Abstract thought, he says,
is not a wholesome occupation for more than a small number of human
beings, nor of them for more than a small part of their time. Art, which
calls the emotions into play along with and more than the reason, is the
only intellectual exercise really adapted to human nature. It is
nevertheless indispensable that the chief theories of the various
abstract sciences, together with the modes in which those theories were
historically and logically arrived at, should form a part of universal
education: for, first, it is only thus that the methods can be learnt,
by which to attain the results sought by the moral and social sciences:
though we cannot perceive that M. Comte got at his own moral and social
results by those processes. Secondly, the principal truths of the
subordinate sciences are necessary to the systematization (still
systematization!) of our conceptions, by binding together our notions of
the world in a set of propositions, which are coherent, and are a
sufficiently correct representation of fact for our practical wants.
Thirdly, a familiar knowledge of the invariable laws of natural
phaenomena is a great elementary lesson of submission, which, he is
never weary of saying, is the first condition both of morality and of
happiness.
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