(2) But the most encyclopedic acquaintance with facts, or even with principles, is not enough; training to think accurately, to reason logically, so as to arrive at valid conclusions and be able to discriminate sound from unsound arguments in others, is vitally necessary.  With new and intricate problems continually confronting us, we need the temper that observes with exactness, and without prejudice or passion, that judges truly, that thinks clearly, and forms independent convictions.  There has been in our educational system an overemphasis on the acquirement of facts, a natural result of our modern dependence upon books; too much is accepted on authority, too little thought out at first hand.  We must “banish the idolatry of knowledge,” as Ruskin exhorted, and “realize that calling out thought and strengthening the mind are an entirely different and higher process from the putting in of knowledge and the heaping up of facts.”  We have many well-informed scholars to one clear and reliable thinker; the world is full of books, widely read and applauded, in which the trained mind detects false premises, fallacious reasoning, unwarranted conclusions.  When the public is really educated, these superficially plausible arguments will not be heeded, these appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the reader will not be tolerated; a stricter standard of logic will be demanded, and we shall be by so much the nearer a solution of our perplexing problems.[Footnote:  This mental training can be given not merely by a specific course in logic, but by an insistence on exactness and the critical spirit in every study.  It is particularly easy to cultivate this temper in scientific study.  So Karl Pearson, for example, pleads for more science in our schools:  “It is the want of impersonal judgment, of scientific method, and of accurate insight into facts, a want largely due to a non-scientific training, which renders clear thinking so rare, and random and irresponsible judgments so common in the mass of our citizens today.”  (Grammar of Science, Introductory.) Cf.  Emerson, “Education,” in Lectures and Biographies:  “It is better to teach the child arithmetic and Latin grammar than rhetoric or moral philosophy, because they require exactitude of performance; it is made certain that the lesson is mastered, and that power of performance is worth more than the knowledge.”  There is in our modern get-knowledge-easy methods a grave danger of letting the child absorb wisdom so comfortably, so almost unconsciously, that its wits shall not be sharpened to grapple with fallacies, to refute specious arguments, and to find their way through a chaos of facts to a correct conclusion.  By way of contrast with these pleas for science, the student should read Arnold’s argument for the superiority of literature, in the address on “Literature and Science” included in Discourses in America.] We may include under our ideal of clear thought, the ability to use clearly and efficiently the language