158 DR. JOHNSON. [CHAP. XII. 



sciences which that knowledge requires, are not the great or the 

 frequent business of the human mind : and we ought not&quot; he 

 adds, &quot; to turn off attention* from life to nature, as if we were 

 placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the 

 stars.&quot; 



That a violent shock had been given in the sixteenth century 

 to certain time-honored dogmas, by what is here slightingly called 

 &quot; watching the motions of the stars,&quot; was an historical fact with 

 which Johnson was of course familiar ; but if it had been adduced 

 to prove that they who exercise their reasoning powers, in inter 

 preting the great book of nature, are constantly arriving at new 

 truths, and occasionally required to modify preconceived opinions, 

 or that when habitually engaged in such discipline, they often ac 

 quire independent habits of thought, applicable to other depart 

 ments of human learning, such arguments would by no means 

 have propitiated the critic, or have induced him to moderate his 

 disapprobation of the proposed innovations. In the mind of John 

 son there was a leaning to superstition, and no one was more con 

 tent to leave the pupil to tread forever in beaten paths, and to 

 cherish extreme reverence for authority, for which end the whole 

 system then in vogue in the English schools and colleges was ad 

 mirably conceived. For it confined the studies of young men, up 

 to the age of twenty-two, as far as possible to the non-progressive 

 departments of knowledge, to the ancient models of classical ex 

 cellence, whether in poetry or prose, to theological treatises, to 

 the history and philosophy of the ancients rather than the mod 

 erns, and to pure mathematics rather than their application to 

 physics. No modern writer was more free from fear of inquiry, 

 more anxious to teach the millions to think and reason for them 

 selves, no one ever looked forward more enthusiastically to the 

 future growth and development of the human mind, than Chan- 

 ning. If his own education had not been cast in an antique 

 mold, he would have held up Milton as a model for imitation, 

 not only for his love of classical lore and poetry, but for his wish 

 to cultivate a knowledge of the works of nature. 



Certainly no people ever started with brighter prospects of 

 uniting the promotion of both these departments, than the people 



