Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450, by Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450
Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852

Author: Various

Editor: William Chambers
Robert Chambers

Release Date: July 27, 2007 [EBook #22161]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

No. 450. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._

HINTS ON THE USEFUL-KNOWLEDGE MOVEMENT.

The advocates of the diffusion of useful knowledge among the great
body of the people, found one of their greatest difficulties to lie in
an inability on the part of the people themselves to see what benefit
they were to derive from the knowledge proposed to be imparted. This
knowledge consisted of such a huge mass of facts of all kinds, that
few could overcome a sense of hopelessness as attending every
endeavour to acquire it. Take botany alone, it was said. You have a
hundred thousand species of plants to become acquainted with--to learn
their names, and to what genera and orders they belong, besides
everything like a knowledge of their habitats, their properties, and
their physiology. Seeing that this is but one of the sciences, there
might well be a pause before admitting that the moral and intellectual
regeneration of our people was to be brought about by the
useful-knowledge movement.

There was here, however, a mistake on both hands, and one which we are
only now beginning to appreciate. It was not observed at first, that
there is a great distinction to be drawn between the relations of
science to its cultivators or investigators, and those which it bears
to the community at large. It is most important that a scientific
zoologist like Mr Waterhouse, or a profound physiologist like
Professor Owen, should determine and describe every