480 On Mental Education. [1855. 



Considerations of this nature are very important aids to the 

 judgment ; and when a statement is made claiming our assent, 

 we should endeavour to reduce it to some consequence which 

 can be immediately compared with, and tried by, these or like 

 compact and never-failing truths. If incompatibility appears, 

 then we have reason to suspend our conclusion, however 

 attractive to the imagination the proposition may be, and pur- 

 sue the inquiry further, until accordance is obtained ; it must 

 be a most uneducated and presumptuous mind that can at 

 once consent to cast off the tried truth and accept in its place 

 the mere loud assertion. We should endeavour to separate 

 the points before us, and concentrate each, so as to evolve a 

 clear type idea of the ruling fact and its consequences ; looking 

 at the matter on every side, with the great purpose of di- 

 stinguishing the constituent reality, and recognizing it under 

 every variety of aspect. 



In like manner we should accustom ourselves to clear and 

 definite language, especially in physical matters ; giving to a 

 word its true and full, but measured meaning, that we may be 

 able to convey our ideas clearly to the minds of others. Two 

 persons cannot mutually impart their knowledge, or compare 

 and rectify their conclusions, unless both attend to the true 

 intent and force of language. If by such words as attraction, 

 electricity, polarity, atom, they imply different things, they 

 may discuss facts, deny results, and doubt consequences for 

 an indefinite time without any advantageous progress. I hold 

 it as a great point in self-education that the student should 

 be continually engaged in forming exact ideas, and in expressing 

 them clearly by language. Such practice insensibly opposes 

 any tendency to exaggeration or mistake, and increases the 

 sense and love of truth in every part of life. 



I should be sorry, however, if what I have said were under- 

 stood as meaning that education for the improvement and 

 strengthening of the judgment is to be altogether repressive 

 of the imagination, or confine the exercise of the mind to pro- 

 cesses of a mathematical or mechanical character. I believe 

 that, in the pursuit of physical science, the imagination should 

 be taught to present the subject investigated in all possible, 

 and even in impossible views ; to search for analogies of like- 

 ness and (if I may say so) of opposition inverse or contrasted 



