species with the
minutest care, even to the slightest peculiarities in the markings of
a shell or the arrangements of a joint, because that exactness of
description is necessary in the foundations of the science. But it is
not necessary that every member of the public should follow the man of
science into all these minutiae. It is not required of him, that he
should have the names of even the seventy families of plants at his
finger-ends, though that is not beyond the reach of most people. Some
summation of the facts, some adroit generalisation, if such be
attainable, is enough for him. The man of science is, as it were, a
workman employed in rearing up a structure for the man of the world to
look at or live in. The latter has no more necessary concern with the
processes of investigation and compilation, than a gentleman has with
the making of the mortar and hewing of the stones used in a house
which he has ordered to be built for his residence.

Were the facts of science thus generalised, it is surprising how
comprehensive a knowledge of the whole system of the universe every
person might have. Only generalise enough, and no one need to be
ignorant. Just in proportion as a man has little time to bestow on
learning, condense the more what you wish to impart, and the result,
where there is any fair degree of preparedness, will be all the
better. In the very last degree of exigency, explain that nature is a
system of fixed method and order, standing in a beneficial relation to
us, but requiring a harmonious conformity on our part, in order that
good may be realised and evil avoided, and you have taken your pupil
by one flight to the very summit of practical wisdom. The most
illustrious _savant_, while knowing some of the intermediate steps by
which that wisdom was attained, and having many delightful subjects of
reflection in the various phenomena involved in the generalisation,
cannot go an inch further.

This is putting the matter in its extreme form. We are entitled to
suppose that the bulk of mankind have some time to spend on the
acquirement of a knowledge of the natural system of things into which
their Maker has thrown them. Grant a little time to such a science,
for example, as botany; we would never attempt impressing a vast
nomenclature upon them. We would give them at once more pleasure and
more instruction in shewing some of the phenomena of vegetable
physiology: fundamental and profoundly interesting matte