every man must consult himself, and choose what he likes best; and that method which is easiest and pleasantest, (in both which cases all men are to judge for themselves,) is for that very reason the properest. Men's minds differ as much as their bodies. Every man not only thinks for himself, but has some peculiarities in his way of thinking distinct from other men; and in studying, it is not so much what a man comprehends, as what he likes, that must engage him. When men are once jaded, they presently give over. Besides, every man must be guided by the books that he can procure, by the leisure that he has, and by the pre-cognita that he has already attained. W. WOTTON, D.D., Some Thoughts concerning a Proper Method of studying Divinity.

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Everything in this world is big with jest; and has wit in it and instruction too, if we can but find them out.-STERNE, Tristram Shandy.

The man who is best able to recognize new and important features in the things known or assumed before his time, will always be the one to make the greatest number of discoveries, to throw the most light upon departments previously obscure, and to ascertain entirely new and more correct relations between the phenomena &c. with which he has to deal. For all this presupposes that the various doubts and questions connected with the subject

must have been present in his mind; that he has weighed within himself the sufficiency of the things which others have been content to take for granted, and adopted among them only such as, after the ordeal of profound reflection and exact investigation, he found answered by a secure affirmation.

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That a powerful influence is exercised by the susceptibility and moral condition of the individual upon observation and judgement, and that hence an abundant source of error arises, requires no proof. Everything which makes a very vivid impression upon our feelings, particularly if it captivate our imagination, which keeps our interest in suspense, which rouses our will and energy, or excites our fears in an unusual degree, influences our whole intellectual being, and at the same time clouds our perceptions or warps our judgement. In this state we are less fitted for a calm and circumspect investigation and correct judgement; and whatever has in this manner once taken hold upon our minds may be compared to a pair of spectacles improperly adapted to our vision. The one is of necessity almost as certainly allied to the other, as that a person under the influence of wine or passion observes, examines, and judges quite differently from what he would in a sober and calm position. -F. OESTERLEN, M.D., Medical Logic.

As all knowledge must enter the mind by

labor, it must be evident that facts and principles are the only things which ought to be selected, and fixed in it by every one. Information received through books, or other sources of instruction, may give a bias to the mind, which may afterwards be with difficulty superseded by any other, especially the relation of shocking occurrences, which produce fearfulness and a want of selfreliance in darkness, and cause a disturbance of the regular functions of the brain, and lead to disease. J. SWAN, The Brain in relation to the Mind.

Whatever I have learnt, unworthy as it may be of the name of knowledge, has been acquired by avoiding the causes of error, the idols by which man is so speciously deluded. Submission to undue authority is one commanding idol. We talk of the independence of the human mind; but man loves to grovel before any intellectual authority, except that which is grounded upon obedience to the Almighty will.

Let any teacher arise; and listening multitudes will crowd around his chair, provided he does not appeal to Holy Writ. Announce positions utterly unintelligible to the human mind, and they are acknowledged implicitly, if propounded as the doctrines of human intellect and the results of human reason. It is true that man frequently resists one tyrant but, if he releases himself, he only sur

renders himself instantly to a new thraldom: it is only to place his neck again beneath an other yoke. Every yoke is light to him excepting that of his Redeemer. - SIR F. PALGRAVE, The Merchant and the Friar.

There are "facts" to support every absurdity. No speculation was ever so baseless as not to have some "facts" on which to rest. But "many individuals overlook the half of an event through carelessness; an other adds to what he observes the creation of his own imagination; whilst a third, who sees sufficiently distinctly the different parts of the whole, confounds together things which ought to be kept separate."- Saturday Review, October 1859.

Strict mathematical science is of course an excellent instrument of mental discipline, though somewhat too severe for any but the more advanced classes of an English school, or of most American colleges. But physical science generally is, from its very nature, unfit for such a purpose. Its principles are deduced from an immense mass of facts acquired by observation; and either you must teach the principles without the facts on which they rest, in which case you give the pupil only a superficial acquaintance with the subject, or you overload his mind with a multitude of dry details, which, not being acquired by his personal observation, it is hard for him to

learn, and almost impossible to retain. In neither case have you obtained an instrument of education, in the true sense of the word. - Saturday Review, February 1871.

Ancient education, however deficient in depth and solidity, attempted at least to bring every variety of knowledge to the aid of him who undertook any of the great Professions. - Quarterly Review, vol. lxxviii.

But if the knowledge of the doctrines unfolded by Science is pleasing, so is the being able to trace the steps by which those doctrines are investigated, and their truth demonstrated: indeed you can not be said, in any sense of the word, to have learnt them, or to know them, if you have not so studied them as to perceive how they are proved. Without this you can never expect to remember them long, or to understand them accurately; and that would of itself be reason enough for examining closely the grounds they rest on. But there is the highest gratification of all, in being able to see distinctly those grounds, so as to be satisfied that a belief in the doctrines is well founded. — LORD BROUGHAM, A Discourse of the Objects, Advantages and Pleasures of Science, 1827.

I believe that whoever would form a right estimate of himself and others; whoever would improve his own character; whoever aspires to the