70 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



accessible to all, were it only that they may be the 

 more thoroughly examined into, and more effectually 

 developed in their consequences, and receive that 

 ductility and plastic quality which the pressure of 

 minds of all descriptions, constantly moulding them 

 to their purposes, can alone bestow. But to this 

 end it is necessary that it should be divested, as far 

 as possible, of artificial difficulties, and stripped of 

 all such technicalities as tend to place it in the light 

 of a craft and a mystery, inaccessible without a 

 kind of apprenticeship. Science, of course, like 

 every thing else, has its own peculiar terms, and, 

 so to speak, its idioms of language ; and these it 

 would be unwise, were it even possible, to relinquish : 

 but every thing that tends to clothe it in a strange 

 and repulsive garb, and especially every thing that, 

 to keep up an appearance of superiority in its profes- 

 sors over the rest of mankind, assumes an unnecessary 

 guise of profundity and obscurity, should be sacri- 

 ficed without mercy. Not to do this, is to deliber- 

 ately reject the light which the natural unencumbered 

 good sense of mankind is capable of throwing on 

 every subject, even in the elucidation of principles : 

 but where principles are to be applied to practical 

 uses it becomes absolutely necessary ; as all man- 

 kind have then an interest in their being so fami- 

 liarly understood, that no mistakes shall arise in 

 their application. 



(64.) The same remark applies to arts. They cannot 

 be perfected till their whole processes are laid open, 

 and their language simplified and rendered univer- 

 sally intelligible. Art is the application of knowledge 

 to a practical end. If the knowledge be merely 



