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 ...

326 IIEMOPR Y.
at first disgusting, which presents to it a chaos of facts apparently unconnected with each other. But this love of arrangement, if united with persevering industry, will at last conquer
every difficulty; will introduce order into what seemed, on a
superficial view, a mass of confusion, and reduce the dry and
uninteresting detail of positive statutes into a system comparatively luminous and beautiful.
The observation, I believe, may be made more general, and
may be applied to every science in which there is a great nmultiplicity of facts to be remembered. A man destitute of genius
may, with little effort, treasure up in his memory a number of
particulars in chemistry or natural history, which he refers to
no principle, and from which he deduces no conclusion; and
from his facility in acquiring this stock of information, may
flatter himself with the belief -that he possesses a natural taste
for these branches of knowledge. But they who are really
destined to extend the boundaries of science, when they first
enter on new pursuits, feel their attention distracted, and their
Memory overloaded, with facts among which they can trace no
relation, and are sometimes apt to despair entirely of their future progress. In due time, however, their superiority appears,
and arises in part from that very dissatisfaction which they at
first experienced, and which does not cease to stimulate their
inquiries, till they are enabled to trace, amidst a chaos of apparently unconnected materials, that simplicity and beauty
which always characterize the operations of nature.
Inconveniences experienced by men of genius. - There are,
besides, other circumstances which retard the progress of a man
of genius, when lie enters on a new pursuit, and which sometimes render him apparently inferior to those who are possessed
of ordinary capacity. A want of curiosity and of invention
facilitates greatly the acquisition of knowledge. It renders the
mind passive in receiving the ideas of' others, and saves all the
time which might be employed in examining their foundation,
or in tracing their consequences. They who are possessed of
much acuteness and originality, enter with difficulty into the,