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LEARNING THE MOTHER TONGUE.

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sentences and trains of sentences, with objects, situations, actions, purposes, feelings, and so on. This refers us back to the law of heterogeneous association (§ 32) whereby the adhesion between two things is ruled by the respective tenacity or persistence of each; the strong pictorial mind, for example, being disposed to remember better the names of visible objects. Whatever contributes to the interest or impressiveness of the subject-matter increases the facility of remembering the names. The strain of diction is thus a clue to the things that have engaged and arrested the mind. Swift could have acquired the magniloquence of Milton, and Milton might have made himself thoroughly familiar (as he was, in some degree, in his prose) with the coarseness of Swift, so far as concerned mere verbal acquisition; but their vocabularies were made up under their respective preferences for the subject-matter.

Written Language introduces the adhesiveness of the eye for Forms, a very powerful adjunct in verbal memory: being an important aid in the mother tongue, and a principal bond of adhesion in the scholarly recollection of languages.

68. In acquiring Foreign Languages by the usual methods, we have more of the purely verbal associations than in the mother tongue. We do not usually connect the names of a foreign language with the objects, but with the names already learnt. We may connect sound with sound, as when we are taught orally, articulation with articulation, or mark with mark in the eye. Thus 'domus' and 'house' may be associated as two sounds, two articulations, or two sights; usually we have the help of all three ways of linking. If we include the act of writing down words, which embodies them also in the nerve centres of the arm and hand (besides concentrating the eye), there are no less than four lines of adhesion, involving two senses and two modes of mechanical exertion.

In the absence of a good contiguous adhesiveness for indifferent objects, such as arbitrary sounds and symbols, lingual acquisitions are necessarily laborious and difficult.

69. Oratorical Acquisition introduces the element of

Cadence. This is partly created in ourselves by the spontaneous flow of voice becoming modified to please each person's own ear; by which means we have originality of cadence, whether the quality of the creation be high or low.. But for the most part, it is acquired by hearing others, like vocal melodies. Many forms of cadence prevail in human speech. Each nation has characteristic strains of this kind; the foreigner, however perfect in the pronunciation of the words of another language, is detected by the absence of the national manner in his spoken melody. Provinces differ in the same country: English, Irish, and Scotch have their peculiar strains. The orator is a man able to produce a great variety of the richest cadences, just as a singer has the command of many vocal melodies. To fit articulate language into the forms and falls of musical articulation is the orator's art. We have no artificial means of expressing or representing the oratorical rhythm, so as to preserve the manner of a great orator, or to mark the differences between one cadence and another; the notation of the elocution manuals is not carried far enough for that. But we can readily specify the general conditions of oratorical acquirement. The abundant and various action of the voice by primitive constitution, the susceptible ear, the opportunity of hearing many and good varieties of the elocutionist's displays, and a strong sustaining interest in this particular effect, are the essentials; a good general adhesiveness concurring.

Cadence, although properly a spoken effect, is transparent through written composition. In pronouncing the language of Johnson or of Milton, we fall into a distinct strain; this, too, we can acquire and impress upon compositions of our own. We naturally drink in such cadences as are most suitable to the natural march of our own vocal organs, and such as possess the greatest charm.

The Metrical form of language imparts a special pleasure to the ear; and some minds being highly susceptible to it, are disposed to remember by preference composition in verse. Pope 'lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.'

ACQUISITIONS IN ABSTRACT SCIENCE.

RETENTIVENESS IN SCIENCE.

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70. By science, I here understand the artificial symbolism and machinery, requisite for expressing the laws and properties of the world, as distinguished from the actual appearances of things to the common eye, of which I have already spoken under the heads of natural conjunctions, successions, &c. Thus, a treatise on Astronomy is a mass of algebraical calculations and numerical tables. Nothing can well be more unlike the aspects of sun, moon, and planets, than the formulæ and tables expressing the scientific relations of these bodies.

The OBJECT sciences range from the extremely abstract and symbolical, such as Mathematics, where nature in its obvious guise is utterly excluded, to the more concrete subjects of Natural History, wherein some part at least of the acquisition consists in storing up the common appearances of animals, plants, and minerals. The conditions of the acquirement differ, according as any branch is nearer the one or the other extreme. Thus, theoretical Mechanics, Astronomy, and Optics, come under the mathematical class. The experimental parts of Chemistry, Physiology, and Anatomy approach the other end of the scale: in these, the adhesiveness of the natural history mind for sensible appearances and properties, is of the highest consequence.

