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Philosophical beauties selected from the works of John Locke
Philosophical beauties selected from the works of John Locke Author:John Locke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ihe whole, and give a just allowance to the dis- linct provinces of the several sciences in the due order and usefulness of each of them. If this be that whic... more »h old men will not think ne- cessary, nor be easily brought to ; it is fit at least that it should be practised in the breeding of the )oung. The business of education, as I have already observed, is not, as I think, to make them 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 applv themselves to it. If men are for a long time accustomed only to one sort or method of thoughts, their minds grow stiffin it, and do not readily turn to another. It is therefore to give them their freedom, that I think they should be made look into all sorts of knowledge, and exercise their understandings in so wide a variety and stock of knowledge. But I do not purpose it as a variety and stock of knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking, as an increase of the powers and activity of the mind, not as an enlargement of its possessions. SECT. XX. READING. THIS is that which I think great readers are apt 'o be mistaken in. Those vhp have read of every filing, are taught to understand every tiling too ; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge, it is thinking iniikes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselveswith a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some writers visible instances of deep thought, close and acute reasoning, and ideas well pursued. The light these would give, would be of great use, if their readers would observe and imitate them ; all the rest at best are but...« less