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Python Advanced Programming: The
Guide to Learn Python Programming.
Reference with Exercises and Samples
About Dynamical Programming,
Multithreading, Multiprocessing,
Debugging, Testing and More

Marcus Richards

Published by Marcus Richards, 2024.

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book,
the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for
damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

PYTHON ADVANCED PROGRAMMING: THE GUIDE TO LEARN PYTHON

PROGRAMMING. REFERENCE WITH EXERCISES AND SAMPLES ABOUT
DYNAMICAL PROGRAMMING, MULTITHREADING, MULTIPROCESSING,
DEBUGGING, TESTING AND MORE

First edition. March 19, 2024.

Copyright © 2024 Marcus Richards.

ISBN: 979-8224869794

Written by Marcus Richards.

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Page

Chapter 1: Advanced Programming Techniques

Further Procedural Programming

Branching Using Dictionaries

Generator Expressions and Functions

Chapter 2: Dynamic Code Execution

Dynamic Code Execution

Dynamically Importing Modules

Function and Method Decorators

Function Annotations

Chapter 3: Further Object-Oriented Programming

Controlling Attribute Access

Functors
Context Managers

Descriptors

Class Decorators

Abstract Base Classes

Multiple Inheritance

The metaclass

Chapter 4: Functional-Style Programming

Partial Function Application

Coroutines

Performing Independent Actions on Data

Chapter 5: DEBUGGING, TESTING AND PROFILING

Chapter 6: Debugging

Dealing with Syntax Errors

Dealing with Runtime Errors

Scientific Debugging
Unit Testing

Profiling

Chapter 7: Processes and Threading

Using the Multiprocessing Module

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 CHAPTER 1: ADVANCED PROGRAMMING
TECHNIQUES
In this Chapter we will investigate a wide scope of programming
methodologies and present various extra, consistently further created,
Python etymological structure. Bits of the material in this segment is
very trying, yet recall that the most dynamic techniques are now and
again required and you can commonly skim the primary go through to
get an idea of what should be conceivable and scrutinized even more
circumspectly when the need rises.

The part's first area delves all the more profoundly into Python's
procedural highlights. It begins by telling the best way to utilize what
we previously canvassed in a novel manner, and after that profits to
the topic of generators. The segment at that point presents dynamic
programming—stacking modules by name at runtime and executing
self-assertive code at runtime. The area comes back to the subject of
nearby (settled) capacities, however what's more covers the utilization
of the nonlocal watchword and recursive capacities. Prior we
perceived how to utilize Python's predefined decorators—in this
segment we figure out how to make our own decorators. The area
finishes up with inclusion of annotations.

The second part covers all new material relating to object-oriented

program-ming. It starts by the introduction of __slots__, a mechanism
to minimize the memory used by any object. Then, it shows how to
access object attributes without using its properties.
The section also describes functors, and context managers—these are
used in conjunction with the with keyword, and in many cases (e.g.,
file handling) they can be used to replace try ... except ... finally
constructs with simpler try ... except constructs. The section also
shows how to create custom context managers, and introduces
additional advanced features, including class decorators, abstract base
classes, multiple inheritance, and metaclasses.

The third area intoduces some basic concepts of functional

programming, and presents some valuable functions from the
functools, itertools,and administrator modules. This segment
additionally tells the best way to utilize halfway capacity application to
simplify code, and how to make and utilize co-routines.

This chapter takes everything that we have just covered and

transforms it into the "deluxe Python toolbox", with all the first
instruments (tech-niques and punctuations), in addition to numerous
new ones that can make our programming simpler, shorter, and
increasingly viable. A portion of the devices can have tradable uses,
for instance, a few occupations should be possible utilizing either a
class decorator or a metaclass, while others, for example, descriptors,
can be utilized in various approaches to accomplish various impacts. A
portion of the apparatuses secured here, for instance, setting
supervisors, we will utilize constantly, and others will stay prepared
close by for those specific circumstances for which they are the ideal
arrangement.
 FURTHER PROCEDURAL PROGRAMMING

The majority of this area manages additional facilities relating with

procedural programming and functions, yet the absolute first
subsection is diverse in that it shows a helpful programming system
dependent on what we previously covered without presenting any
new syntax.
 BRANCHING USING DICTIONARIES

As we noted before, functions are items like everything else in Python,

and a function’s name is an object reference that alludes to the
functions. On the off chance that we compose a function’s name
without brackets, Python realizes we mean the reference, and we can
transfer such references around simply like any others. We can utilize
this reality to supplant if proclamations that have loads of elif
provisions with a single function call.

We will obseve an intelligent console called dvds-dbm.py, featuring

the following menu:

(A)dd (E)dit (L)ist (R)emove (I)mport e(X)port (Q)uit

The software has a function that gets the user’s decision and which
will return just a legitimate decision, for this situation one of "an", "e",
"l", "r", "I", "x", and "q". Here are two proportional code pieces for
calling the important functions dependent on the user’s decision:

if action == "a":

add_dvd(db)

elif action == "e":

edit_dvd(db)
elif action == "l":

list_dvds(db)

elif action == "r":

remove_dvd(db)

elif action == "i":

import_(db)

elif action == "x":

export(db)

elif action == "q":

quit(db)
functions = dict(a=add_dvd, e=edit_dvd, l=list_dvds, r=remove_dvd,
i=import_, x=export, q=quit)

functions[action](db)
The decision is held as a one-character string in the activity variable,
and the database to be utilized is held in the db variable. The
import_() function has a trailing underscore to keep it distinct from
the built-in import proclamation.

In the correct hand code piece we make a lexicon whose keys are the
legitimate menu decisions, and whose qualities are function
references. In the second proclamation we recover the function
reference comparing to the given activity and call the function alluded
to utilizing the call administrator, (), and in this model, passing the db
contention. Not exclusively is the code on the right-hand side a lot
shorter than the code on the left, yet in addition it can scale (have
unmistakably more word reference things) without influencing its
performance, dissimilar to one side hand code whose speed relies
upon what number of elifs must be tried to locate the suitable
function to call.

