Nay, even if we imagine beauties and charms which do not really exist;
still if we err at all it is better to do so on the side of charity; like
Nasmyth, who tells us in his delightful autobiography, that he used to
think one of his friends had a charming and kindly twinkle, and was one
day surprised to discover that he had a glass eye.
But I should err indeed were I to dwell exclusively on science as lending
interest and charm to our leisure hours. Far from this, it would be
impossible to overrate the importance of scientific training on the wise
conduct of life.
"Science," said the Royal Commission of 1861, "quickens and cultivates
directly the faculty of observation, which in very many persons lies
almost dormant through life, the power of accurate and rapid
generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement; it
accustoms young persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect; it
familiarizes them with a kind of reasoning which interests them, and which
they can promptly comprehend; and it is perhaps the best corrective for
that indolence which is the vice of half-awakened minds, and which shrinks
from any exertion that is not, like an effort of memory, merely
mechanical.
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