1855.] On Mental Education. 475 



appear to preponderate extremely in favour of a certain decision, 

 it is wise and proper to hear a counter-statement. You can 

 have no idea how often and how much, under such an impres- 

 sion, I have desired that the marvellous descriptions which 

 have reached me might prove, in some points, correct ; and 

 how frequently I have submitted myself to hot fires, to friction 

 with magnets, to the passes of hands, &c. 5 lest I should be 

 shutting out discovery; encouraging the strong desire that 

 something might be true, and that I might aid in the develop- 

 ment of a new force of nature. 



Among those points of self-education which take up the 

 form of mental discipline) there is one of great importance, 

 and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an 

 internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. 

 It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all 

 we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. 

 It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by 

 the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of con- 

 tinual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in 

 relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force 

 of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence 

 and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to dis- 

 regard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In 

 this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. 

 In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever 

 make the wish the father to the thought : we receive as 

 friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that 

 which opposes us ; whereas the very reverse is required by 

 every dictate of common sense. Let me illustrate my meaning 

 by a case where the proof being easy, the rejection of it under 

 the temptation is the more striking. In old times, a ring or a 

 button would be tied by a boy to one end of a long piece of 

 thread, which he would then hold at the other end, letting the 

 button hang within a glass, or over a piece of slate-pencil, or 

 sealing-wax, or a nail; he would wait and observe whether 

 the button swung, and whether, in swinging, it tapped the 

 glass as many times as the clock struck last, or moved along 

 or across the slate-pencil, or in a circle or oval. In late times, 

 parties in all ranks of life have renewed and repeated the boy's 

 experiment. They have sought to ascertain a very simple 



