Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 450

Edinburgh Journal, No. 450, by
Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 Volume 18, New Series,
August 14, 1852
Author: Various
Editor: William Chambers Robert Chambers
Release Date: July 27, 2007 [EBook #22161]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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EDINBURGH JOURNAL ***

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS,
EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,'
'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
No. 450. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1852. PRICE
1-1/2d.

HINTS ON THE USEFUL-KNOWLEDGE MOVEMENT.
The advocates of the diffusion of useful knowledge among the great
body of the people, found one of their greatest difficulties to lie in an
inability on the part of the people themselves to see what benefit they
were to derive from the knowledge proposed to be imparted. This
knowledge consisted of such a huge mass of facts of all kinds, that few
could overcome a sense of hopelessness as attending every endeavour
to acquire it. Take botany alone, it was said. You have a hundred
thousand species of plants to become acquainted with--to learn their
names, and to what genera and orders they belong, besides everything
like a knowledge of their habitats, their properties, and their physiology.
Seeing that this is but one of the sciences, there might well be a pause
before admitting that the moral and intellectual regeneration of our
people was to be brought about by the useful-knowledge movement.
There was here, however, a mistake on both hands, and one which we
are only now beginning to appreciate. It was not observed at first, that
there is a great distinction to be drawn between the relations of science
to its cultivators or investigators, and those which it bears to the
community at large. It is most important that a scientific zoologist like
Mr Waterhouse, or a profound physiologist like Professor Owen,
should determine and describe every species with the minutest care,
even to the slightest peculiarities in the markings of a shell or the
arrangements of a joint, because that exactness of description is
necessary in the foundations of the science. But it is not necessary that
every member of the public should follow the man of science into all
these minutiæ. It is not required of him, that he should have the names
of even the seventy families of plants at his finger-ends, though that is

not beyond the reach of most people. Some summation of the facts,
some adroit generalisation, if such be attainable, is enough for him. The
man of science is, as it were, a workman employed in rearing up a
structure for the man of the world to look at or live in. The latter has no
more necessary concern with the processes of investigation and
compilation, than a gentleman has with the making of the mortar and
hewing of the stones used in a house which he has ordered to be built
for his residence.
Were the facts of science thus generalised, it is surprising how
comprehensive a knowledge of the whole system of the universe every
person might have. Only generalise enough, and no one need to be
ignorant. Just in proportion as a man has little time to bestow on
learning, condense the more what you wish to impart, and the result,
where there is any fair degree of preparedness, will be all the better. In
the very last degree of exigency, explain that nature is a system of fixed
method and order, standing in a beneficial relation to us, but requiring a
harmonious conformity on our part, in order that good may be realised
and evil avoided, and you have taken your pupil by one flight to the
very summit of practical wisdom. The most illustrious savant, while
knowing some of the intermediate steps by which that wisdom was
attained, and having many delightful subjects of reflection in the
various phenomena involved in the generalisation, cannot go an inch
further.
This is putting the matter in its extreme form. We are entitled to
suppose that the bulk of mankind have some time to spend on the
acquirement of a knowledge of the natural system of things into which
their Maker has thrown them. Grant a little time to such a science, for
example, as botany; we would never attempt impressing a vast
nomenclature upon them. We would give them at once more pleasure
and