The mistaken views
of life, which spring from a false application of general ideas, have
afterwards to be corrected by long years of experience; and it is
seldom that they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of
learning are possessed of common-sense, such as is often to be met
with in people who have had no instruction at all.
_To acquire a knowledge of the world_ might be defined as the aim
of all education; and it follows from what I have said that special
stress should be laid upon beginning to acquire this knowledge _at
the right end_. As I have shown, this means, in the main, that the
particular observation of a thing shall precede the general idea of
it; further, that narrow and circumscribed ideas shall come before
ideas of a wide range. It means, therefore, that the whole system of
education shall follow in the steps that must have been taken by the
ideas themselves in the course of their formation. But whenever any of
these steps are skipped or left out, the instruction is defective, and
the ideas obtained are false; and finally, a distorted view of the
world arises, peculiar to the individual himself--a view such as
almost everyone entertains for some time, and most men for as long as
they live.
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