xii.] TEE AET OP LEARNING. 291 



one in the present day, even if we look on Mm as on a 

 mere advertiser of nature's wonders. As such. I appear 

 here to-night ; not to teach you natural history ; for 

 that you can only teach yourselves : but to set before 

 you the subject and its value, and if possible, allure 

 some of you to the study of it. 



I have said that lectures do not supply mental 

 training; that only personal study can do that. The 

 next question is, What study ? And that is a question 

 which I do not answer in a hurry, when I say, The 

 study of natural history. It is not, certainly, a study 

 which a young man entering on the business of self- 

 education would be likely to take up. To him, naturally, 

 man is the most important subject. His first wish is to 

 know the human world ; to know what men are, what 

 they have thought, what they have done. And there- 

 fore, you find that poetry, history, politics, and 

 philosophy are the matters which most attract the 

 self-guided student. I do not blame him, but he seems 

 to me to be beginning at the middle, rather than at 

 the beginning. I fell into the same fault myself more 

 than once, when I was younger, and meddled in 

 matters too high for me, instead of refraining my soul, 

 and keeping it low ; so I can sympathise with others 

 who do so. But I can assure them that they will find 

 such lofty studies do them good only in proportion as 

 they have first learnt the art of learning. Unless 

 they have learnt to face facts manfully, to discriminate 

 between them skilfully, to draw conclusions from them 

 rigidly ; unless they have learnt in all things to look, 

 not for what they would like to be true, but for what 

 is true, because God has done it, and it cannot be un- 

 done then they will be in danger of taking up only the 



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