^YHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH? 277 



brevity; and happily, no very lengthened treatment of it is needed. 

 Having found what is best for the one end, we have by implication 

 found what is best for the other. We may be quite sure that the 

 acquirement of those classes of facts which are most useful for regu- 

 lating conduct, involves a mental exercise best fitted for strengthening 

 the faculties. It would be utterly contrary to the beautiful economy 

 of Nature, if one kind of culture were needed for the gaining of infor- 

 mation and another kind were needed as a mental gymnastic. Every- 

 where throughout creation we find faculties developed through the per- 

 formance of those functions which it is their office to perform; not 

 through the performance of artificial exercises devised to fit them for 

 these functions. The Eed Indian acquires the swiftness and agility 

 which make him a successful hunter, by the actual pursuit of animals ; 

 and by the miscellaneous activities of his life, he gains a better balance 

 of physical powers than gymnastics ever give. That skill in tracking 

 enemies and prey which he has reached by long practice, implies a sub- 

 tlety of perception far exceeding anything produced by artificial train- 

 ing. And similarly throughout. From the Bushman, whose eye, 

 which being habitually employed in identifying distant objects that 

 are to be pursued or fied from, has acquired a quite telescopic range, 

 to the accountant whose daily practice enables him to add up several 

 columns of figures simultaneously, we find that the highest power of a 

 faculty results from the discharge of those duties which the conditions 

 of life require it to discharge. And we may be certain, a priori, that 

 the same law holds throughout education. The education of most 

 value for guidance, must at the same time be the education of most 

 value for discipline. Let us consider the evidence. 



One advantage claimed for that devotion to language-learning which 

 forms so prominent a feature in the ordinary curriculum, is, that the 

 memory is thereby strengthened. And it is apparently assumed that 

 this is an advantage peculiar to the study of words. But the truth 

 is, that the sciences afford far wider fields for the exercise of memory. 

 It is no slight task to remember all the facts ascertained respecting 

 our solar system; much more to remember all that is known concern- 

 ing the structure of our galaxy. The new compounds which chemistry 

 daily accumulates, are so numerous that few, save professors, know the 

 names of them all ; and to recollect the atomic constitutions and affini- 

 ties of all these compounds, is scarcely possible without making chem- 

 istry the occupation of life. In the enormous mass of phenomena 

 presented by the Earth's crust, and in the still more enormous mass 

 of phenomena presented by the fossils it contains, there is matter which 

 it takes the geological student years of application to master. In each 

 leading division of physics — sound, heat, light, electricity — the 

 facts are numerous enough to alarm any one proposing to learn 



