1855.] On Mental Education. 483 



our welfare or our lives upon it. Still, only an uneducated 

 mind will confound probability with certainty, especially when 

 it encounters a contrary conclusion drawn by another from like 

 data. This suspension in degree of judgment will not make a 

 man less active in life, or his conclusions less certain as truths ; 

 on the contrary, I believe him to be the more ready for the 

 right amount and direction of action on any emergency ; and 

 am sure his conclusions and statements will carry more weight 

 in the world than those of the incautious man. 



When I was young, I received from one well able to aid a 

 learner in his endeavours toward self-improvement, a curious 

 lesson in the mode of estimating the amount of belief we might 

 be induced to attach to our conclusions. The person was Dr. 

 Wollaston, who, upon a given point, was induced to offer me a 

 wager of two to one on the affirmative. I rather impertinently 

 quoted Butler's well-known lines* about the kind of persons 

 who use wagers for argument, and he gently explained to me, 

 that he considered such a wager not as a thoughtless thing, but 

 as an expression of the amount of belief in the mind of the 

 person offering it ; combining this curious application of the 

 wager, as a meter, with the necessity that ever exists of drawing 

 conclusions, not absolute but proportionate to the evidence. 



Occasionally and frequently the exercise of the judgment 

 ought to end in absolute reservation. It may be very distaste- 

 ful, and great fatigue, to suspend a conclusion ; but as we are 

 not infallible, so we ought to be cautious ; we shall eventually 

 find our advantage, for the man who rests in his position is not 

 so far from right as he who, proceeding in a wrong direction, 

 is ever increasing his distance. In the year 1824, Arago dis- 

 covered f that copper and other bodies placed in the vicinity 

 of a magnet, and having no direct action of attraction or repul- 

 sion upon it, did affect it when moved, and was affected by it. 

 A copper plate revolving near a magnet carried the magnet 

 with it; or if the magnet revolved, and not the copper, it car- 

 ried the copper with it. A magnetic needle vibrating freely 

 over a disc of glass or wood, was exceedingly retarded in its 

 motion when these were replaced by a disc of copper. Arago 



* " Quoth she, I 've heard old cunning stagers 



Say fools for arguments use wagers." 

 t Annales de Chiraie, xxviii. 325. 



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