qualified by its being difficult or abstruse ; we often prefer ignorance, 

 even in matters of consequence, to intellectual labor. 



All the natural objects that bear upon our subsistence, our wants, 

 our pleasures, our exemptions from pain, are individually interesting to 

 us, and become known in respect of their special efficacy. Our food, 

 and all the means of procuring it, our clothing and shelter, our means 

 of protection, our sense-stimulants, are studied with avidity, and re- 

 membered with ease. This department of knowledge, notwithstanding 

 its vital concern, is apt to be considered as groveling ; it has, howerer, 

 the recommendation of truth. We do not encourage ourselves in any 

 deceptions in such matters ; and, if we make mistakes, it is owing to 

 the obscurity of the case, rather than to our indifference, or to any mo- 

 tive for perverting the facts. Indeed, this is the department that first 

 suj^plied to mankind the best criterion of certainty. 



There is a different class of objects that appeal, not to the more 

 pressing utilities of subsistence, safety, and comfort, but to the gratifi- 

 cations of the higher senses and the emotions : the pleasures of touch, 

 sigrht, and hearing: ; the social and anti-social emotions. These com- 

 prise all the more striking objects of the world : the sun and celestial 

 sphere, the earth's gay coloring and sublime vastness ; the innumer- 

 able objects, inanimate and animate, that tickle some sense or emotion. 

 In proportion as human beings are set free from the struggle for sub- 

 sistence do they lay themselves open to the seinfluences, and so enlarge 

 the sphere of natural knowledge. Individual things become interesting 

 and known from inspiring these feelings. The culminating interest, 

 however, is in living beings, and especially persons of our own species. 

 The intellectual impressions thus left upon us are lively, but not neces- 

 sarily correct as to the facts. 



