EDUCATION, AS IT IS AND AS IT SHOULD BE. 79 



mans had very little knowledge to communicate; and 2nd. That 

 little has already been translated into the British language. Little or 

 nothing was known of the mind, of the body, of the stars, of the heal- 

 ing art, of Natural History, of Astronomy, of Geography, of Geolo- 

 gy, of Chemistry, of Government, till the appearance of Gall, Hah- 

 nemann, Linna;us, Galileo, Columbus, Lyell, Davy, Bentham— all 

 moderns ; and yet teachers, with a perversity unparalleled, perhaps, 

 in the annals of mankind, continue to toil in the same barren path, 

 without a single rational reason to warrant so strange a procedure ! 

 I have actually known a teacher put a Greek grammar into the hands 

 of a pupil, in play-hours, who was reading a work on Natural Histo- 

 ry ; and when questioned why he did so, gravely answered " The 

 proper study of mankind is man !" Veri/ learned, but not the less 

 ignorant for that ! And thus it is that mere language has acquired 

 a repute above real solid acquirements in knowledge. Phrenology 

 will, however, dissipate this, like most other errors : this science 

 shows us why great linguists are, as Dr. Macnish remarks, generally 

 great blockheads. An American phrenologist says, " When the doc- 

 trines of Phrenology come to be generally understood, the admiration 

 excited by the possession of a great number of dead and foreign lan- 

 guages will be much diminished. It will then be considered merely 

 as evidence of a large organ of Language, and as no evidence of i^u- 

 perior general talents." It is owing to the disproportionate attention 

 that is paid to the education of this organ that style is generally 

 placed above matter ; and I have actually heard it maintained that if 

 the style was good the matter or ideas cannot be bad ! It must ap- 

 pear obvious, however, I should think, that the worst ideas may be 

 conveyed in the best language, and that the worst language may be 

 employed to convey the best ideas. It is said that the Greek in 

 which some parts of the New Testament are written is almost barba- 

 rous, yet every one knows what the ideas are ; and, again, the most 

 poisonous and dangerous ideas have constantly been couched in the 

 most sublime and eloquent language. Bentham seems to have been 

 aware of the propensity of the shallow-minded (phrenologically speak- 

 ing, those with small Causality) to be taken in by style ; for he says 

 he has written one of his treaties to « teach the reader to distinguish 

 between showy language and sound sense." And in the course of this 

 treatise, speaking of Blacksone's Commentaries, he remarks, " Cor- 

 rect, elegant, unembarrassed, ornamented, the sti/le is such as could 

 scarce fail to recommend a work still more vicious, in point of matter, 

 to the multitude of readers." 



