The good of having learnt.

have learned, but only so far as we remember." He seems, indeed, almost to ignore the fact that the act of learning serves other purposes than that of making learned, and to assert that to forget is the same as never to have learned, which is a palpable error. We necessarily forget much that passes through our minds, and yet its effect remains. All grown people have arrived at some opinions, convictions, knowledge, but they cannot call to mind every spot they trod on in the road thither. When we have read a great history, say, or travelled through a fresh country, we have gained more than the number of facts we happen to remember. The mind seems to have formed an acquaintance with that history or that country, which is something different from the mere acquisition of facts. Moreover, our interests, as well as our ideas, may long survive the memory of the facts which originally started them. We are told that one of the old judges, when a barrister objected to some dictum of his, put him down by the assertion, "Sir, I have forgotten more law than ever you read." If he wished to make the amount forgotten a measure of the amount remembered, this was certainly fallacious, as the ratio between the two is not a constant quantity. But he may have meant that this extensive reading had left its result, and that he could see things from more points of view than the less travelled legal vision of his opponent. That power acquired by learning may also last longer than the knowledge of the thing learned is sufficiently obvious. So the advantages derived from having learnt a thing are not entirely lost when the thing itself is forgotten.*

the learner to get a feeling of, and a power over, the main words of the language and the machinery in which they are employed.

I append in a note a passage from the old edition of this hook re

The old Cambridge "mathematical man."

§ 16. But the reflection by no means justifies the dis. graceful waste of memory which goes on in most school

ferring to the Cambridge man of forty years ago. "The typical Cambridge man studies mathematics, not because he likes mathematics, or derives any pleasure from the perception of mathematical truth, still less with the notion of ever using his knowledge; but either because, if he is "a good man," he hopes for a fellowship, or because, if he cannot aspire so high, he considers reading the thing to do, and finds a satisfaction in mental effort just as he does in a constitutional to the Gogmagogs. When such a student takes his degree, he is by no means a highly cultivated man; but he is not the sort of man we can despise for all that. He has in him, to use one of his own metaphors, a considerable amount of force, which may be applied in any direction. He has great power of concentration and sustained mental effort even on subjects which are distasteful to him. In other words, his mind is under the control of his will, and he can bring it to bear promptly and vigorously on anything put before him. He will sometimes be half through a piece of work, while an average Oxonian (as we Cambridge men conceive of him at least) is thinking about beginning. But his training has taught him to value mental force without teaching him to care about its application. Perhaps he has been working at the gymnasium, and has at length succeeded in "putting up" a hundredweight. In learning to do this, he has been acquiring strength for its own sake. He does not want to put up hundredweights, but simply to be able to put them up, and his reward is the consciousness of power. Now the tripos is a kind of competitive examination in putting up weights. The student who has been training for it, has acquired considerable mental vigour, and when he has put up his weight he falls back on the consciousness of strength which he seldom thinks of using. Having put up the heavier, he despises the lighter weights. He rather prides himself on his ignorance of such things as history, modern languages, and English literature. He "can get those up in a few evenings," whenever he wants them. He reminds me, indeed, of a tradesman who has worked hard to have a large balance at his banker's. This done, he is satisfied. He has neither taste nor desire for the things which make wealth valuable; but when he sees other people in the enjoyment of

Waste of memory at school.

