1855.] On Mental Education. 487 



their affirmations are unanswerable. We are not even called 

 upon to give an answer to the best of our belief; nor bound to 

 admit a bold assertion because we do not know to the contrary. 

 No one is justified in claiming our assent to the spontaneous 

 generation of insects, because we cannot circumstantially ex- 

 plain how a mite or the egg of a mite has entered into a parti- 

 cular bottle. Let those who affirm the exception to the general 

 law of nature, or those others who upon the affirmation accept 

 the result, work out the experimental proof. It has been done 

 in this case by Schulze*, and is in the negative; but how few 

 among the many who make or repeat the assertion, would 

 have the requisite self-abnegation, the subjected judgment, the 

 perseverance, and the precision, which has been displayed in 

 that research ! 



When men, more or less marked by their advance, are led 

 by circumstances to give an opinion adverse to any popular 

 notion, or to the assertions of any sanguine inventor, nothing 

 is more usual than the attempt to neutralize the force of such 

 an opinion by reference to the mistakes which like educated 

 men have made; and their occasional misjudgments and erro- 

 neous conclusions are quoted, as if they were less competent 

 than others to give an opinion, being even disabled from judging 

 like matters to those which are included in their pursuits by 

 the very exercise of their minds upon them. How frequently 

 has the reported judgment of Davy, upon the impossibility of 

 gas-lighting on a large scale, been quoted by speculators en- 

 gaged in tempting moneyed men into companies, or in the pages 

 of journals occupied with the popular fancies of the day ; as if 

 an argument were derivable from that in favour of some special 

 object to be commended ! Why should not men taught in the 

 matter of judgment far beyond their neighbours, be expected 

 to err sometimes, since the very education in which they are 

 advanced can only terminate with their lives ? What is there 

 about them, derived from this education, which sets up the 

 shadow of a pretence to perfection ? Such men cannot learn 

 all things, and may often be ignorant. The very progress 

 which science makes amongst them as a body is a continual 

 correction of ignorance, i. e. of a state which is ignorance in 

 relation to the future, though wisdom and knowledge in relation 

 * Miiller's Physiology, or Poggendorff's Annalen, 1836, xxxix. p. 487- 



