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    which a narrow education implies , they are not acquainted with the rest ; must be perpetually liable to the formation of wrong judgments ; and want- * ing in those means of clear and correct judgment which the more enlarged knowledge derived from a liberal education can alone supply . This is a difference fully recognised in the remarkable case of medicine ;

    and as the reason extends to every system of action , which must be founded upon a system of knowledge complete or incomplete , the ease of medicine ought to have suggested , much more generally than it has done , the difference between the quack artist and the instructed artist , in every department of human action . What is the difference between the quack doctor and the enlightened physician ? Only this , that the one uses all the knowledge which a complete education bestows ; and the other , without the knowledge derived

    from a liberal education , knows only what his own practice has suggested to him . Wherein , therefore , is he inferior to the well-educated physician ? In this , that he is a less accurate judge of the circumstances on which health and disease depend . He looks only at a few circumstance ' s , when the result depends on a great many . He knows not the connexions among circumstances ; which it is above all things the business of an enlightened education

    to teach . The grand object of an enlightened education is to render familiar to the mind of the pupil the laws of nature ; which is , in fact , to make him acquainted with the connexions among circumstances . By an enlightened education he is taught to combine these connexions into groupes ; to give names to the groupes ; to bring in this manner the greatest number possible of such connexions within the grasp of the mind , and to hold the knowledge of them always ready whenever there is occasion to use it .

    Ihere are few , we trust , of our readers who cannot make the application of this very obvious but most important doctrine to the general occupations of the middle rank of life . How many , for example , and recondite are the laws of nature which are concerned in the operations of him who cultivates the ground ; the gardener , the fanner , the grazier ! These laws of nature are the connexions among the circumstances on which the results pursued by him "depend . These results will most assuredly be attained in greatest

    degree , and with greatest certainty , where the knowledge of the causes on which they depend , that is , the knowledge of those connexions above-mentioned , those laws of nature , is the most perfectly enjoyed . How many advantages , to mention but one of the numerous branches of knowledge with which the business of the farmer is connected , must he possess , who is fully acquainted with the laws of vegetation , who knows the structure and habits of plants , the elements , combinations and properties of soils , the food of plants , the circumstances which stimulate , and those which retard their

    growth , and who , knowing the powers with which he has to operate , has acquired habits of forming new combinations of those powers , adapted to the varying circumstances in which he has to appl y them , —over the man who , without any knowledge but that of a blind routine , p loughs the ground and throws in the seed , rnerely because his father did so before him , and in the self-same manner ; and who looks upon all improvement as a sort of injury to the dead , and hardly differing from a sin !

    Without stopping to shew how many combinations are involved in the proceedings of the manufacturer and the merchant , and how impossible it is for any but the man who has all the knowledge which it is the business of the most complete education to bestow , to be master of all those combinations , and capable of turning them to his own advantage , we shall only speak of one other happy result of a generous education , and that in few words ;

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    166 Scientific Education ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 166, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/6/