78 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



appealing directly to Nature, and of acquiring through 

 his senses concrete images of those properties of 

 things, which are, and always will be, but approxi- 

 matively expressed in human language. Our way 

 of looking at Nature, and of speaking about her, 

 varies from year to year ; but a fact once seen, 

 a relation of cause and effect, once demonstratively 

 apprehended, are possessions which neither change 

 nor pass away, but, on the contrary, form fixed 

 centres, about which other truths aggregate by 

 natural affinity. 



Therefore, the great business of the scientific 

 teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable 

 facts of his science, not only by words upon the 

 mind, but by sensible impressions upon the eye, 

 and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete 

 a manner, that every term used, or law enunciated, 

 should afterwards call up vivid images of the 

 particular structural, or other, facts which furnished 

 the demonstration of the law, or the illustration 

 of the term. 



What is the purpose of primary intellectual 

 education? I apprehend that its first object is to 

 train the young in the use of those tools where- 

 with men extract knowledge from the ever-shifting 

 succession of phenomena which pass before their 

 eyes ; and that its second object is to inform them 

 of the fundamental laws which have been found 

 by experience to govern the course of things, so 

 that they may not be turned out into the world 

 naked, defenceless, and a prey to the events they 

 might control. 



A boy is taught to read his own and other 

 languages, in order that he may have access to 