The convert-incidents.py program uses this technique in its import_()

method, as this extract from the method shows:

call = {(".aix", "dom"): self.import_xml_dom,

(".aix", "etree"): self.import_xml_etree,

(".aix", "sax"): self.import_xml_sax,

(".ait", "manual"): self.import_text_manual,

(".ait", "regex"): self.import_text_regex,

(".aib", None): self.import_binary,

(".aip", None): self.import_pickle}

result = call[extension, reader](filename)

The total method is 13 lines in length; the expansion parameter is

processed in the method, and the reader is passed in. The word
reference keys are 2-tuples, and the qualities are methods. On the off
chance that we had utilized if statements, the code would be 22 lines
in length, and would not scale also.
 GENERATOR EXPRESSIONS AND
FUNCTIONS

It is additionally conceivable to make generator expressions. These

are syntactically nearly identical to list comprehensions, the distinction
being that they are encased in paantheses instead of backets. Here
are their syntaxes:

(expression for item in iterable)

(expression for item in iterable if condition)

Here are two equal code bits that show how a simple for ... in loop
containing a yield articulation can be coded as a generator:

def items_in_key_order(d): def items_in_key_order(d):

for key in sorted(d): return ((key, d[key])

yield key, d[key] for key in sorted(d))

Both functions return a generator that produces a list of key–value

items for the given dictionary. If we need all the items in one go we
can pass the generator returned by the
functions to list() or tuple(); otherwise, we can iterate over the
generator to retrieve items as we need them.

Generators give a method for performing languid evaluation, which

implies that they figure just the values that are really required. This
can be more productive than, say, processing an extremely enormous
rundown in one go. A few generators produce the same number of
values as we request—with no upper limit. For instance:

def quarters(next_quarter=0.0):

while True:

yield next_quarter

next_quarter += 0.25

This function will return 0.0, 0.25, 0.5, and so on, forever. Here is how
we could use the generator:

result = []

for x in quarters():

result.append(x)

if x >= 1.0:

break
The break command is useful - without that, the for ... in loop would
never finish!

At the end the result list is [0.0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0].

Each time we call quarters() we get back a generator that starts at

0.0 and increments by 0.25; yet imagine a scenario in which we need
to reset the generator's present value. It is possible to pass a value
into a generator, as this new version of the generator function shows:

def quarters(next_quarter=0.0):

while True:

received = (yield next_quarter)

if received is None:

next_quarter += 0.25

else:

next_quarter = received

The yield expression restores each an incentive to the caller in return.

What's more, if the caller calls the generator's send() technique, the
worth sent is gotten in the generator function as the consequence of
the yield expression. Here is the way we can utilize the new generator
function:

result = []

generator = quarters()

while len(result) < 5:

x = next(generator)

if abs(x - 0.5) < sys.float_info.epsilon:

x = generator.send(1.0)

result.append(x)

We make a variable to allude to the generator and call the implicit

next() function which recovers the next thing from the generator it is
given. (A similar impact can be accomplished by calling the
generator's __next__() unique strategy, for this situation, x =
generator.__next__().) If the worth is equivalent to 0.5 we send the
worth 1.0 into the generator (which quickly yields this value back).
This time the outcome rundown is [0.0, 0.25, 1.0, 1.25, 1.5].

In the following subsection we will audit the enchantment numbers.py

program which procedures files given on the command line. Sadly, the
Windows shell ace gram (cmd.exe) doesn't give trump card
development (likewise called file globing), so if a program is kept
running on Windows with the contention *.*, the strict content "*.*"
will go into the sys.argv list instead of the considerable number of files
in the present directory. We tackle this issue by making two distinctive
get_files() capacities, one for Windows and the other for Unix, the two
of which use generators. Here's the code:

if sys.platform.startswith("win"):

def get_files(names):

for name in names:

if os.path.isfile(name):

yield name

else:

for file in glob.iglob(name):

if not os.path.isfile(file):

continue

yield file

else:
def get_files(names):

return (file for file in names if os.path.isfile(file))

In either case the function is relied upon to be called with a rundown
of filenames, for instance, sys.argv[1:], as its contention.

On Windows the function repeats over every one of the names

recorded. For every filename, the function yields the name, however
for nonfiles (typically indexes), the glob module's glob.iglob() function
is utilized to restore an iterator to the names of the files that the
name speaks to after trump card extension. For a standard name like
autoexec.bat an iterator that produces one thing (the name) is
returned, and for a name that utilizations trump cards like *.txt an
iterator that creates all the coordinating files (for this situation those
with expansion .txt) is returned. (There is likewise a glob.glob()
function that profits a rundown as opposed to an iterator.)

On Linux the shell does special case development for us, so we simply
need to restore a generator for every one of the files whose names
we have been given.

Generator functions can likewise be utilized as co-routines, on the off

chance that we structure them effectively. Co-routines are functions
that can be suspended in mid-execution (at the yield articulation),
trusting that the yield will give an outcome to take a shot at, and once
got they keep processing.
CHAPTER 2: DYNAMIC CODE EXECUTION

In some cases it is easier to write a bit of code that generates the

code we need than to compose the required code legitimately. What's
more, in some contexts it is useful to give users a chance to input
code (for example, functions in a spreadsheet), and to give Python a
chance to execute the entered code for us as opposed to compose a
parser and handle it ourselves—in spite of the fact that executing self-
assertive code like that may be a potential security risk, obviously.
Another case that may need dynamic code execution is to give plug-
ins to broaden a program's usefulness. Using these plugins has one
significant disadvantage: all the necessary usefulness is not
incorporated with the expert gram (which can make the program
increasingly hard to convey and runs the risk of plug-ins getting lost),
however the advantages has that plug-ins can be redesigned
exclusively and can be given separately, perhaps to give
enhancements that were not initially envisaged.
 DYNAMIC CODE EXECUTION

The easiest way to execute an expression is to use the built-in eval()

function. For example:

x = eval("(2 ** 31) - 1")# x == 2147483647

This is fine for user-entered expressions, yet consider the possibility

that we have to make a function progressively. For that we can utilize
the inherent executive() function. For instance, the user might give us
a formula such as 4πr2 and the name “area of sphere”, which they
want turned into a function. Assuming that x will be replaced with
math..pi, the function they want can be created like this:

import math

code = '''

def area_of_sphere(r):

return 4 * math.pi * r ** 2

'''

context = {}

context["math"] = math
exec(code, context)

We should utilize appropriate space—all things considered, the cited

code is standard Python. (In spite of the fact that for this situation we
could have composed everything on a single line in light of the fact
that the suite is only one line.)

