Practical Essays | Page 2

but not of all motives.
* * * * *
II.
ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES.
Meanings of Relativity--intellectual and emotional.
All impressions greatest at first. Law of Accommodation and habit.
The pleasure of rest presupposes toil.

Knowledge has its charm from previous ignorance.
Silence is of value, after excess of speech.
Previous pain not, in all cases, necessary to pleasure.
Simplicity of Style praiseworthy only under prevailing artificiality. To
extol Knowledge is to reprobate Ignorance.
Authority appealed to, when in our favour, repudiated when against us.
Fallacy of declaring all labour honourable alike.
The happiness of Justice supposes reciprocity.
Love and Benevolence need to be reciprocated.
The moral nature of God--a fallacy of suppressed correlative
A perpetual miracle--a self-contradiction.
Fallacy that, in the world, everything is mysterious.
Proper meaning of Mystery.
Locke and Newton on the true nature of Explanation
The Understanding cannot transcend its own experience.--Time and
Space, their Infinity.
We can assimilate facts, and generalise the many into one. This alone
constitutes Explanation.
Example from Gravity: not now mysterious.
Body and Mind. In what ways the mysteriousness of their union might
be done away with.
* * * * *

III.
THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS.
I. HISTORICAL SKETCH.
First official recommendation of Competitive Examinations.
Successive steps towards their adoption.
First absolutely open Competition--in the India Service.
Macaulay's Report on the subjects for examination and their values.
Table of Subjects. Innovations of Lord Salisbury.
An amended Table.
II. THE SCIENCE CONSIDERED.
Doubts expressed as to the expediency of the competitive system.
Criticism of the present prescription for the higher Services.
The Commissioners' Scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science
objectionable.
Classification of the Sciences into Abstract or fundamental, and
Concrete or derivative.
Those of the first class have a fixed order, the order of dependence.
The other class is represented by the Natural History Sciences, which
bring into play the Logic of Classification.
Each of these is allied to one or other members of the primary Sciences.
The Commissioners' Table misstates the relationships of the various
Sciences.

The London University Scheme a better model.
The choice allowed by the Commissioners not founded on a proper
principle.
The higher Mathematics encouraged to excess.
Amended scheme of comparative values.
Position of Languages in the examinations.
The place in education of Language generally.
Purposes of Language acquisition.
Altered position of the Classical, languages.
Alleged benefits of these languages, after ceasing to be valuable in their
original use.
The teaching of the languages does not correspond to these secondary
values.
Languages are not a proper subject for competition with a view to
appointments.
For foreign service, there should be a pass examination in the
languages needful.
The training powers attributed to languages should be tested in its own
character.
Instead of the Languages of Greece, Rome, &c., substitute the History
and Literature.
Allocation of marks under this view.
Objections answered.

Certain subjects should be obligatory.
* * * * *
IV.
THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY.
ITS PRESENT ASPECT.
Attack on Classics by Combe, fifty years ago.
Alternative proposals at the present day:--
1. The existing system Attempts at extending the Science course under
this system.
2. Remitting Greek in favour of a modern language. A defective
arrangement.
3. Remitting both Latin and Greek in favour of French and German.
4. Complete bifurcation of the Classical and the Modern sides.
The Universities must be prepared to admit a thorough modern
alternative course.
Latin should not be compulsory in the modern side.
Defences of Classics.
The argument from the Greeks knowing only their own
language--never answered.
Admission that the teaching of classics needs improvement.
Alleged results of contact with the great authors of Greece and
Rome--unsupported by facts.

Amount of benefit attainable without knowledge of originals.
The element of training may be obtained from modern languages.
The classics said to keep the mind free from party bias.
Canon Liddon's argument in favour of Greek as a study.
* * * * *
V.
METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES.
Metaphysics here taken as comprising Psychology, Logic, and their
dependent sciences.
Importance of the two fundamental departments.
The great problems, such as Free-will and External Perception should
be run up into systematic Psychology.
Logic also requires to be followed out systematically.
Slender connection of Logic and Psychology.
Derivative Sciences:--Education.
Aesthetics--a corner of the larger field of Human Happiness
The treatment of Happiness should be dissevered from Ethics
Adam Smith's loose rendering of the conditions of happiness
Sociology--treated, partly in its own field, and partly as a derivative of
Psychology.
Through it lies the way to Ethics.

The sociological and the ethical ends compared.
Factitious applications of Metaphysical study.
Bearings on Theology, as regards both attack and defence.
Incapable of supplying the place of Theology.
Polemical handling of Metaphysics.
Methodised Debate in the Greek Schools.
Much must always be done by the solitary thinker.
Best openings for