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Practical Essays

Practical Essays

Author: : Alexander Bain
Genre: Literature
Practical Essays by Alexander Bain

Chapter 1 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES.

Meanings of Relativity-intellectual and emotional.

All impressions greatest at first. Law of Accommodation and habit.

The pleasure of rest presupposes toil.

Knowledge has its charm from previous ignorance.

Silence is of value, after excess of speech.

Previous pain not, in all cases, necessary to pleasure.

Simplicity of Style praiseworthy only under prevailing artificiality. To extol Knowledge is to reprobate Ignorance.

Authority appealed to, when in our favour, repudiated when against us.

Fallacy of declaring all labour honourable alike.

The happiness of Justice supposes reciprocity.

Love and Benevolence need to be reciprocated.

The moral nature of God-a fallacy of suppressed correlative

A perpetual miracle-a self-contradiction.

Fallacy that, in the world, everything is mysterious.

Proper meaning of Mystery.

Locke and Newton on the true nature of Explanation

The Understanding cannot transcend its own experience.-Time and Space, their Infinity.

We can assimilate facts, and generalise the many into one. This alone constitutes Explanation.

Example from Gravity: not now mysterious.

Body and Mind. In what ways the mysteriousness of their union might be done away with.

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Chapter 2 THE SCIENCE CONSIDERED.

Doubts expressed as to the expediency of the competitive system.

Criticism of the present prescription for the higher Services.

The Commissioners' Scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science objectionable.

Classification of the Sciences into Abstract or fundamental, and Concrete or derivative.

Those of the first class have a fixed order, the order of dependence.

The other class is represented by the Natural History Sciences, which bring into play the Logic of Classification.

Each of these is allied to one or other members of the primary Sciences.

The Commissioners' Table misstates the relationships of the various Sciences.

The London University Scheme a better model.

The choice allowed by the Commissioners not founded on a proper principle.

The higher Mathematics encouraged to excess.

Amended scheme of comparative values.

Position of Languages in the examinations.

The place in education of Language generally.

Purposes of Language acquisition.

Altered position of the Classical, languages.

Alleged benefits of these languages, after ceasing to be valuable in their original use.

The teaching of the languages does not correspond to these secondary values.

Languages are not a proper subject for competition with a view to appointments.

For foreign service, there should be a pass examination in the languages needful.

The training powers attributed to languages should be tested in its own character.

Instead of the Languages of Greece, Rome, &c., substitute the History and Literature.

Allocation of marks under this view.

Objections answered.

Certain subjects should be obligatory.

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Chapter 3 No.3

The Universities must be prepared to admit a thorough modern alternative course.

Latin should not be compulsory in the modern side.

Defences of Classics.

The argument from the Greeks knowing only their own language- never answered.

Admission that the teaching of classics needs improvement.

Alleged results of contact with the great authors of Greece and Rome-unsupported by facts.

Amount of benefit attainable without knowledge of originals.

The element of training may be obtained from modern languages.

The classics said to keep the mind free from party bias.

Canon Liddon's argument in favour of Greek as a study.

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