100 FURTHER THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION. 
ful exercise. System and order in arrangement of ideas are indis- . 
pensably necessary to the attainment of excellence in any science. 
Now the habit of application induced by early routine study is, in 
this way, most beneficial; for if the knowledge then acquired be 
found in after life distasteful or unnecessary, the concentrative 
power of the mind, having been once stimulated, is readily exerted 
upon other objects, and forms, as it were, a fulcrum on which the 
intellectual lever may rest, and by which it may be enabled to ac- 
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complish its highest imaginings. Education hasits empirics as well | 
as medicine and politics; and there are found persons who both 
advocate and practice a system, as they term it, of free mental action, 
which they make to consist in allowing a child to exercise his own 
unbiassed inclination, not only in the selection of objects for study, 
but also as to the mode and time for gaining information, The ar- 
guments which these blind leaders of the blind use in favour of 
their plan is, that by putting aside all the trammels of previous 
opinion and prejudice the mind is thrown on its own resources, and 
thus is originality of idea promoted. They maintain that when a 
child feels the necessity of knowledge he will quickly acquire it, and 
that the reflective faculties can best educate themselves. A very 
short examination will prove that these conclusions are erroneous. 
In man, judgment is the produce of reflection directed by reason, and 
based upon a connected chain of inductions, which chain must have . 
certain points or data on which to rest ; for without these, right and 
wrong would be mere arbitrary terms. Now, if these data are not 
furnished from external sources, the mind will create them for 
itself, and thereby too frequently assume false positions, and will 
always exaggerate even correct premises. Experience of the past 
affords the best material from which to derive these steadying points 
for the chain of reflection; for, on ascertaining the consequences 
which have generally ensued upon certain conditions, we are enabled 
fairly to infer the present results that will accrue from similar cir- 
cumstances. 
The wise in all ages have borne testimony to the advantages aris- 
ing from early and regular instruction. ‘Train up a child in the 
way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” is 
a maxim which, though not always borne out in practice, is perfectly 
true in theory. The impressions of childhood are rarely, if ever, 
effaced ; and the pursuits in that period of life are frequently found 
colouring the occupations of riper years. Individuals educated upon 
the principle of free mental action—that is to say, educated in di- 
rect accordance with their own inclinations—frequently are found 
