210 REASONING. 



or of tools, is of a precisely similar nature. The savage who 

 executes unerringly the exact throw which brings down his 

 game, or his enemy, in the manner most suited to his purpose, 

 under the operation of all the conditions necessarily involved, 

 the weight and form of the weapon, the direction and distance 

 of the object, the action of the wind, &c., owes this power 

 to a long series of previous experiments, the results of which 

 he certainly never framed into any verbal theorems or rules. 

 The same thing may generally be said of any other extraor 

 dinary manual dexterity. Not long ago a Scotch manufacturer 

 procured from England, at a high rate of wages, a working 

 dyer, famous for producing very fine colours, with the view 

 of teaching to his other workmen the same skill. The work 

 man came ; but his mode of proportioning the ingredients, 

 in which lay the secret of the effects he produced, was by 

 taking them up in handfuls, while the common method was to 

 weigh them. The manufacturer sought to make him turn his 

 handling system into an equivalent weighing system, that the 

 general principle of his peculiar mode of proceeding might 

 be ascertained. This, however, the man found himself quite 

 unable to do, and therefore could impart his skill to nobody. 

 He had, from the individual cases of his own experience, 

 established a connexion in his mind between fine effects of 

 colour, and tactual perceptions in handling his dyeing 

 materials ; and from these perceptions he could, in any par 

 ticular case, infer the means to be employed, and the effects 

 which would be produced, but could not put others in pos 

 session of the grounds on which he proceeded, from having 

 never generalized them in his own mind, or expressed them 

 in language. 



Almost every one knows Lord Mansfield s advice to a 

 man of practical good sense, who, being appointed governor 

 of a colony, had to preside in its court of justice, without 

 previous judicial practice or legal education. The advice 

 was to give his decision boldly, for it would probably be 

 right ; but never to venture on assigning reasons, for they 

 would almost infallibly be wrong. In cases like this, which 

 are of no uncommon occurrence, it would be absurd to sup- 



