Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1888-11-17

tain Subjects Due Only to Siothfal
Habits.

We doubt if ever thoughtful English
men, apart always from a limited class Of
experienced and observant teachers, are
at all aware of the extent to which many
men and more women are swayed by
what is really nothing but mental lazi-
ness says the London Spectator. Mum
bers of them positively will not apply
their minds at all. prefcrring any conse-
sequences which may result from ignor-
ance, and emerge from school as
ignorant as fishes, while still larger
classes, possibly even a majority, betray
the same impulse as regards particular
subjects. Men are constantly heard Ia
affirm in confidential moments
that they literally cannot &C
quire this or that ordinary branch
of knowledge, while they DO learn at the
very same time things much more diff
ticult, and requiring precisely the same
kind of mental capacities. Hundreds of
men will profess positive inability to
learn the commonest facts relating TO any
science but their own, ven when their
own is kindred TO the one discussed;
while thousands of women will calculate
accurately all the Measurement necessary
for a dress, a really difficult process if ac-
curacy is to be attained, and then declare
unblushingly that they cannot, no they
cannot understand rule-0f-three, or cal
culate Mr.. Goschen's interest in their
own fortunes. Half the men in the world
who are not sensitive to music think il
an impossibility for them to learn
TO read musical notation; and we
have heard a man, not without power Of
reasoning and with q special aptitude for
mental arithmetic, declare that a thous-
and years of tuition would not enablehim
to comprehend aquadratic equation. In
deed il is one Of the phenomena Of men.
tai l~aziness that it often reveals itself in
its actual form in the naturally able, and
that it is the reasoner who is most dauntcd
by a particular set Of s~yollogIsms, not one
whit more difficult than those he has al
ready mastered. The inability is no,
positive, but only relative, aud is pro
duccd either by what W. call want OF
interest in the subject, which may be
either instructive or natural, or by a sense
of pain in the effort, that, like the pain 10
the arms in swimming, can be overcome
only by frequent and continuous
practice. If the necessity is peremptory,
the inability speedily disappears, and
that often in a way which at once indi-
Gates its source. 1t does not disappear
gradually; it lasts, apparently, as in
superably as ever, up to a detinable mo-
ment; and then, presto.it is gone never to
return. The truth 10, enough has been
learned to awaken unconsciously tho
faculty of attention, or, in other words
to take away the pain Of it, and then thu
natural power has its full swing. Tha
is, we believe the unvarying eXperienc,
of every man who learns chess-whicl
no man ever forgot-and Of all except tn
few with natural bent who stud,
any abstract science whatsoever. Ii
men possessed of the natural bent,
there is, of course, no l~aziness, becaus
there is no sense Of pain; they learn with
out effort p%erceptible to themselves, a
the savage learns the wilderness o
natural facts necessary TO enable him [,
hunt or fish for food with success. 4
savage never knows anything about tn,
forest'--cxcept the myriad Of minute in
dications necessary TO tell him where t,
find the great maggots which he eats. II,
is compelled &c learn that, and his men
tai laZiness, therefore, does not stop hin
as it would if Sir j. Lubbock were to tr,
to teach him the anatomy Of n leaf. HI
could learn that anatomy If il were equal
ly essential TO his existence.