On the off chance that exec() is called with some code as its solitary
contention there is no real way to get to any functions or factors that
are made because of the code being executed. Moreover, exec() can't
get to any imported modules or any of the factors, functions, or
different objects that are in degree at the purpose of the call. Both of
these issues can be understood by passing a dictionary as the
subsequent contention. The dictionary gives a spot where object
references can be kept for getting to after the exec() call has wrapped
up. For instance, the utilization of the setting dictionary implies that
after the exec() call, the dictionary has an object reference to the
area_of_sphere() function that was made by exec(). In this model we
required exec() to have the option to get to the math module, so we
embedded a thing into the setting dictionary whose key is the
module's name and whose worth is an object reference to the
comparing module object. This guarantees inside the exec() call,
math.pi is open

Now and again it is advantageous to give the whole worldwide setting

to exec(). This should be possible by passing the dictionary returned
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
process, as are the changing moods of the laughing and crying
woman. The poet always recognizes a dictation from without, and
we hardly think it a figure of speech when we talk of his inspiration.
The mental attitude of the poet while writing, if I may venture to
define it, is that of the “nun, breathless with adoration.” Mental
stillness is the first condition of the listening state; and I think my
friends the poets will recognize that the sense of effort, which is
often felt, accompanies the mental spasm by which the mind is
maintained in a state at once passive to the influx from without, and
active in seizing only that which will serve its purpose.[3] It is not
strange that remembered ideas should often take advantage of the
crowd of thoughts and smuggle themselves in as original. Honest
thinkers are always stealing unconsciously from each other. Our
minds are full of waifs and estrays which we think our own. Innocent
plagiarism turns up everywhere. Our best musical critic tells me that
a few notes of the air of “Shoo Fly” are borrowed from a movement
in one of the magnificent harmonies of Beethoven.
And so the orator—I do not mean the poor slave of a manuscript,
who takes his thought chilled and stiffened from its mould, but the
impassioned speaker who pours it forth as it flows coruscating from
the furnace—the orator only becomes our master at the moment
when he himself is surprised, captured, taken possession of, by a
sudden rush of fresh inspiration. How well we know the flash of the
eye, the thrill of the voice, which are the signature and symbol of
nascent thought—thought just emerging into consciousness, in
which condition, as is the case with the chemist's elements, it has a
combining force at other times wholly unknown!
But we are all more or less improvisators. We all have a double,
who is wiser and better than we are, and who puts thoughts into our
heads and words into our mouths. Do we not all commune with our
own hearts upon our beds? Do we not all divide ourselves and go to
buffets on questions of right or wrong, of wisdom or folly? Who or
what is it that resolves the stately parliament of the day, with all its
forms and conventionalities and pretences, and the great Me
presiding, into the committee of the whole, with Conscience in the
chair, that holds its solemn session through the watches of the
night?
Persons who talk most do not always think most. I question
whether persons who think most—that is, have most conscious
thought pass through their minds—necessarily do most mental work.
The tree that you are sticking in “will be growing when you are
sleeping.” So with every new idea that is planted in a real thinker's
mind: it will be growing when he is least conscious of it. An idea in
the brain is not a legend carved on a marble slab: it is an impression
made on a living tissue, which is the seat of active nutritive
processes. Shall the initials I carved in bark increase from year to
year with the tree? and shall not my recorded thought develop into
new forms and relations with my growing brain? Mr. Webster told
one of our greatest scholars that he had to change the size of his
hat every few years. His head grew larger as his intellect expanded.
Illustrations of this same fact were shown me many years ago by Mr.
Deville, the famous phrenologist, in London. But organic mental
changes may take place in shorter spaces of time. A single night of
sleep has often brought a sober second-thought, which was a
surprise to the hasty conclusion of the day before. Lord Polkommet's
description of the way he prepared himself for a judicial decision is
in point, except for the alcoholic fertilizer he employed in planting his
ideas: “Ye see, I first read a' the pleadings; and then, after letting
them wamble in my wame wi' the toddy two or three days, I gie my
ain interlocutor.”
The problem of memory is closely connected with the question of
the mechanical relation between thought and structure. How
intimate is the alliance of memory with the material condition of the
brain, is shown by the effect of age, of disease, of a blow, of
intoxication. I have known an aged person repeat the same question
five, six, or seven times during the same brief visit. Everybody
knows the archbishop's flavour of apoplexy in the memory as in the
other mental powers. I was once asked to see a woman who had
just been injured in the street. On coming to herself, “Where am I?
What has happened?” she asked. “Knocked down by a horse ma'am;
stunned a little: that is all.” A pause, “while one with moderate haste
might count a hundred,” and then again, “Where am I? What has
happened?”—“Knocked down by a horse, ma'am; stunned a little:
that is all.” Another pause, and the same question again; and so on
during the whole time I was by her. The same tendency to repeat a
question indefinitely has been observed in returning members of
those worshipping assemblies whose favourite hymn is “We Won't
Go Home Till Morning.”
Is memory, then, a material record? Is the brain, like the rocks of
the Sinaitic Valley, written all over with inscriptions left by the long
caravans of thought, as they have passed year after year through its
mysterious recesses?
When we see a distant railway-train sliding by us in the same line,
day after day, we infer the existence of a track which guides it. So,
when some dear old friend begins that story we remember so well;
switching off at the accustomed point of digression; coming to a
dead stop at the puzzling question of chronology; off the track on
the matter of its being first or second cousin of somebody's aunt; set
on it again by the patient, listening wife, who knows it all as she
knows her well-worn wedding-ring—how can we doubt that there is
a track laid down for the story in some permanent disposition of the
thinking-marrow?
I need not say that no microscope can find the tablet inscribed
with the names of early loves, the stains left by tears of sorrow or
contrition, the rent where the thunderbolt of passion has fallen, or
any legible token that such experiences have formed a part of the
life of the mortal, the vacant temple of whose thought it is exploring.
It is only as an inference, aided by illustration which I will presently
offer, that I suggest the possible existence, in the very substance of
the brain-tissue, of those inscriptions which Shakespeare must have
thought of when he wrote—
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain.

