directly the faculty of observation, which in very many persons lies
almost dormant through life, the power of accurate and rapid
generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement; it
accustoms young persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect; it
familiarizes them with a kind of reasoning which interests them, and which
they can promptly comprehend; and it is perhaps the best corrective for
that indolence which is the vice of half-awakened minds, and which shrinks
from any exertion that is not, like an effort of memory, merely
mechanical."

Again, when we contemplate the grandeur of science, if we transport
ourselves in imagination back into primeval times, or away into the
immensity of space, our little troubles and sorrows seem to shrink into
insignificance. "Ah, beautiful creations!" says Helps, speaking of the
stars, "it is not in guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but
out of the dark waters of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to
ourselves the most of your significance." They teach, he tells us
elsewhere, "something significant to all of us; and each man has a whole
hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and befriend him."

There is a passage in an address given many years ago by Professor Huxley
to the South London Working Men's College which struck me very much at the
time, and which puts this in language more forcible than any which I could
use.

"Suppose," he said, "it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune
of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or
losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to
be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces?
Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to