Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

288 MIEMORY.
peculiarity, that all easy things are dificult to me, and on the
other hand, all difficult things are easy."]
Upon this very remarkable expression with respect to himself,
it were to be wished that Leibnitz had enlarged a little more
fully. The only interpretation I call put upon it is, that he felt
a certain degree of dificzulty necessary to rouse his intellectual
faculties to action; and that, in consequence of this circumstance,
(combined probably with a consciousness of his own powers,)
he was inferior to the common run of mankind in some of those
easy acquisitions which are within the reach of all. The case,
I apprehend, is not a singular one; as we often meet with men
of the most splendid talents, who are deficient, to a ludicrous
degree, in some of the most simple and mechanical branches of
school education. I shall only mention, as examples, the art of
penmanship, and the still more important one, of arithmetical
computation; in both of which, (though from different causes,)
the progress of the student is retarded rather than aided by an
extraordinary degree of quickness and of intellectual capacity;
and in which, accordingly, men of genius may be expected t6
fall below the general standard, unless in those cases where they
have had the good fortune to be carefully trained to the practice
of them in their childhood, or very early youth. All such
acquisitions (it may be here observed by the way,) should, on
this account, be rendered by habit a second nature, before the
powers of reason and reflection have attained such a degree of
strength as to render the task of the learner irksome to himself, by presenting more interesting objects to his curiosity.
The art of reading, in particular, may be taught to infants by
any person of common sense, by a process almost as insensible
as the use of speech.
The foregoing quotation from Leibnitz brings to my recollection a fragment of Montesquieu, which affords a memorable
proof of the difficulty which men of superior minds frequently
experience in acquiring a ready and practical knowledge of
those trifling and uninteresting details, which are treasured up
without any effort by those to whose understandings they are
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