The objection to the existence of such a material record—that we

renew our bodies many scores of times and yet retain our earliest
recollections—is entirely met by the fact, that a scar of any kind
holds it own nearly through life in spite of all these same changes,
as we have not far to look to find instances.
It must be remembered that a billion of the starry brain-cells
could be packed in a cubic inch, and that the convolutions contain
one hundred and thirty-four cubic inches, according to the estimate
already given. My illustration is derived from microscopic
photography. I have a glass slide on which there is a minute
photographic picture, which is exactly covered when the head of a
small pin is laid upon it. In that little speck are clearly to be seen, by
a proper magnifying power, the following objects: the Declaration of
Independence, with easily recognized facsimile autographs of all the
signers; the arms of all the original thirteen States; the Capitol at
Washington; and very good portraits of all the Presidents of the
United States, from Washington to Mr. James K. Polk. These objects
are all distinguishable as a group with a power of fifty diameters:
with a power of three hundred any one of them becomes a sizable
picture. You may see, if you will, the majesty of Washington on his
noble features, or the will of Jackson in those hard lines of the long
face crowned with that bristling head of hair in a perpetual state of
electrical divergence and centrifugal self-assertion. Remember that
each of these faces is the record of a life.
Now recollect that there was an interval between the exposure of
the negative in the camera and its development by pouring a wash
over it, when all these pictured objects existed potentially, but
absolutely invisible and incapable of recognition, in a speck of
collodion-film, which a pin's head would cover; and then think what
Alexandrian libraries, what Congressional document loads of
positively intelligible characters—such as one look of the recording
angel would bring out; many of which we can ourselves develop at
will, or which come before our eyes unbidden, like “Mene, Mene,
Tekel, Upharsin”—might be held in those convolutions of the brain
which wrap the talent entrusted to us, too often as the folded napkin
of the slothful servant hid the treasure his master had lent him.
Three facts, so familiar that I need only allude to them, show how
much more is recorded in the memory than we may ever take
cognizance of. The first is the conviction of having been in the same
precise circumstances once or many times before. Dr. Wigan says,
never but once; but such is not my experience. The second is the
panorama of their past lives, said, by people rescued from drowning,
to have flashed before them. I had it once myself, accompanied by
an ignoble ducking and scrambling self-rescue. The third is the
revival of apparently obsolete impressions, of which many strange
cases are related in nervous young women and in dying persons,
and which the story of the dog Argus in the “Odyssey,” and of the
parrot so charmingly told by Campbell, would lead us to suppose not
of rare occurrence in animals. It is possible, therefore, and I have
tried to show that it is not improbable, that memory is a material
record; that the brain is scarred and seamed with infinitesimal
hieroglyphics, as the features are engraved with the traces of
thought and passion. And, if this is so, must not the record, we ask,
perish with the organ? Alas! how often do we see it perish before
the organ!—the mighty satirist tamed into oblivious imbecility; the
great scholar wandering without sense of time or place among his
alcoves, taking his books one by one from the shelves and fondly
patting them; a child once more among his toys, but a child whose
to-morrows come hungry, and not full-handed—come as birds of
prey in the place of the sweet singers of morning. We must all
become as little children if we live long enough; but how blank an
existence the wrinkled infant must carry into the kingdom of heaven,
if the Power that gave him memory does not repeat the miracle by
restoring it!
 FOOTNOTES:

[3]Burns tell us how he composed verses for a given

tune: “My way is, I consider the poetic sentiment
correspondent to my idea of the musical expression; then
choose my theme; begin one stanza. When that is
composed, which is generally the most difficult part of the
business, I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for
objects in Nature that are in unison or harmony with the
cogitations of my fancy, and workings of my bosom;
humming every now and then the air with the verses I
have framed. When I feel my Muse beginning to jade I
retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit
my effusions to paper; swinging at intervals on the hind-
legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own
critical strictures, as my pen goes on.”—“Letters to G.
Thomson,” No. XXXVII.
 MEMORY

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HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D.

[Dr. Maudsley, of London, is an eminent physician and

psychologist. His works include “Body and Mind,” “Body and
Will,” “Responsibility in Mental Disease,” “Pathology of the
Mind,” all published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. From the
work last mentioned the following is part of the chapter on
Memory and Imagination.]