To advert to the more abstract sciences, which represent science as most opposed to our unscientific images and notions of the things about us :-the symbols of Arithmetic and Mathematics in general, the symbols and nomenclature of Chemistry (combining proportions, atoms, &c.), the nomenclature and abstractions of Physiology (cells, corpuscles, ultimate fibres, secreting glands), require a peculiar cast of intellect for their acquisition; and they are so far of a piece that the mental adhesiveness suited for one would not be much at fault in any other. They are a collection of bare forms not remarkably numerous, which are to be held in the mind with great tenacity, and to be accepted as

the sole representatives of the phenomena. The selfdenial that enables us to dwell among algebraical symbols, concentrating the force of the brain upon them, to the exclusion of all those things that gratify the various senses and emotions, this abnegation, so to speak, of human interest, is the moral peculiarity of the mathematician. It is not necessary that the mathematical mind should be entirely destitute of attraction for colour and beauty, and picturesqueness, and music, but it is necessary for such a mind to cast all these out of the view, and to grapple with the artificial symbols that express the important truths of the world. The interest in attaining the sure and certain laws of the universe, is the motive for immersing the mind in such a cheerless labyrinth of uncouth characters; this motive being once strong in an individual, the other chief requisite is great natural adhesiveness for arbitrary symbols, an adhesiveness that, if depending on local causes, results, in a considerable measure, from the moderate degree of the competing sensibility of the eye-the feeling of Colour. The symbols of a science are few in comparison with the words of a language, but the hold of the one must be much more severe than of the other. A circle used as a diagram in Euclid, must make a deeper impression than a circle as an alphabetic letter. With Euclid's circle has to be associated innumerable lines and constructions, which can never be all presented to the eye at one time, but must be firmly held in idea alone, ready to be brought up on the hint being given; to the alphabetical circle there is no such array of ideal appendages; it is conceived simply as it can be written, and only as regards its visible difference from the other letters of the same alphabet. It is this complication of visible figures, with a multitude of associates not possible to exhibit at once to the eye, and which yet must all be at command, that gives such an intellectual character to scientific reasonings. The Geometrician must retain, in connexion with a circle, all the constructions of Euclid's Third Book, and, if need be, all the constructions that

ACQUISITIONS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCES.

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precede and give foundation to these, and likewise the language that represents in words what cannot be presented to the eye; all which puts to a severe test the cerebral adhesiveness for uninteresting forms. Moreover, this adhesion must rapidly get firm at every step, otherwise the earlier steps of a deduction would be lost before the later were fixed. In an algebraical problem, where x is put for one thing, and y for another, the learner must, by the force of a single repetition, remember all through that these letters stand for such and such things. Persons not rapidly impressed with these arbitrary connexions, are unqualified for mathematics.

In Arithmetic, the ciphers, their additions, subtractions, multiplications, and the decimal system of reckoning, are of the nature of associations of symbolical forms, and require the firm concentration of the mind upon arbitrary signs for the sake of the end they serve. In Algebra, the same operation is carried to a higher complexity, but without any difference in the nature of the machinery. In Geometry, a host of definitions have to be remembered; that is, a line, a space, a square, a circle, must be associated with certain other lines and constructions, with the assistance of language. A circle is a line equally distant from a central point.' The association here is between the visible aspect of the circle, with its central point, and a line drawn from the centre to the circumference, which line is a representative line, and may be drawn anywhere round the whole compass of the figure. This principle of representation is a thing of the intellect entirely; for, in addition to the sensible object, there is a fact, or a multitude of facts, that cannot be made apparent to the eye at one and the same moment.

In the experimental and concrete sciences-as Heat, Electricity, Chemistry, Anatomy, and Natural History in general -the consideration of the actual appearances to the senses, mixes largely with the artificial symbols and abstractions, and hence the value of a good adhesiveness for colour and shape, for touch, and even for taste and smell, in storing up the objects of those sciences. The Mathematical mind

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