44 NO ERROR IN JUDGMENT. 



always ready, we elicit valuable thought, and get rid 

 of much useless thought altogether. 



Besides, as we remember thoughts only from their 

 connexion with what we have observed, or could 

 observe if we were in the right place at the proper 

 time, it follows that the results of our observations 

 are not only the most easily remembered of all 

 thoughts, but they are, as it were, "nails in sure 

 places," to hang the rest upon. If a story, or an 

 abstract truth, or any matter of that kind, be told 

 when one first visits the sea, or a mountain top, or 

 any place that is calculated to make a strong im- 

 pression on the senses, it is rarely, if ever, forgotten. 

 The old practice of whipping all the children of the 

 manor at the march-stones, or on perambulating the 

 boundaries, though both a little ludicrous and a little 

 cruel, was a very certain way of getting witnesses 

 to the identity of the stone. Men never forget those 

 lessons for which they were whipped at school. That 

 may not be the best, and it is certainly not the most 

 pleasant way of "hammering things down on the 

 memory ;" but an impression on the senses, some- 

 thing that can be observed, and observed with 

 pleasure, not with irritation, is highly desirable. 



How often do we, because we want the test of 

 observation, treat the unknown and the absurd as if 

 they were true. That is not done from any imper- 

 fection in the act of judging : for ignorant people, so 

 far as they do know, judge as correctly as the learned ; 

 and, indeed, often far more so, because, with ignorant 

 people, observation, the test of truth in judgment, 

 forms a much larger proportion of their thoughts. 

 And indeed we cannot ascribe unsound judgment even 

 to those who err the most in their decisions. The 

 judgments of the mind are in all cases true and 

 accurate, according to the evidence which is before the 

 mind at the time: and if men were equally in pos- 

 session of that, the judgment of one man would be 

 just as sound as that of another. If that were not 

 the case, it would be difficult to show how any per- 



