V. A fifth point is the proportion of book-reading to Observation of the facts at first hand.  From want of opportunity, or from disinclination, many persons have all their information on certain subjects cast in the bookish mould, and do not fully conceive the particular facts as these strike the mind in their own character.  A reader of History, with no experience of affairs, is likely to have imperfect bookish notions; just as a man of affairs, not a reader, is subject to narrowness of another kind.  It was remarked by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, that the German historians of the Athenian Democracy write like men that never had any actual experience of popular assemblies.  A lawyer must be equally versed in principles and in cases as heard in court:  this is a type of knowledge generally.  In the Natural History Sciences, observation and reading go hand in hand from the first.  In the science of the Human Mind, there are general doctrines, contrived to embrace the world of mental phenomena:  the student may have to begin with these, and work upon them exclusively for a time, but in the end, phenomena must be independently viewed by him in their naked character, as exhibited directly in his own mind, and inferentially in the minds of those that fall under his observation.  Book knowledge of Disease has to be coupled with bed-side knowledge; neither will take the place of the other.

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VI.  I began by limiting the meaning of study to the reading of books, and have reviewed the various points in the economy of this process.  The other means of attaining, enlarging, deepening our knowledge, namely, Observation of facts, Conversation, Disputation, Composition, have each an art of its own—­especially Disputation, which has long been reduced to rule.  Observation also admits of specific directions, but, in stating the necessity of combining observation with book theories and descriptions, I have assumed the knowledge of how to observe.

[AIDS OF CONVERSATION AND COMPOSITION.]

Of all the adjuncts of study, none is so familiar, so available, and, on the whole, so helpful, as Conversation.  The authors of Guides to Students, as Isaac Watts, give elaborate rules for carrying on conversation, a good many of them being more moral than intellectual; but an art of conversation would be very difficult to formulate; it would take quite as long an essay as I have devoted to study, and even then would not follow half of the windings of the subject.  The only notice of it that my plan requires, is such as I have already bestowed upon Observation:  namely, to point out the advantage of combining a certain amount of reading with, conversation; a thing that almost everybody does according to their opportunities.  To rehearse what we have read to some willing and sympathizing listener, is the best way of impressing the memory and of clearing up difficulties to the understanding.  It brings in the social stimulus,