Practical Essays | Page 3

Polemic:--Settling' the meanings of terms.
Discussing the broader generalities.
The Debate a light for mastery, and ill-suited for nice adjustments.
The Essay should be a centre of amicable co-operation, which would
have special advantages.
Avoidance of such debates as are from their very nature interminable.
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VI.
THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL--PAST AND PRESENT.
The Higher Teaching in Greece.
The Middle Age and Boëthius.
Eve of the University.
Separation of Philosophy from Theology.
The Universities of Scotland founded--their history.

First Period.--The Teaching Body.
The Subjects taught and manner of teaching.
Second Period.--The Reformation.
Modified Curriculum--Andrew Melville.
Attempted reforms in teaching.
System of Disputation.
Improvements constituting the transition to the Third Period.
The Universities and the political revolutions.
How far the Universities are essential to professional teaching:
perennial alternative of Apprenticeship.
The Ideal Graduate.
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VII.
THE ART OF STUDY.
Study more immediately supposes learning from Books.
The Greeks did not found an Art of Study, but afforded examples:
Demosthenes.
Quintilian's "Institutes" a landmark.
Bacon's Essay on Studies. Hobbes.
Milton's Tractate on Education.
Locke's "Conduct of the Understanding" very specific as to rules of

Study.
Watts's work entitled "The Improvement of the Mind".
What an Art of Study should attempt.
Mode of approaching it.
I. First Maxim--"Select a Text-book-in-chief".
Violations of the maxim: Milton's system.
Form or Method to be looked to, in the chief text-book.
The Sciences. History.
Non-methodical subjects.
Repudiation of plans of study by some.
Merits to be sought in a principal Text-book.
Question as between old writers and new.
Paradoxical extreme--one book and no more.
Single all-sufficing books do not exist.
Illustration from Locke's treatment of the Bible.
II. "What constitutes the study of a book?"
1. Copying literally:--Defects of this plan.
2. Committing to memory word for word.
Profitable only for brief portions of a book.
Memory in extension and intension.

3. Making Abstracts.
Variety of modes of abstracting.
4. Locke's plan of reading.
A sense of Form must concur with abstracting.
Example from the Practice of Medicine.
Example from the Oratorical Art
Choice of a series of Speeches to begin upon.
An oratorical scheme essential.
Exemplary Speeches.
Illustration from the oratorical quality of negative tact. Macaulay's
Speeches on Reform.
Study for improvement in Style.
III. Distributing the Attention in Reading.
IV. Desultory Reading.
V. Proportion of book-reading to Observation at first hand.
VI. Adjuncts of Reading.--Conversation.
Original Composition.
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VIII.
RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS.
Pursuit of Truth has three departments:--order of nature, ends of

practice, and the supernatural.
Growth of Intolerance. How innovations became possible.
In early society, religion a part of the civil government.
Beginnings of toleration--dissentients from the State Church.
Evils attendant on Subscription:--the practice inherently fallacious.
Enforcement of creeds nugatory for the end in view.
Dogmatic uniformity only a part of the religious character: element of
Feeling.
Recital of the general argument for religious liberty.
Beginnings of prosecution for heresy in Greece:--Anaxagoras, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle.
Forced reticence in recent times:--Carlyle, Macaulay, Lyell.
Evil of disfranchising the Clerical class.
Outspokenness a virtue to be encouraged.
Special necessities of the present time: conflict of advancing
knowledge with the received orthodoxy.
Objections answered:--The Church has engaged itself to the State to
teach given tenets.
Possible abuse of freedom by the clergy.
The history of the English Presbyterian Church exemplifies the absence
of Subscription.
Various modes of transition from the prevailing practice.

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IX.
PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES.
Growing evil of the intolerable length of Debates.
Hurried decisions might be obviated by allowing an interval previous to
the vote.
The oral debate reviewed.--Assumptions underlying it, fully examined.
Evidence that, in Parliament, it is not the main engine of persuasion.
Its real service is to supply the newspaper reports.
Printing, without speaking, would serve the end in view.
Proposal to print and distribute beforehand the reasons for each
Motion.
Illustration from decisions on Reports of Committees.
Movers of Amendments to follow the same course.
Further proposal to give to each member the liberty of circulating a
speech in print, instead of delivering it.
The dramatic element in legislation much thought of.
Comparison of the advantages of reading and of listening.
The numbers of backers to a motion should be proportioned to the size
of the assembly.
Absurdity of giving so much power to individuals.
In the House of Commons twenty backers to each bill not too many.

The advantages of printed speeches. Objections.
Unworkability of the plan in Committees. How remedied.
In putting questions to Ministers, there should be at least ten backers.
How to compensate for the suppression of oratory in the
House:--Sectional discussions.
The divisions occasioned at one sitting to be taken at the beginning of
the next.
Every deliberative body must be free to determine what amount of
speaking it requires.
The English Parliamentary system considered