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 ...

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views of others; not from any defect in their power of apprehension, but because they cannot adopt opinions which they
have not examined; and because their attention is often seduced by their own speculations.
It is not merely in the acquisition of knowledge, that a man
of genius is likely to find himself surpassed by others; he has
commonly his information much less at command, than those
who are possessed of an inferior degree of originality; and,
what is somewhat remarkable, he has it least of all at command
on those subjects on which he has found his invention most fertile. Sir Isaac Newton, as we are told by Dr. Pemberton, was
often at a loss, when the conversation turned on his own discoveries. It is probable that they made but a slight impression on
his mind, and that a consciousness of his inventive powers prevented him from taking much pains to treasure them up in his
Memory. Men of little ingenuity seldom forget the ideas they
acquire; because they know, that, when an occasion occurs for
applying their knowledge to use, they must trust to AMemory and
not to invention. Explain an arithmetical rule to a person of
common understanding, who is unacquainted with the principles
of the science; he will soon get the rule by heart, and become
dexterous in the application of it. Another, of more ingenuity,
will examine the principle of the rule before he applies it to
use, and will scarcely take the trouble to commit to Memory a
process which he knows he can, at any time, with a little reflection, recover. The consequence will be, that, in the practice
of calculation, he will appear more slow and hesitating, than if
he followed the received rules of arithmetic without reflection
or reasoning.
Prompt recollection may be mistaken for readiness of apprehension. - Something of the same kind happens every day in
conversation. By far the greater part of the opinions we announce in it, are not the immediate result of reasoning on the
spot, but have been previously formed in the closet, or, perhaps,
have been adopted implicitly on the authority of others. The
promptitude, therefore, with which a man decides in ordinary
discourse, is not a certain test of the quickness of his appres