Preliminary education, or, The general culture required by the student of medicine : a discourse delivered before the Harveian Society of Edinburgh on the 13th April 1868 / by Alexander Wood.
- Date:
- 1868
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Preliminary education, or, The general culture required by the student of medicine : a discourse delivered before the Harveian Society of Edinburgh on the 13th April 1868 / by Alexander Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
12/30 page 12
![This introduces us to another, though subordinate, power of the mind—Attention—one which especially requires and benefits by diligent cultivation. Eecurring to the example of the child, we find that the develop- ment of memory is followed by that of another power. He soon begins to compare one object with another; the taste of salt and sugar at first undistinguishable by him, soon cease to be alike, and .a marked preference is shown for one over the other. He will in- stinctively turn to the most striking of two objects,—the brightest light, the loudest sound, will attract his attention. At a further advanced age he will measure by the eye and correct the sight by the touch, the sizes of objects, or will compare the taste and smell of different bodies. This is the commencement of the exercise of Judgment, one of the most important faculties of the mind. Closely allied with Judgment is Reasoning, that mental power or combina- tion of powers by which the results of judgment are compared, conclusions drawn, and truth arrived at. Whately thus clearly explains the operation of this faculty,— There are three operations of mind in argument: Apprehension, that is the notion in the mind analogous to perception by the senses; Judgment, the comparing of two notions that are the objects of apprehension ; and Reasoning, the proceeding from one judgment to another founded thereon, re- producing the result. The expression of the apprehension is a Term; the expression of the act of judgment is a Proposition ; the ex- pression of an act of reasoning is an Argument. We have thus passed to certain qualities of the mind of a higher order, by which man is distinguished from the lower animals, and which constitute him a Reasonable Being. The inferior animals have Sensation and Memoiy, but are devoid of reason and judgment. Therefore it is tlaat language, and its representation by characters, which are in fact the commutation of our perceptions for a significant sound or word communicable to others, is comprehensible by man alone of all animals—Words are the floating cun-ency of the mind, the efficient materials for the perspicuous expression of thought. If the truth of the preceding be admitted, you will estimate at its true value Mr Lowe's sneer at the study of words instead of things in modern education. As well might he reclaim against the use of the symbols in Algebra, or the figures in Geometry in the teaching of these sciences. Sm'ely when he penned his unfortunate contrast between things and words, deliberately giving his preference to the former over the latter,' his eyes must have blinked or been blinded for the time by the flood of light which Philology, so largely developed in our day, is throwing on the past, connecting the pre- sent with it by lineal descent, and in its great modern development 1 T think it will be admitted by all who hear me, that, as we live in a uni- verse of things and not of words, the knowledge of things is more important to us than the knowledge of words.—]jOwe's Address, page 14.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21964579_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
