Mental /V.v< ////;/< /// l : . ( {i(cat iu. 431 



objects of thought, whether in the arts, the professions, 

 business, or science. 



Dr. Whewell, in his defence of the absorbing attention 

 given to mathematics and physics, in the University of 

 Cambridge, has urged the necessity of admitting, as means 

 of education, only those subjects the truths of which are 

 demonstrated and settled forever. But what is the extent 

 of the field of the absolutely unquestionable ? Mathe- 

 matics do indeed present truths upon which rational be- 

 ings can never disagree ; but supposing that the student 

 becomes a little inquisitive, and ventures to ask something 

 about the grounds and origin of these truths, he is in- 

 stantly launched into the arena of polemical strife, and his 

 teacher, from being a frigid expositor of self-evident prin- 

 ciples, is suddenly transformed into an ardent partisan. 

 Dr. Whewell has been the lifelong champion of certain 

 views respecting the nature of mathematical conceptions, 

 which are sharply contested, and have certainly no more 

 than held their own in philosophical conflict. In the field 

 of physics, also, has not the present generation witnessed 

 one of the deepest and most comprehensive revolutions 

 which the history of science records the acceptance of a 

 totally new view of the nature and relations of forces ? 

 What, indeed, is the object of education, the leading out 

 of the mind, if not to arouse thought and provoke inquiry, 

 as well as to direct them ? Is the student's mind a tank to 

 be filled, or an organism to be quickened ? It may be 

 well pleasing to indolent and arrogant pedagogues never 

 to have their assertions questioned, but it is wholesome 

 neither for themselves nor their students. 



Important as may be the mental preparation for deal- 

 ,ing with certainties, it is still more important to prepare for 

 dealing with uncertainties : to ignore this, arrests education 

 at an inferior stage, and but ill prepares for the emergencies 

 of practical life. It is matter of notoriety that the so- 



