OCR Text |
Show 14 NO :ERROR IN JUDGI'IH:NT. always ready, we elicit valuable thought, and get rid of much useless thought altogether. . . Besides, as we remember thoughts only from then connexion with what we have observed, or could observe if we were in the right place at the pr?per time it follows that the results of our observatiOns are ~ot only the most easily reme,~b~red. of al! thoughts, but they are, as. it were, nails m sure places," to hang the rest upon. If a ~tory, or an abstract truth, or any matter of that km~, be told when one first visits the sea, or a mountam top,. or any place that is calc!J~a!ed to m?-ke a strong Impression on the senses, It Is rarely, If ev~r, forgotten. fhe old practice of whipping all the children. of the manor at the march-stones, or on perambulatmg. the boundaries, though both a little ludicro~s an~ a little cruel, was a very certain way of gettmg witnesses to the identity of the stone. M~n never forget those lessons for which they were whipped at school. That may not be the best, and it is certainly not the most pleasant way of "hammering things down on the memory;" but an impression on the senses, so~ething that can be observed, and observed witt pleasure, not with irritation, is higltly desirable. How often do we, because we want the test of observation, treat the unknown and the absurd as it they were true. 1'hat is not don~ from any imperfection in the act of judging: for Ignorant people, so far as they do know, judge as correctly as t~1e ~earned ; and, indeed, often far more so, because, with Ignorant people, observation, the test of truth in judgment, forms a much larger proportion of their thoughts. And indeed we cannot ascribe unsound judgment even to those who err the most in their decisions. The judgments of the mind are in all cases true and accurate, according to the evidence which is before tlze mind at the time: and if men were equally in possession of that, the judgment of one man wou1u be just as sound as that of another. If that were not the case. it would bo difficult to show how auy pur- IH.: LII~F I.N EVID.E.NCE. 15 ~on, unlearned ?r learne~, could give. any judgment .. tt c:lll.. As that Is a very Important pomt, let us illustrate It by an example: Suppo~e, .then, that a man had the evidence of a long a!1d mtm~ate acquaintance, during which you had t?ld h.1m nothmg but truth; suppose him at the same ttme Ignorant. of the structure of the mammalia, or quadrupeds w1th warm blood, and also of the animals of an:y di ~tant country, a.s Africa; and suppose you told hun, m your usual fnendly and instructive manner, that tl1ere lmd just been discovered, in the interior of .Afri.ca, by a traveller -who had penetrated farther mto 1t than any former traveller whole flocks of a new species of creatures, which had four le(rs upon which they could run or bound as fleetly ~a~ ~ntelopes, a~1d on their shoulders, above the fore-legs, feathered wmgs, more powerful than the wings of eagles, by the help of which they could fly over the forests or the deserts at their pleasure: how could the man help believing you 1 If he were a mere surface dabbl~r in natural history, the chanue is that he would beheve you all the more readily; because he wo_uld of co.urse have heard of, and perhaps also seen m a spe?Im~n or a fi.gure, the Ornitlw,rhyncus paTadoxus, wh1ch IS found m some of the pools of |