found in books is not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen as is requisite to discover that, every reader's mind is not forward to make; especially in those who have given themselves up to a party, and only hunt for what they can scrape together, that may favour and support the tenets of it. Such men wilfully exclude themselves from truth and from all true benefit to be derived by reading. Others of more indifferency often want attention and industry. The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original, and to see upon what basis it stands and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this, at first, uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility. So that those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one cast of the eye take a view of the argument and presently, in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books and the clue to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young readers should be entered in, and showed the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers to it will be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men's studies, and they will suspect they shall make but small progress, if, in the books they read, they must stand to examine and unravel every argument, and follow it step by step up to its original.

"I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But I am here inquiring into the conduct of the understanding in its progress towards knowledge; and to those who aim at that, I may say, that he who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right, will sooner be at his journey's end than he

that runs after every one he meets, though he gallop all day full speed.

"To which let me add, that this way of thinking on, and profiting by what we read, will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning: when custom and exercise have made it familiar, it will be despatched on most occasions without resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The motions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick; and a man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at one glimpse as would require a long discourse to lay before another, and make out in an entire and gradual deduction. Besides, that, when the first difficulties are over, the delight and sensible advantage it brings mightily encourages and enlivens the mind in reading, which without this is very improperly called study."

Reasoning and Principles.

Then when he speaks of the necessity of reasoning, and resting our convictions on principles, he points out how generally men fail to use their reason. § VI.

"Few men (he says) are from their youth-(observe from their youth)-accustomed to strict reasoning, and to trace the dependence of any truth, in a long train of consequences, to its remotest principles and to observe its connexion; and he that by frequent practice has not been used to this employment of his understanding, it is no more wonder that he should not, when he is grown into years, be able to bring his mind to it, than that he should not be, on a sudden, able to grave or design, dance on the ropes, or write a good hand, who has never practised either of them.

"Nay, the most of men are so wholly strangers to this, that they do not so much as perceive their want of it; they despatch the ordinary business of their callings by rote, as we say, as they have learnt it; and if at any time they miss success they impute it to anything rather than want of thought or skill."

Again (§ XLIV.):

"To accustom ourselves in any question proposed, to examine and find out upon what it bottoms. Most of the difficulties that come in our way, when well considered and traced, lead us to some proposition, which, known to be true, clears the doubt and gives an easy solution of the question: whilst topical and superficial arguments, of which there is store to be found on both sides, filling the head with variety of thoughts and the mouth with copious discourse, serve only to amuse the understanding, and entertain company, without coming to the bottom of the question, the only place of rest and stability for an inquisitive mind, whose tendency is only to truth and knowledge."

Here then in these quotations we have laid down with sufficient clearness and vigour of language, wherein intellectual virtue consists in almost all the operations of the understanding. We now know what is the educational aim as regards intelligence. Is this intellectual excellence, the issue of which is truth and wisdom, to be acquired by simply wishing for it? Certainly not. It is a habit of mind to which we have to be trained or to train ourselves, and is to be attained only (save in the case of genius) by a slow and laborious process of discipline.

"What then," Locke says, "should be done in the case?" (§ vi.) "I answer, we should always remember what I said above that the faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to us just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would you have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any other manual operation dexterously and with ease; let him have ever so much vigour and activity, suppleness and address naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in fashioning and forming his hand, or outward parts, to these motions. Just so it is in the mind, would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing

the connexion of ideas, and following them in train. Nothing does this better than Mathematics, which therefore I think should be taught all those who have the time and opportunity, not so much to make them mathematicians as to make them reasonable creatures; for though we all call ourselves so, because we are born to it if we please, yet we may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it: we are born to be, if we please, rational creatures; but it is use and exercise only that make us so and we are indeed so, no farther than industry and application have carried us. And, therefore, in ways of reasoning, which men have not been used to, he that will observe the conclusions they take up must be satisfied they are not all rational."

Elsewhere he says (§ vI.),

"What then can grown men never be improved or enlarged in their understandings? I say not so; but this I think I may say, that it will not be done without industry and application, which will require more time and pains than grown men settled in their course of life will allow to it, and therefore very seldom is done. And this very capacity of attaining it by use and exercise only brings us back to that which I laid down before, that it is only practice that improves our minds as well as bodies, and we must expect nothing from our understandings any farther than they are perfected by habits."

Conclusion.

Locke has been called a Realist and Cyclopaedist, and perhaps if we are to classify him he would fall under these designations as compared with other men of his time were we to consider the Thoughts alone; but the Conduct of the Understanding throws fresh light on his position.

As to Encyclopaedism he himself says: "Others that they may seem universally knowing, get a little smattering in every

thing. These may fill their heads with superficial notions of things, but are very much out of the way of attaining truth or knowledge." § XVIII.

The general object of all instruction he puts before us in the following words (§xIx.): "The business of education is not to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them capable of any, when they shall apply themselves to it. * * It is therefore to give them this freedom that I think they should be made to look into all sorts of knowledge and exercise their understanding in so wide a variety or stock of knowledge. But I do not propose it as a variety and stock of knowledge but a variety and freedom of thinking; as an increase of the powers and activities of the mind, not as an enlargement of its possessions."

It is now, I should say, sufficiently clear that if we wish fully to understand Locke's educational views we must read his Thoughts and his Conduct of the Understanding together. And if we do so we find on his own showing, not that Virtue in the moral sense and good manners and general information constitute the sole educational aim, but also Virtue of the Intellect. We also find on his own showing that this latter virtue is truly a training to accurate knowledge of things and words and the putting of a man in possession of his own Reason. We further find that an intellectual result so high is to be attained only by labour, by exercise, by discipline. Let us then read his educational system back from this its admitted aim, and we find it in complete discord with the prevalent tone of the section of the Thoughts which has to do with intelligence and instruction. It is in childhood and boyhood that we can alone sow the seeds of a good habit of Intelligence as well as of a good habit of Will according to Locke himself. The intelligence then has to be trained and disciplined as well as the moral nature. The materials of that training we may take from Locke's Thoughts, if we please,