PLAN OF STUDY. 



ix 



By the latter method, the memory may, no doubt, be highly 

 improved ; but it is, almost without exception, at the expense 

 of the judgment, which, by the method here recommended, is 

 the chief faculty exercised. The memory of children is in 

 many cases too ready, and it might be more advantageous to 

 check than to foster it, like a hot-house plant, into premature 

 growth, which is certain to be followed by premature decay; 

 while, at the same time, every chance of originality and inde- 

 pendence of mind must be utterly extinguished. It was remarked 

 by Aristotle, that precocious prizers, at the Olympic games, 

 were rarely afterwards distinguished, and every day's experience 

 proves the correctness of his observation. It would not, indeed, 

 be difficult to demonstrate, that the mode here recommended of 

 discriminating the objects of Natural History, is a more effi- 

 cient instrument for exercising the judgment, than even mathe- 

 matics ; at least when they are taught on the plan so frequently 

 followed in our schools and Universities, of merely committing 

 to memory, or, what is the same thing, conning over, the demon- 

 strations of Euclid, or Sir Isaac Newton ; instead, as is done on 

 the continent, of pupils inventing the diagram, and working out 

 the demonstration of a proposition, as much as possible, by their 

 own efforts. The consequence of this leading-string system has 

 been, that it has nearly extinguished the mathematical reputation 

 of Britain, formerly so high ; it being as impossible to make a 

 Newton by parroting the Principia, as to make a Milton by com- 

 mitting to memory the Paradise Lost. In the same way in Natural 

 History; the trusting to books alone, which, in so many cases, are 

 the compilations of men altogether ignorant of the subject, has 

 virtually placed the authority of a few names (Linnaeus for ex- 

 ample, and some of his disciples) far above nature itself, and has 

 thereby checked the progress of original and independent obser- 

 vation. We may well say with Lactantius, that " they make 

 shipwreck of their wisdom who thus adopt, without judgment, 

 the opinions of their ancestors, and allow themselves to be led 

 by others like a flock of sheep."* 



In books (whose principal use I shall presently advert to) 

 we can only obtain knowledge at second hand, and this, like 



* Sapientiam sibi adrmunt, qui sine ullo judicio inventa majorum probant, 

 et ab aliis pecudum more ducuntur. — Lactantius, Divin. Institut. ii. 7. 



