wanted as provision for the voyage of life after
the age of fourteen, sixteen, or twenty. They
look upon teaching as the provisioning of some
newly-built ship for a long passage, or the coaling
of a steamer; and even then there are some
who have such faith in old stores or in worked-
out mines, that they will mix their supplies
largely with wormeaten biscuit, and pour in
more slate than coal, to be thrown overboard as
soon as the good ship has discharged her pilot,
and is fairly tossing on the open sea.

In childhood and in age there is, as to the
mind, too little practical distinction made
between feeding and working. The body's power
of strengthening itself by the assimilation of food
has understood limits, and its power of putting
out the strength so got is known to be a great
deal less limited. A man who eats for two hours
works for ten. The swallowing of facts by the
mind is as the swallowing of food by the body.
Reading, repetition, learning by rote, are but
means to an end, and the end to which they are
a means is not the mere power of vomiting forth
again what has been taken in. The mental
digestion of the young is naturally very energetic.
Hear a child besieging those about it with its
endless Why? and How? and wonder at the
blindness of men who think that dogmatic
authority is the best help to the growth of its
understanding, and that it suffices to reply to
those questions with, Because I say it, and As I
say. The spirit of independent research, of
endless inquiry and comparison, leading to
innumerable shrewd little conclusions, is the process
of digestion in the child's mind. The combative
argumentative temper of the boy and girl, so
prompt to question all that is presented to it, is
a sign of healthy hunger in the brain, not to be
checked as presumptuous challenging of the
authority of elders, but to be encouraged as a
means of building up the strong life of the mind.
Is it not notorious that in schools and families
this habit of constant questioning by the young,
is often forcibly repressed because it becomes so
direct and searching, or so wide in its range, that
the elder to whom appeal is made, if it be his
rule, or her rule, fairly to meet every inquiry,
may many times a day have no better reply to
give than, "I don't know "?

It is a miserable vanity that shrinks from
uttering that little "I don't know;"—vanity
founded on the meanest estimate of the infinity
of knowledge. There was a time when a few
bookshelves would hold the written record of
all that men knew; now, it would take a life
to learn all that is known and thought about
a single subject. The new degrees of
Bachelor and Doctor of Science at the London
University are founded upon the understanding
that even of the imperfect knowledge
man has of each small branch of the study of
nature, one branch alone can be mastered
thoroughly by one mind. It is not even considered
to be in the power of one man to master, as it
stands, the whole science of chemistry—a science
still in its infancy: the doctor of chemical science
may be an inorganic or an organic chemist, he
cannot be both. In the commonest truths lie
often the deepest of unfathomed mysteries. Is
the child, then, to be brought up in the persuasion
that his father or his schoolmaster can
answer every question if he will, but is unwilling
to be teased too much? Wholesomer teaching
no youth ever gets than when the person who is
held to be the wisest, and who is most ready to
guide with his knowledge, is found daily, and as
it were hourly, pointing to the vast regions of
knowledge and thought which are beyond even
his vision with the honest "I don't know," which
makes the way straight for pursuance of inquiry.

Centuries ago, Roger Bacon declared one of
the chief hindrances to increase of sound
knowledge was the prevalent willingness of men to
receive credit for knowing that of which they
indeed were ignorant. Honour be to "I don't
know" in the schoolhouse! If the teacher be
only reasonably wise, and answer questions of all
sorts to the best of his ability, never affecting
knowledge that he has not, rather proud than
ashamed to guide those who learn from, him by
the honesty with which he confesses ignorance
when he is ignorant, he will be in the eyes of
the young about him a true Solomon. It
is amazing that men who have been boys,
who have been to school and shared with the
race of boys clear-sighted ridicule of affectation
in their rulers, can suppose that their own airs
of infallibility, maintained by more or less
suppression of inquiry, are as against the same race
a successful fraud upon intelligence.

Whatever goes into the brain ought to be
properly debated there, that is to say digested.
Together with the time for swallowing the
daily bits of knowledge, should go a longer time
for their conversion into the material of thought.
The process is one that may be almost left to
nature. In youth it begets infinite research into
the experience of others, and in age it goes on
silently. At each period the process is the same;
the best attainable experience of others is sought,
and compared. The young can only appeal to
those about them and work upon oral testimony;
the old seek information of the best attainable
authorities by questioning their books. At every
age the vitality of the whole process depends
upon that quiet turning over of facts and reflections
in the mind. Perhaps even the mental state
known as "wool-gathering" in men who study
much, is as truly a result of the process of digestion
in the mind as the bodily torpor sometimes
following a full meal is associated with the
labours of the stomach.

If these be truths, it is not hard to see how
possible it is that three hours a day spent in the
mere feeding on facts may be of six times more
value than six hours so spent, if the facts learnt
in the shorter time be fairly dwelt upon during
the intervals of feeding. The medical student,
even in the strength of his youth, is made to
feel that three lectures a day—that is to say,
a three hours' supply of naked facts—are as much
as he can honestly digest; more work than they
afford to his mind is cram, for which—though it
may make a prize animal of him and get him