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Untitled Article
Or if we apply a principle , however well ascertained , to the explanation of all appearances between which we can fancy a resemblance . In the education of a family of children , there ought to be some general rules , the enforcement of which must be salutary to ea $ } i ; hut as no two minds are alike in all points , it would be as absurd to regulate all in a precisely similar manner , as to have a totally different system for each . Some weaknesses , faults
and follies , are common to all young minds , while there is an infinite variety in their capacities and dispositions ; and he is the truly wise parent who knows how to enforce general rules with steadiness , while he applies particular methods with discernment . Such discrimination should be our aim in our interpretation of the common events of life , in our judgment of human character , in the lessons we draw from circumstances , and in our study of books and of the world of nature . We must be careful not to conclude that
because actions resemble each other , the motives must in all cases be alike , that events which have been once connected are for ever inseparable , that one department of research , however good , will make us universally wise , or that one metbo $ of discipline , however salutary , will secure ourselves or others from the insinuations of all moral evil . While our observation of facts is very limited , a small portion o > f philosophical knowledge may be
sufficient to account for them ; but if we seek to extend our range , we must be careful that our minds are so disciplined as to receive new ideas without prejudice , that they are strengthened for the formation of new conceptions , prepared to apply well-known truths in their proper places , and to leave them behind when we enter on unexplored and extended regions .
Ideas are impressed on all minds in the order of time ; but the modes in which they are afterwards disposed are various . Upon the mode of classification depends much of the clearness and strength of the intellect . A welltrained intellect will , with ease , retain valuable impressions , and dismiss those that are unimportant ; while a young or weak mind will retain both indiscriminately , and a perverted one will let siip all that should be retained , and grasp only what is trifling and useless . How large a portion of useful
knowledge we daily forego , how awfully we weaken our minds by the retention of ideas which can minister to no good , we cannot at present estimate ; but we may form some faint idea by drawing a contrast between the mind of Milton and that of a fashionable fop , between such a man as Hartley and a scoffing , dissolute infidel . The habit of classifying our impressions as they are received , and arranging our ideas in such an order as that we may know where to find them , and when to produce them , must be formed by early attention and considerable labour ; but the acquisition is worth
any degree of " exertion . The habit oace formed , the benefit is secured for ever 3 the mind converts all things to wholesome aliment , and the process of assimilation goes on with ease , and without intermission . A mind totall y destitute of a power of classification , is of rare occurrence , except among the most ignorant of our race , but the exercise of the power is deficient in most , and perfect , perhaps , in none . The weakest minds arrange all their impressions in the order of time , the most philosophical in that of cause and effect .
We have all smiled at the nurse in Romeo and Juliet , with her long story to prove Juliet's age , the absurd detail of unconnected circumstances , related merely because they happened near the same time ; but we may all be conscious of something of the same folly in ourselves , and may observe that we can scarcely relate the shortest story , the most simple incident , without introducing some detail whichi is not to the purpose . In forming
Untitled Article
Essays on the Art of Thinking . 605
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1829, page 605, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2576/page/5/
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