Things versus Words. 
[September, 
520 
soul of Examinationalism, cannot be pronounced of modern 
origin. For centuries original research and observation 
were practically non-existent in Europe. The only task of 
the man of learning was to study not Nature, but books , 
to comment on, discuss, and expound the doCtrmes 0 
“ the Ancients,” without any attempt to increase or to 
rectify the existing stock of human knowledge. Legend re- 
presents the sage not as observing and experimenting, but 
as reading. . , , , „ , „ 
To such a length was this carried that the spoken or 
written word came to be held synonymous with reason, in 
the East, to this day, a book, a scroll, even a scrap ot papei, 
is looked on as well-nigh sacred. , 
How came everyone to forget that knowledge must have 
its origin elsewhere than in books, as otherwise no books 
could ever have been written ? Why was the cistern or the 
bottle, foul often or dirty, preferred to the spring ? 
To form even a probable conjecture we must look back to 
the pre-historical ages,— days innocent of fossil gossip. 
Man, from the earliest date at which he could be called man, 
would certainly observe. A part of the knowledge thus 
accumulated would be handed down even without oral tra- 
dition. The young would remember and practise the aits 
which they had seen exercised by their elders. But much 
would, for want of any permanent record, be forgotten, and 
die with those who had collected it, 
Hence we may easily conceive that when language reached 
such a stage as to admit of the transmission,. and consequent 
accumulation, of knowledge in the form of inscriptions, our 
early forefathers were intoxicated with the value of the step 
thus gained. They insensibly began to pay less attention to 
things and more to words, which, as we have just seen, are 
often but very dim, indistindt transcripts of things: this error 
seems to have grown until it culminated in the Sociatic 
apostacy ” from which we only returned in the days of bacon 
and Galileo. Even now, as I have urged, words still receive 
the lion's share of attention. In England until very lately 
men ran through the highest attainable curricula without 
anything but mere verbal training, and if in aftei life they 
proved capable of dealing with anything, beyond words and 
abstraaions it was simply in spite of their education. It is 
to be feared that now a verbal education is being, ioiced 
upon the lower classes the “ vice of inobservance, which 
has hitherto haunted the higher orders, will be in dangei 
of infeaing the whole nation. 
In taking my walks abroad I have not unfrequently met 
