THE BATTALION.
13
student, it becomes the more important for him to master it.
This results from the very defect in the uncultivated mind tha t
it is intended to remedy. Its object is to give a man a con _
trol over his mind, the sovereign power over his intellectives,
by enabling him to fix his attention exclusively upon what
ever object of observation, or subject of conversation or med
itation, he may desire. It may seem an idionsyncrasy, the
result of hopeless pedantry, for a man to assert that the
mathematics are essential to the due development of mind,
when there are other subjects iuclosed within books that
require the exercise of reason. If the different paragraphs
of other departments of science were so inseparably connected
that each one depended entirely for its truth upon one or more
of those preceding such an oninion, would be well grounded.
But such is not the case. In every other science and in
every department of literature the different chapters, sections
or parts are comparatively so loosely connected that a man
may understand any portion of them without being conversant
fully with what precedes. Then when the student applies
himself to them, he is not compelled to master anything but
thai which may be very interesting, or suited to the peculiar
structure of his mind. He then does not school himself to
make investigations where his curiosity is not brought into
play, 01: where no novelty strikes his fancy. He makes great
apparent progress; he amasses great knowledge of a certain
kind. He passes through some classes of men as a wiseacre,
an oracle, a Solomon, who has succeded to the control of
wisdom. And .as long as common topics, common questions^
are brought before him, he may rejoice in the reputation
acquired by ease and application to pleasant and extremely
interesting themes. But every voyager of life must meet his
tempests, his breakers and shipwreck. The pathway of life
will not always be overspread by flowers of praise, nourished
by an indulgent community, who spare him the pain of deal
ing in uninteresting subjects and wrestling with insurmount
able opposition. The time will come in every man’s life
when he will have to study, observe and unceasingly medi-