No mental development would be possible without memory, for if

a man possessed it not he would be obliged to begin his conscious
life afresh with each impression made upon him, and would be
incapable of any education. We cannot perhaps better define
memory than, following Locke, as the power which the mind has “to
revive perceptions which it once had with this additional perception
annexed to them, that it has had them before;” in other words, as
the power or process by which that which has been once known is,
when represented to the mind, known as a previous mental
experience, that is, is recognized. When people speak of ideas being
laid up in the memory, they of course speak metaphorically; there is
no such repository in which ideas are stored up, ready to be brought
out when required for use; when an idea which we have once had is
excited again, there is simply a reproduction of the same nervous
current, with the conscious addition that it is a reproduction—it is
the same idea plus the consciousness that it is the same. The
question then suggests itself, What is the physical condition of this
consciousness? What is the modification of the anatomical substrata
of fibres and cells, or of their physiological activity, which is the
occasion of this plus element in the reproduced idea? It may be
supposed that the first activity did leave behind it, when it subsided,
some after-effect, some modification of the nerve element, whereby
the nerve circuit was disposed to fall again readily into the same
action; such disposition appearing in consciousness as recognition or
memory. Memory is, in fact, the conscious phase of this physiological
disposition when it becomes active or discharges its functions on the
recurrence of the particular mental experience. To assist our
conception of what may happen, let us suppose the individual nerve-
elements to be endowed with their own consciousness, and let us
assume them to be, as I have supposed, modified in a certain way
by the first experience; it is hard to conceive that when they fall into
the same action on another occasion they should not recognize or
remember it; for the second action is a reproduction of the first, with
the addition of what it contains from the after-effects of the first. As
we have assumed the process to be conscious, this reproduction
with its addition would be a memory or remembrance.
Psychology affords us not the least help in this matter, for in
describing memory as a faculty of the mind or the conservative
faculty it does no more than present us with a name in place of our
explanation. But we do get nearer realities when we go down to the
organic aptitude which, in consequence of an action, there is to the
recurrence of a similar action on another occasion. And physiology
presents us with many illustrations of such organized aptitudes.
Take, for example, the education of our movements: a designed
movement is performed at first slowly and clumsily, and it is only by
giving great pains to it and frequently repeating it that we acquire
the skill to perform it easily and quickly; the aptitude thereto being
at last so completely organized in the proper nervous centres that it
may be performed without consciousness on our part, quite
automatically. Thus it appears that memory in this case becomes
less conscious as it becomes more complete, until, when it has
reached its greatest perfection and is performed with the most
facility, it is entirely unconscious. After which, if we are psychologists
who are content to rest in words and forbear to pursue the facts
which they denote, we must cease to speak of it as memory: it has
become custom, or habit, or automatism. But if we go beneath
words to the property of the motor nerve-centres whereby they
react in a definite way to impressions made upon them, organically
register their experience, and so acquire by education their special
faculties, we perceive that we have not to do in the higher nerve-
centres with fundamentally different properties of nerve element,
but with different functions which depend upon the same
fundamental property. Substitute the highest nerve-centres for the
motor nerve-centres, and the complex idea for the complex
movement, and what has been said of the latter is strictly true of the
former; the idea, like the movement, is accompanied with less
consciousness the more completely it is organized, and when it has
been completely organized it takes its part automatically in our
mental operations, being performed, as a habitual movement is
performed, automatically. The physiological condition of memory is,
then, the organic process by which nerve-experiences in the
different centres are registered; and to recollect is to revive these
experiences in the highest centres, the functions of which are
attended with consciousness—to stimulate, by external or internal
causes, their residua, aptitudes, dispositions, or whatever else we
may choose to call them, into functional activity. Stimulated from
without, they constitute recognition, that is, cognition with memory
of former cognition; stimulated from within, they constitute
recollection.
It must be borne in mind, as Dr. Darwin remarked many years
ago, that in dealing with memory we have to do not with laws of
light, but with laws of life, and that the misleading notion of images
or ideas of objects being stored up in the mind has been derived
from our experience of the action of light upon the retina. If we
would understand the laws of organization in the highest nerve-
centres, we shall certainly do well to study organic processes
generally; it would be not less absurd to attempt to understand the
higher processes without giving attention to the lower, than it would
be to attempt to build a house without taking pains to lay its
foundations securely. It is a plain matter of observation that other
organic elements besides nervous elements perpetuate impressions
made upon them, which they may accordingly in a certain sense be
said to remember; the virus of smallpox, for example, makes an
impression upon all the elements of the body, which they never lose,
although it becomes fainter with the lapse of time; in some unknown
way it modifies their constitution so that ever afterwards their
susceptibilities are changed. The scar which is left after the healing
of a wound in a child's finger keeps the same relative proportion to
the finger through life, growing as it grows; for the elements of the
new tissue not only renew themselves particle by particle, and thus
perpetuate it, but they extend it in relation with the growth of the
surrounding parts. We need not brave the fire of psychological scorn
by calling this retention of impressions memory, or care greatly what
it is called, so long as due heed is given to the fact; but we may be
permitted to perceive in it the same physiological process which, in
the cortical [outer] layers of the cerebral [brain's] hemispheres, is
the condition of memory, and of habit in thought. Moreover, it may
be fairly demanded of the psychologists that they be consistent, and
that they no longer use the word memory to denote those mental
processes which have been so completely organized that they take
place without consciousness; if it be wrong, as they profess, to
assume or imply an unconscious memory, it must be still more
wrong to assume or imply an unconscious consciousness, as they
sometimes do.
In any case, the foregoing considerations cannot fail to show how
misleading it is to look upon perceptions as mere pictures of nature,
and upon the mind as a vast canvas on which they are cunningly
painted; the real process is one of organization, and it is rightly
conceivable only by the aid of ideas derived from the observation of
organic development—namely, the fundamental ideas of Assimilation
of the like and Differentiation of the unlike. Nowhere is it more
necessary than in the study of memory to apprehend clearly that
what we call mind is the function of a mental organization; for
thereby we get rid at once of many empty discussions which have
been carried on without definite result; as, for example, whether
memory is a knowledge of the past, or a knowledge of the present
with a belief of the past, and the like. Moreover, this conception of a
mental organization is indispensable to the explanation of the
manifold varieties of partial or general loss of memory which are
produced by injury, disease and decay of brain; for memory is good
or bad according to bodily states, is impaired in various ways by
disease, decays with the decay of structure in old age, and is
extinguished with the extinction of life in the brain.
From of old two kinds of memory have been distinguished,
according as the object remembered occurs to the mind
spontaneously, or is voluntarily sought for; the former being known
as memory proper, the latter as recollection. It is certain that we do
recognize this difference, which common language attests, between
that which is revived without any effort, and that which we
endeavour to recover by an effort; and that men differ much, by
virtue of natural capacities, both in memory and in power of
recollection. No doubt much of the difference in both cases is due to
the degree of attention which is given to the subject when it is first
presented to the mind, but this will not account satisfactorily for all
the difference which is observed; some persons being able to repeat
with great ease a row of figures, a number of dates, or several lines
of poetry, after reading them over once, while others fail to do so
with equal success after reading them over many times.
Extraordinary instances have been recorded of this exactness of
memory for details reaching back to the earliest periods of life. I
have seen an imbecile in the Earlswood Asylum for idiots who can
repeat accurately a page or more of any book which he has read
years before, even though it was a book which he did not
understand in the least; and I once saw an epileptic youth, morally
imbecile, who would, shutting his eyes, repeat a leading article in a
newspaper word for word, after reading it once. This kind of
memory, in which the person seems to read a photographic copy of
