256 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



their truth entirely assented to and relied upon, while 

 yet they carry no meaning distinctly home to the 

 mind; and while the matter of fact or law of nature 

 which they originally expressed, is as much lost sight 

 of, and practically disregarded, as if it never had been 

 heard of at all. In those subjects which are at the 

 same time familiar and complicated, and especially in 

 those which are so much of both these things as 

 moral and social subjects are, it is matter of common 

 remark how many important propositions are believed 

 and repeated from habit, while no account could be 

 given, and no sense is practically manifested, of the 

 truths which they convey. Hence it is, that the tra- 

 ditional maxims of old experience, though seldom 

 questioned, have so little effect on the conduct of life; 

 because their meaning is never, by most persons, 

 really felt, until personal experience has brought it 

 home. And thus also it is that so many principles 

 of religion, ethics, and even politics, so full of mean- 

 ing and reality to first converts, have manifested (after 

 the association of that meaning with the verbal for- 

 mulas has ceased to be kept up by the controversies 

 which accompanied their first introduction) a tendency 

 to degenerate rapidly into lifeless dogmas ; which 

 tendency, all the efforts of an education expressly and 

 skilfully directed to keeping the meaning alive, are 

 barely found sufficient to counteract. 



Considering, then, that the human mind, in different 

 generations, occupies itself with different things, and 

 in one age is led by the circumstances which surround 

 it to fix more of its attention upon one of the properties 

 of a thing, in another age upon another; it is natural 

 and inevitable that in every age a certain portion 

 of our recorded and traditional knowledge, not being 

 continually suggested by the pursuits and inquiries with 