rooms. Much is learnt which, for want of the necessary repetition, will soon be lost again, besides much that would be valueless if remembered. The thing to aim at is giving "useful knowledge," but making the memory a store house of such facts as are good material for the other powers of the mind to work with; and that the facts may serve this purpose they must be such as the mind can thoroughly grasp and handle, and such as can be connected together. To instruct is instruere," to put together in order, to build;" it is not cramming the memory with facts without connexion, and, as Herbert Spencer calls them, unorganisable. And yet a great deal of our children's memory is wasted in storing facts of this kind, which can never form part of any organism. We do not teach them geography (earth_knowledge, as the Germans call it), but the names of places. Our "history" is a similar, though disconnected study. We leave our children ignorant of the land, but insist on their getting up the “landmarks.” And, perhaps, from a latent perception of the uselessness of such work, neither teachers nor scholars ever think of these things as learnt to be remembered. They are indeed got up, as Schuppius says of the Logic of his day, in spem futuræ oblivionis. Latin grammar is gone through again and again, and a boy feels that the sooner he gets it into his head, the better it will be for him; but who expects that the lists of geographical and historical names which are learnt one half-year, will be remembered the next? I have seen it asserted, that when a boy leaves school, he has already forgotten nine-tenths of what he has been taught, and I dare say that estimate is quite within the mark.

them, he hugs himself with the corsciousness that he can write a cheque for such things whenever he pleases.”

How to stop this waste.

§ 17. By adopting the principles of Jacotot, we avoid a great deal of this waste. We give some thorough knowledge, with which fresh knowledge may be connected. And it will then be found that perfect familiarity with a subject is something beyond the mere understanding it and being able, with difficulty, to reproduce what we have learned. By thus going over the same thing again and again, we acquire a thorough command over our knowledge; and the feeling perfectly at home, even within narrow borders, gives a consciousness of strength. An old adage tells us that the Jack-of-all-trades is master of none; but the master of one trade will have no difficulty in extending his insight and capacity beyond it. To use an illustration, which is of course an illustration merely, we should kindle knowledge in children, like fire in a grate. A stupid servant, with a small quantity of wood, spreads it over the whole grate. It blazes away, goes out, and is simply wasted. Another, who is wiser or more experienced, kindles the whole of the wood at one spot, and the fire, thus concentrated, extends in all directions. Similarly we should concentrate the beginnings of knowledge, and although we could not expect to make much show for a time, we might be sure that after a bit the fire would extend, almost of its own accord.*

§ 18. From Joseph Payne I take Jacotot's directions for carrying out the rule, "Il faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout le reste.”

* On this interesting subject I will quote three men who said nothing inepte-De Morgan, Helps, and the first Sir James Stephen. De Morgan, speaking of Jacotot's plan, wrote :-" There is much truth in the assertion that new knowledge hooks on easily to a little of the old thoroughly mastered. The day is coming when it will be found out that crammed erudition got up for examination, does not cast out any

Multum, non multa. De Morgan. Helps. Stephen

I. LEARN-i.e., learn so as to know thoroughly, perfectly, immovably (imperturbablement), as well six months or twelve

hooks for more." (Budget of Paradoxes, p. 3.) Elsewhere he says :~ "When the student has occupied his time in learning a moderate portion of many different things, what has he acquired—extensive knowledge or useful habits? Even if he can be said to have varied learning, it will not long be true of him, for nothing flies so quickly as half-digested knowledge; and when this is gone, there remains but a slender portion of useful power. A small quantity of learning quickly evaporates from a mind which never held any learning except in small quantities; and the intellectual philosopher can perhaps explain the following phenomenon-that men who have given deep attention to one or more liberal studies, can learn to the end of their lives, and are able to retain and apply very small quantities of other kinds of knowledge; while those who have never learnt much of any one thing seldom acquire new knowledge after they attain to years of maturity, and frequently lose the greater part of that which they once possessed."

Sir Arthur Helps in Reading (Friends in C.) says:-" All things are so connected together that a man who knows one subject well, cannot, if he would, have failed to have acquired much besides; and that man will not be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on than he who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however, is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter; for what I would aim at producing not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in itself-is always growing. And anybody will confirm this who in his own case has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon; for he must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate itself to, his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on."

In his Lecture on Desultory and Systematic Reading, Sir James Stephen said :-"Learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accumulations of human knowledge are not so many detached masses. They are all connected parts of one great system of truth, and though that system be infinitely too comprehensive for any one of us to compass,