On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    slower advance in physical science , than if I had given them what is called a lecture on natural philosophy ; just , as I should consider such an audience in a way to make a sounder , though apparently a slower progress in moral knowledge , if I had drawn their attention first to a few scenes in Shakspeare or Scott , Edgeworth or Martineau , and then to a clear statement of the principles therein developed , and to the common exemplification of such principles in every day life , than if I had read them an essay on some intellectual , or moral , or political principle :

    If we could see into the minds of many country-town audiences , not to extend the remark further , we should find them wearied with numerous and complicated experiments . We should discover that the mind had been perplexed , as much as the eyes had been dazzled , by rapid and brilliant evolutions of metal and glass , instead of having been enabled to comprehend and apply principles . Lastly , we shall find many , whose minds are

    accustomed to physical language , remembering , and reasoning on , physical phenomena , rather by means of words and their ideas than by a distinct recollection of the objects of sight . I well remember the difficulty I experienced in passing from a discipline of learning to a discipline of science , to remember objects of sight ; and it delights me to hear a physical student say , ' I can remember what I see . '

    The above remarks , which are , I am convinced , important to be attended to by a physical lecturer in a small country-town , are admirably exemplified in the delightful volumes of Dr . Arnott . Following the plain method of Ferguson , in his common sense mode of teaching , and in rejecting as much as possible the use of technical formulas , Dr . Arnott has given to his work

    a variety of illustration , a depth of feeling , and a spirit of composition , which render his volumes eminently delightful . How far a mind quickened and strengthened by such a discipline may be enabled and induced to pass forward into the synthetical demonstrations of mathematics and the analytic solutions of

    algebra , from which , if offered before it had been prepared to estimate the usefulness of the abstractions of lines and the perplexities of numbers , it would have turned away in disgust , is a question equally interesting to the metaphysician and to the mathematician , —to him who studies the nature of the

    instrument , and to him who would employ it to the best advantage . Let us now suppose ourselves to have succeeded not only in establishing evening readings , but in introducing at each of them a certain quantity of experimental philosophy ; and let us pause to review our work . Is it not a wonderful and an encouraging fact , a cause not for congratulation only , but for gratitude , that the human mind , which in a state of ignorance and apathy is but ft capacious vacuum , capable indeed of containing many things

    Untitled Article

    276 The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst the People .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 276, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/44/