11 



undertake m earnest. One object of education undoubtedly is to 

 furnish the mind with knowledge which may be turned to good 

 account hereafter. But that is not the only object. And there is 

 always danger that, in exercising the faculty of learning over much, 

 the higher faculties of thought and observation may not be exercised 

 sufficiently. There may indeed well be, for the higher order of 

 minds, too much as well as too little of systematic education ; and 

 hence it is that for some of the greatest achievements in the 

 way of scientific discovery, we are indebted to those who, like Sir 

 Humphry Davy, were in a great degree self-educated. 



" It is a poor pedantry that would exalt one kind of knowledge by 

 disparaging others. Literature, the arts, the moral and the physical 

 sciences, all of these in their respective ways have tended to elevate 

 the condition of mankind. But it is by the union of the whole that 

 the greatest results have been obtained. That union is indeed as 

 necessary to the higher forms of civilization, as the combination of 

 rays of different degrees of refrangibility is to the constitution of a 

 beam of solar light. 



" Of the physical sciences, it may, I apprehend, be truly asserted 

 that they have an advantage over every other department of know- 

 ledge, in this respect, that the field of inquiry is practically unli- 

 mited. The student may indeed meet with an impassable barrier in 

 one direction, but in that case he has only to proceed in another. 

 As he advances, the horizon which terminates his view recedes before 

 him. He enters on fresh scenes, gathers in new knowledge ; and 

 every addition which he makes becomes the foundation of further 

 knowledge, to be afterwards acquired ; so that, at the end of a long 

 life, he finds himself a learner still. In the meanwhile, under what- 

 ever circumstances he may be placed, whether he be in the cultivated 

 valley, on the glaciers of the Alps, on the wide sea, in the crowded 

 city, in the busy factory, in the broad sunshine, or in the starlight 

 night, he has only to look around him to find objects which have to 

 him a peculiar interest, exhibiting relations which are not perceptible 

 to those whose minds have been otherwise engaged. While viewing 

 the gorgeous sunset, he finds, in the changing colour of the clouds and 

 in the dark blue sky above, illustrations of the phenomena and laws 

 of light. The flashes of the aurora are to him not mere objects of 