former impressions with his mind's eye, is not indeed commonly
associated with great intellectual power; for what reason I know not,
unless it be that the mind to which it belongs is prevented by the
very excellence of its power of apprehending and recalling separate
facts from rising to that discernment of their higher relations which
is involved in reasoning and judgment, and so stays in a function
which should be the foundation of its further development; or that,
being by some natural defect prevented from rising to the higher
sphere of comprehension of relations, it applies all its energies to the
apprehension of details. Certainly one runs some risk, by overloading
the memory of a child with details, of arresting the development of
the mental powers: stereotyping details on the brain, we prevent
that further development of it which consists in rising from concrete
perception to conception of relations. However, it must be allowed
that there have been a few remarkable instances of extraordinary
men who have combined a wonderful memory for details with the
possession of the highest intellectual powers.
If we now proceed to examine closely the nature of recollection, it
will be found that the difference between it and simple memory is
not fundamentally so great as appears on the surface. When we
voluntarily try hard to remember something which has been
forgotten, and succeed in the end, the actual revival is done
unconsciously and, as it were, spontaneously; for it is plain that if
we were conscious of what we want we should not need to recollect
it, inasmuch as it would already be in possession; and it is
furthermore plain that a definite act of volition recalling it must imply
a consciousness of it, inasmuch as it is impossible to will what we
are not conscious of. Arbitrary recollection by an act of will is
therefore nonsense. What we really do when we try to recollect is to
apply attention to words or ideas which have, in our past
experience, accidental or essential relations to, or associations with,
the forgotten word or idea, voluntarily to keep these ideas active by
making them consciousness and to trust to their power of awakening
into activity that which it is desired to recall; indeed, it is notorious
that the best way of succeeding is, having held the related ideas
energetically in attention for a time, to allow the thoughts to pass to
other things, when the lost idea will, after a longer or shorter time—
sometimes indeed after days—recur to the mind. The actual process
of reproduction is therefore one of simple or spontaneous memory;
we prepare the way for it by stimulating into action the related
ideas, but we positively interfere with its success if, by continuing to
keep them in attention, we do not permit them to do their work
spontaneously; the reason of this being that we thereby hinder the
propagation of their activity to other nerve-circuits. We shall
understand this the better if we realize that consciousness is the
result of a certain activity of idea, not driven to it, but drawn by it,
and get rid of the metaphysical notion that it is some mysterious
power which we direct voluntarily to the idea in order to make it
active.
It will not be amiss, before passing from this subject, to take note
of and to ponder that certainty which, in trying to recollect
something, we have of our possession of what we are thus striving
to gain consciously, though we are not conscious what it is. We have
the clearest conviction that, although we have forgotten it, we still
have it and may recover it. How comes it to pass that we are so sure
of the existence of that of which we are not conscious? In the first
place, it would appear to supply an argument in support of the
theory that something has been left behind in the nerve-circuit
ministering to the forgotten idea, in other words, retained by it,
which differentiates it from other nerve-circuits, disposes it to a
repetition of its former activity, and produces the conviction of a
latent possession, even when it is not active, or at any rate not
active enough to awaken consciousness. In the second place, it must
be remembered that the forgotten idea had associations with other
ideas, which are really part of its meaning; it may well be, therefore,
that when these are active and occupy the attention, while it
remains inactive and below the horizon of consciousness, there is a
tendency or sort of effort to reopen the former paths of association,
in order to their completeness—to make the circuit, so to speak; and
that it is the consciousness of this tendency or effort which gives rise
to the certainty which we have of something forgotten. Certain it is,
that when a stimulus excites one of two movements which have
taken place together or in succession on former occasions, there is a
tendency, when the stimulus is powerful or continued, to the
reproduction of the associated movement; there is a diffusion of the
stimulus along the accustomed path to the associated motor centres,
and a union of movements is the result. A piece of poetry which has
been thoroughly learnt may be repeated mechanically, as a tune
may be whistled, when the proper verbal movements have been
once started; indeed, the repetition in such case is most successful
when consciousness is not too much occupied with it; for it
frequently happens, if we think about the words which we are
repeating, we become uncertain and forget, and are obliged, in
order to succeed, to begin again and allow the succession of
movements to go on automatically. We impede the operation of the
spontaneous memory, upon which we really depend, when, by
maintaining the activity of a word in consciousness as attention, we
hinder the propagation thereof to the associated nerve-circuits.
When a person who is conscious of an idea is striving to revive a
related idea which he has forgotten, he presents an example of
memory in the making; for he is striving to revive the yet incomplete
organic union between them, which was the result of the original
apprehension of their relations, and which, when complete, will
cause the one idea to recall the other instantly and without the least
effort, just as a single sensation of an object at once revives the
cluster of sensations which are combined in the perception of it. The
process of intellectual development consists in the mental
organization of related ideas, as internal representatives of external
relations in nature, and in making this organization so complete that
a number of associated ideas shall act like a single idea, being
combined into a complex product and recalled instantly and without
conscious effort, just as a complex movement is. Then the memory
is so complete that we must cease to call it memory, because it is
unconscious. In fact, spontaneous recollection is at an end when
involuntary memory begins, and involuntary memory merges
gradually into a reproduction of former mental experiences which is
as completely automatic as the habitual movements of our daily life.
And well it may be; for the same organic property of nerve element
—indeed, I might say, the same fundamental property of
organization—is at the bottom of both.
Thus much concerning the nature and function of memory. Upon
its basis rests the possibility of mental development, in which there
are, as we have already seen, the organic registration of the simple
ideas of the senses; the assimilation of the like in ideas which takes
place in the production or evolution of general ideas; the
assimilation, of the properties common to two or more general ideas
into an abstract idea; the special organization or differentiation, or
discrimination, of unlike ideas; the organic combination of the ideas
derived from the different senses into one complex idea, with the
further manifold combinations of complex ideas into what Hartley
called duplex ideas. In fact, no limit is assignable to the complexity
of combinations which may go to the formation of a compound idea.
Take, for example, the idea of the universe. But how comes it to
pass that a new imaginative creation of the mind, to which nothing
in nature answers, is effected? By the same process fundamentally
as that by which our general and abstract ideas are formed. For
when we consider the matter, it appears that there are no actual
outside existences answering to our most abstract ideas, which are,
therefore, so far new creations of the mind; in their formation there
is a blending or coalescence of the like relations in two concrete
ideas—the development of a concept, there is, as it were, an
extraction of the essential out of the particular, a sublimation of the
concrete; and, by the creation of a new world in which these
essential ideas supersede the concrete ideas, the power of the mind
is most largely extended. Now, although there are no concrete
objects in nature answering to these abstract ideas, yet these are
none the less, when rightly formed, valid and real subjective
existences expressing or signifying the essential relations of things,
as the flower which crowns development expresses the essential
nature of the plant. Thus it is that we rise from the idea of a
particular man to the general idea of man, and from that to the
abstract idea of virtue as a quality of man; so that for the future we
can make use of the abstract idea in all our reasoning, without being
compelled to make continual reference to the concrete. Herein, be it
remembered again, we have a process corresponding with that
which ministers to the production of our motor intuitions; the
acquired faculty of certain co-ordinate movements by means of
which complicated acts are automatically performed, and we are
able to do, almost in the twinkling of an eye, what would cost hours
of labour were we compelled on each occasion to go deliberately
through the process of special adaptation, is the equivalent, on the
motor side, of the general idea by which so much time and labour
are saved in reasoning: in both cases there is an internal
development in accordance with fundamental laws, and the
organized result is, as every new phase of development is, a new
creation. Creation is not by fits and starts, but it is continuous in
nature.
 COMMON SENSE

