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Untitled Article
stimulus than a check to that intense application by which the means of future distinction would be the most effectually secured . The time , we believe , is wholly gone by , when some confused and rude notion prevailed among the middle classes and the Dissenters , that the faculties on which success in life depended were very little connected with
intellectual improvement , and that a cultivated understanding was by no means a recommendation to a minister of the gospel ; that the conduct of the shop , the manufactory , and the farm , was rather injured than improved by any knowledge beyond that which the shop , the farm , and the manufactory yielded , and that the power of enforcing the truths of religion was enjoyed in greatest perfection by him who , possessing the knowledge of his Bible , was not encumbered with knowledge of any other kind .
Our persuasion that the benefits of knowledge are sufficiently appreciated by the classes whom it is now our principal purpose to address , will hinder us from entering into an analysis of the antiquated objections to which we have thus referred . The futility of them indeed is apparent . Do not such objectors allow that one man excels another , in the shop , in the farm , or the manufactory ? Why , having observed what makes one man to excel , should we not convey the same faculty to as many as we can ? Why , having observed what would raise the whole to a greater degree of
excellence than that which is now attained by the most successful , should we not be anxious to bestow this advantage upon them ? One man in the shop or the farm excels his neighbour in the shop or the farm , by what ? By turning to better account the circumstances of the shop or the farm . How does one man turn them to a better , another to a worse account ? By two things ; by an attentive observation of the course of the circumstances as they pass ; and by accurately judging of the nature and consequences of each
circumstance . That the habits and faculties of mind subservient to those important purposes are conveyed by education , is acknowledged by " the objectors themselves as matter of general experience . Why else do they make preference of the youths who , in well-regulated families , are brought up to habits of attention , habits of thought and consideration , to youths who , in ill-regulated families , have been habituated only to examples of giddiness and precipitation , have been abandoned to their own inexperience , and have only dissipated their
attention and time ? The grand advantage of the higher branches of education is to generate these master faculties , the faculties of keen and unwearied attention , and of prompt and unerring judgment , in a degree in which nothing else can impart them . It is well known that no exercise of the mind requires so intense and unbroken an application of attention as the mathematics and other superior sciences ; and habits of attention are formed in the acquisition of such branches of knowledge , which are turned with singular advantage to the
active pursuits of life . On what , again , does good judgment of necessity depend ? On a knowledge , assuredly , of the circumstances to be judged of . But in what line of business are these circumstances not so numerous , and connected with so many other circumstances , in other departments , that nothing but the highest education can give a competent knowledge of them all ? It follows that the men who are without the advantage of such an education ; who are obliged to form their judgments upon partial views ; to draw conclusions from a certain number of circumstances , which form only a , part of those upon which the result they are in quest of depends , because on account of the narrow views
Untitled Article
and the London Zfnivemty . 165
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 165, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/5/
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