Erroneous Conclusions. 17 



mended to all those who are engaged in carrying 

 out the changes that are necessary to enable us to 

 manage profitably the land of Great Britain. The 

 situation, indeed, with reference to foreign competition, 

 and agriculture itself, is so complicated that the student 

 might well turn away from the whole subject in 

 despair, unless he follows the admirable counsel of 

 Locke in the section on " Despondency," where, as the 

 reader will observe, his teacher leads to the inference 

 that it is of much more importance to teach method 

 than to impart knowledge. And if Locke is to be 

 recommended to the farmer, he is still more to be 

 advised for the use of agricultural chemists, who have, 

 as I have shown in my paper delivered at Cambridge, 

 {vide Appendix IX.) led the farmer to most pernicious 

 conclusions, because, as Locke puts it, in his section on 

 " Reasoning," " something was left out which should 

 go into the reckoning to make it just and complete." 



And, besides the danger of misapplying general 

 principles, there are numerous cases where erroneous 

 conclusions are readily come to, as, for instance, that 

 because one seed is cheaper than another it will 

 therefore afford a larger return of grass for the outlay, 

 or, that because some of the richest pastures contain 

 certain plants it is therefore most advantageous to sow 

 the seeds of them, or that because you want much 

 clover it is therefore desirable to put down much seed. 

 The whole subject, in short, is a jungle full of traps by 

 which the unwary are only too liable to be caught, and it 

 is therefore important to begin with that attitude of mind, 

 so difficult to attain, which enables the individual neither 

 to believe, nor, what is of even more importance, 

 disbelieve anything whatever without sound reasons for 

 forming a decisive opinion in one direction or another. 



Since writing this chapter Lord Leicester has been 

 kind enough to inform me, in answer to a letter from 

 me on the subject, that he has no objection to 

 my publishing a paper on the system he has adopted, 