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WILLIAM BOYD CARPENTER, M.D.

[Dr. Carpenter was one of the leading men of science in the

generation which has recently passed away. He was a physician
and psychologist of mark, and withal a geographer of erudition
and extensive travel. His famous work, “Principles of Mental
Physiology,” is published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. Its
eleventh chapter, minus a few paragraphs, is here presented.]

There are two principal forms of common sense which it is

desirable clearly to distinguish. The first is what the philosopher
means by common sense, when he attributes to it the formation of
those original convictions or ultimate beliefs, which cannot be
resolved into simpler elements, and which are accepted by every
normally constituted human being as direct cognitions of his own
mental states. It might, indeed, be maintained that this necessary
acceptance of propositions which only need to be intelligibly stated
to command unhesitating and universal assent, cannot rightly be
termed an act of judgment. But just as sense-perceptions, which are
intuitive in the lower animals, have been acquired in man by a
process of self-education in the earliest stages, in which acts of
judgment are continually called for, so may we regard the autocratic
deliverances of the universal common sense of mankind as really
having, in the first instance, the characters of true judgments, each
expressing the general resultant of uniform experience,—which may
be partly of the individual, and partly that of the race embodied in
the constitution of each member of it.
The second or popular acceptance of the term common sense, on
the other hand, is that of an attribute which judges of things whose
self-evidence is not equally apparent to every individual, but
presents itself to different individuals in very different degrees,
according in part to the original constitution of each, and in part to
the range of his experience and degree in which he has profited by
it. This is the form of common sense by which we are mainly guided
in the ordinary affairs of life: but inasmuch as we no longer find its
deliverances in uniform accordance, but encounter continual
divergences of judgment as to what things are self-evident,—some
being so to A whilst they are not so to B, and others being self-
evident to B which are not so to A,—it cannot be trusted as an
autocratic or infallible authority. And yet, as Dr. Reid truly says,
“disputes very often terminate in an appeal to common sense;” this
being especially the case, when to doubt its judgment would be
ridiculous.
If the view here taken be correct, these two forms—which may be
designated respectively as elementary and as ordinary common
sense—have fundamentally the same basis; and we may further
connect with them as having a similar genesis, those special forms
of common sense, which are the attributes of such as have applied
themselves in a scientific spirit to any particular course of inquiry,—
things coming to be perfectly self-evident to men of such special
culture, which ordinary men, or men whose special culture has lain
in a different direction, do not apprehend as such.
The judgment of common sense as to any self-evident truth, may
be defined as the immediate or instinctive response that is given (in
psychological language) by the automatic action of the mind, or (in
physiological language) by the reflex-action of the brain to any
question which can be answered by such a direct appeal. The nature
and value of that response will depend upon the acquired condition
of the mind, or of the brain, at the time it is given; that condition
being the general resultant of the whole psychical activity of the
individual. The particular form of that activity is determined, as we
have seen, in the first place, by his original constitution; secondly, by
the influences which have been early brought to bear upon it from
without; and thirdly, by his own power of self-direction. And it may
be said that while the elementary form of common sense depends
mainly upon the first of these factors, its ordinary form chiefly arises
out of the first and second, and its special forms almost exclusively
out of the third;—the response being given, in each case, by a
nervous mechanism, in the organization of which the generalized
results of the past experiences of consciousness (whether of the
race or of the individual) have become embodied.
The parallel between the cerebral action which furnishes the
mechanism of thought now under consideration, and the action of
the sensori-motor apparatus which furnishes the mechanism of
sense and motion, is extremely close. We have seen that there are
certain sense-perceptions, which, although not absolutely intuitive,
very early come to possess—in every normally constituted human
being—the immediateness and perfection of those corresponding
perceptions which are intuitive in the lower animals; and that with
these are associated certain respondent motions, which, though
acquired by practice in the first instance, ultimately come to be
performed as by a second nature. Certain of these motions, such as
walking erect, are universally acquired; and thus obviously come to
be the expressions of the original endowments of the mechanism,
trained by an experience very similar in the uniformity of its
character to that which educates the elementary form of common
sense. For it must be clear to any one who compares the erect
progression of a child who has just learned to walk, with that of a
dancing dog or even of a chimpanzee, that while experience makes
its acquirement possible in each case, only an organism which is at
the same time structurally adapted for erect progression and
possessed of a special co-ordinating faculty, can turn such
experience to full account. The balancing the body in the erect
position at starting, the maintenance of that balance by a new
adjustment of the centre of gravity as the base of support is shifted
from side to side and from behind forwards, and the alternate lifting
and advance of the legs, involve the harmonious co-operation of
almost all the muscles in the body. Although this co-operation is
brought about in the first instance by the purposive direction of our
efforts towards a given end, under the guidance of our visual and
muscular sensations, yet when we have once learned to walk erect,
we find ourselves able to maintain our balance without any exertion
of which we are conscious; all that is necessary for the performance
of this movement being that a certain stimulus (volitional, or some
other) shall call the mechanism into activity.—But further, we have
seen that special powers of sense-perception can be acquired by the
habitual direction of the attention to particular classes of objects;
and that special movements come to be the secondarily automatic
expression of them. How nearly related these are to the preceding,
we may assure ourselves by attending to the process by which an
adult learns to walk on a narrow base, such as a rope or the edge of
a plank. For the co-ordinating action has here to be gone through
afresh under altered and more special conditions, so as to give a
greater development to the balancing power; yet when this has
been fully acquired, it is exerted automatically with such an
immediateness and perfection, that a Blondin can cross Niagara on
his rope with no more danger of falling into the torrent beneath,
than any ordinary man would experience if walking without side-rails
along the broad platform of the suspension bridge which spans it.
Now since in those cases in which man acquires powers that are
original or intuitive in the lower animals, there is the strongest
reason for believing that a mechanism forms itself in him which is
equivalent to that congenitally possessed by them, we seem fully
justified in the belief that in those more special forms of activity
which are the result of prolonged training, the sensori-motor
apparatus grows to the mode in which it is habitually exercised, so
as to become fit for the immediate execution of the mandate it
receives: it being often found to act not only without intelligent
direction, but without any consciousness of exertion, in immediate
response to some particular kind of stimulus,—just as an automaton
that executes one motion when a certain spring is touched, will
