102 THE LIFE OF J.LML'S I). FORBES. 



If, instead of a little knowledge, we speak of know- 

 ledge which is superficial in quality and sudden in acqui- 

 sition, then it may be truly said that such knowledge is 

 dangerous. A legacy of 1,000 bequeathed to a poor 

 labourer whose whole previous income was 30 a year, 

 may very probably prove injurious, or even ruinous, to 

 his habits and character ; while to a man who has been 

 accustomed to spend 10,000 a year it becomes merely 

 a small and useful addition. Power, wealth, knowledge, 

 when suddenly possessed by those unprepared to use 

 them, become to them sources of real danger ; it is 

 experience, or the wisdom of experience, which renders 

 these gifts safe and fruitful of good. 



Such sudden and superficial knowledge is called em- 

 pirical, and is acquired by memory, or by a very narrow 

 experience, not deduced from extensive study and general 

 principles. There shall be two men who in the amount of 

 facts they know, that is in their useful information, SIM -in 

 to be as nearly as possible on a par, yet the knowledge 

 of the one shall have been gathered from mere memory of 

 things read in books, the knowledge of the other shall 

 have been thought out by himself, the principles on 

 which it rests apprehended and made his own. Between 

 these two kinds of knowledge, though their amount be 

 exactly equal, there is a whole world of difference. It is 

 one of the most cherished fallacies of self-conceit to con- 

 fuse between the mental power which originates great 

 discoveries and the very commonplace power required to 

 understand and apply these discoveries when made. 



That anyone should for a moment confound the state 

 of mind of a person capable of originating the Theory 

 of Gravitation and of composing Newton's Principia, 

 with that of a reader of the same work, even one who 

 completely comprehends every argument it contains, 

 seems hardly conceivable. Yet those who see no distinc- 

 tion of one sort of knowledge from another, except in the 

 facts with which it makes us conversant, evidently fall 

 into this confusion. They forget that facts have nothing 

 great or little in themselves. The greatness is in the 



