CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCIENTIFIC MEN. 



L I B K A 



spirit, and in what he did\Jor science, which Professor 



Silliman honored. 



^>t ; :j 



FROM MR. WILLIAM MACLTJR] 



October 19, 1822. 



YOUR ideas concerning the utility that would 



result to mankind by a more strict attention to positive 

 knowledge in our Colleges, agree perfectly with my own, 

 and I think that the means you propose would much tend 

 to produce that desirable effect. I only regret that my cir- 

 cumstances are not adequate to the accomplishment of so 

 beneficial a change. When I retired from commerce about 

 twenty-five years ago, I looked round for some occupation 

 that might amuse me always, convinced that a man had 

 the choice of his amusements as well as of his profession, 

 and that common sense dictated an amusement that would 

 produce the greatest good, for it is an axiom with me that 

 it is the positive and real interest of every individual in 

 society to have as many friends and as few enemies as 

 possible. To obtain them he must do as much good and 

 as little harm as possible. In reflecting upon the absurdity 

 of my own classical education, launched into the world as 

 ignorant as a pig of anything useful, not having occasion 

 to practice anything I had learned, except reading, writing, 

 and counting, which any child could now acquire in six or 

 eight months of a Lancasterian School, I had been long 

 in the habit of considering education one of the greatest 

 abuses our species were guilty of, and of course one of the 

 reforms the most beneficial to humanity, and likewise offer- 

 ing to ambition a fair field. Almost no improvement had 

 been made in it for two hundred or three hundred years ; 

 there was immense room for change to put it on a par with 

 the other functions of civilization. The task appeared easy, 

 and the credit to be acquired by any change considerable, 

 for nearly the same reasons. I adopted rock-hunting as 



