Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439, by Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439
Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852

Author: Various

Editor: Robert Chambers and William Chambers

Release Date: September 5, 2006 [EBook #19181]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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. 439. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._

THEREFORE AND BECAUSE.

A distinguished general-officer being appointed to a command in which
he would be called on to discharge judicial as well as military
duties, expressed to Lord Mansfield his apprehensions, that he would
execute his office but ill in the former respect, and that his
inexperience and ignorance of technical jurisprudence would prove a
serious impediment to his efficient administration of justice. 'Make
your mind perfectly easy,' said the great judge; 'trust to your native
good sense in forming your opinions, but beware of attempting to state
the grounds of your judgments. The judgment will probably be
right--the argument infallibly wrong.'

This is a common case, especially with practical men, who rarely have
either leisure or inclination to recall the workings of their own
minds, or observe the intellectual process by which they have been
conducted to any conclusion. By what they are prone to consider as a
kind of instinct--if by chance they are philosophers, and delight in
what old Wilson, the essayist, calls 'inkhorn terms,' they designate
it 'intuition'--they arrive at a truth, but have no recollection
whatever of the road they travelled to reach it, and are able neither
to retrace their own steps nor indicate to another the way they came.
The poet, in describing and contrasting the intellectual
characteristics of the two sexes, attributes to the softer som