execute a very different one when set going in some other way.
There is strong analogical ground, then, for the belief that the
higher part of the nervous mechanism which is concerned in
psychical action, will follow the same law; embodying the
generalized result of its experiences, so as to become able to evolve,
by a direct response, a result of which the attainment originally
required the intervention of the conscious mind at several
intermediate stages of the process. What there is strong ground for
believing in regard to the perceptional consciousness, may fairly be
extended to the ideational, which is so intimately connected to it,
the unconscious co-ordinating action, which in the former case
brings the whole experience to bear upon the question, whilst the
decisions of the latter are based upon a limited, and therefore one-
sided, view of it,—the defect of judgment being due either to an
original want of the co-ordinating power, or to disuse of the exercise
of it through the limitation of the attention to special fields of study.
It may often be noticed that children display a power of bringing
common sense to bear upon the ordinary affairs of life, which seems
much beyond that of their elders; and yet a very sensible child will
often grow into a much less sensible man. Now the reason of this
seems to be, that the child perceives the application of self-evident
considerations to the case at issue, without being embarrassed by a
number of other considerations (perhaps of a trivial or conventional
nature) which distract the attention and unduly influence the
judgment of the adult. And the deliverances of a child's common
sense thus often resemble those of the old court fools, or jesters,
whose function seems to have been to speak out home truths which
timid courtiers would not venture to utter. Moreover, as has been
well remarked, “it is quite possible for minds of limited power to
manage a small range of experience much better than a large, to get
confused (as it were) with resources on too great a scale, and
therefore to show far more common sense within the comparatively
limited field of childish experience, than in the greater world of
society or public life. This is probably the explanation of a thing
often seen,—how very sagacious people instinctively shrink from a
field which their tact tells them is too large for them to manage, and
keep to one where they are really supreme.”
Now, in so far as our conscious mental activity is under the
direction of our will, we can improve this form of common sense, as
to both its range and the trustworthiness of its judgments, by
appropriate training. Such training, as regards the purely intellectual
aspect of common sense, will consist in the determinate culture of
the habit of honestly seeking for truth,—dismissing prejudice, setting
aside self-interest, searching out all that can be urged on each side
of the question at issue, endeavouring to assign to every fact and
argument its real value, and then weighing the two aggregates
against each other with judicial impartiality. For in proportion to the
steadiness with which this course is volitionally pursued, must be its
effectiveness in shaping the mechanism whose automatic action
constitutes the unconscious thinking, of which the results express
themselves in our common-sense judgments.
The ordinary common sense of mankind, disciplined and enlarged
by an appropriate culture, becomes one of the most valuable
instruments of scientific inquiry; affording in many instances the best
and sometimes the only basis for a rational conclusion. A typical
case, in which no special knowledge is required, is afforded by the
flint implements of the Abbeville and Amiens gravel beds. No logical
proof can be adduced that the peculiar shapes of these flints were
given to them by human hands; but no unprejudiced person who
has examined them now doubts it.
The evidence of design to which, after an examination of one or
two such specimens, we should only be justified in attaching a
probable value, derives an irresistible cogency from accumulation.
On the other hand, the improbability that these flints acquired their
peculiar shape by accident, becomes to our minds greater and
greater as more and more such specimens are found; until at last
this hypothesis, although it cannot be directly disproved, is felt to be
almost inconceivable, except by minds previously possessed by the
dominant idea of the modern origin of man. And thus what was in
the first instance a matter of discussion, has now become one of
those self-evident propositions, which claim the unhesitating assent
of all whose opinion on the subject is entitled to the least weight.
We proceed upwards, however, from such questions as the
common sense of mankind generally is competent to decide, to
those in which special knowledge is required to give value to the
judgment; and here we must distinguish between those departments
of inquiry in which scientific conclusions are arrived at by a process
of strict reasoning, and those in which they partake of the nature of
common sense judgments.
Of the former class we have a typical example in mathematics,
and in those exact sciences which make use of mathematics as their
instrument of proof; but even in these, it is common sense which
affords not only the basis, but the materials of the fabric. For while
the axioms of geometry are self-evident truths which not only do not
require proof, but are not capable of being proved in all their
universality, every step of a demonstration is an assertion of which
our acceptance depends on our incapability of conceiving either the
contrary or anything else than the thing asserted. And thus the
certain assurance of the proof felt by every person capable of
understanding a mathematical demonstration, depends upon the
conclusive self-evidence of each step of it. But we not unfrequently
meet with individuals, not deficient in ordinary common sense, who
cannot be brought to see this self-evidence; whilst, on the other
hand, the advanced mathematician, when adventuring into new
paths of inquiry, is able to take a great deal for granted as self-
evident, which at an earlier stage of his researches would not have
so presented itself to his mind. The deliverances of this acquired
intuition can in most cases be readily justified by the reasoning
process which they have anticipated. But the genius of a
mathematician—that is, his special aptitude developed by special
culture—will occasionally enable him to divine a truth, of which,
though he may be able to prove it experientially, neither he nor any
other can at the time furnish a logical demonstration. In this divining
power we have clear evidence of the existence of a capacity which
cannot be accounted for by the mere co-ordination of antecedent
experiences, whether of the individual or of the race; and yet, as
already shown, such co-ordination has furnished the stimulus to its
development.
Of those departments of science, on the other hand, in which our
conclusions rest (like those of ordinary common sense) not on any
one set of experiences, but upon our unconscious co-ordination of
the whole aggregate of our experiences,—not on the conclusiveness
of any one train of reasoning, but on the convergence of all our lines
of thought towards one centre,—geology may be taken as a typical
example. For this inquiry brings (as it were) into one focus, the light
afforded by a great variety of studies,—physical and chemical,
geographical and biological; and throws it on the pages of that great
stone book in which the past history of our globe is recorded. And its
real progress dates from the time when that common sense method
of interpretation came to be generally adopted, which consists in
seeking the explanation of past changes in the forces at present in
operation, instead of invoking (as the older geologists were wont to
do) the aid of extraordinary and mysterious agencies.
Of the adequacy of common sense to arrive at a decisive
judgment under the guidance of the convergence just indicated, we
have a good example in the following occurrence:—A man having
had his pocket picked of a purse, and the suspected thief having
been taken with a purse upon him, the loser was asked if he could
swear to it as his property. This he could not do; but as he was able
to name not only the precise sum which the purse contained, but
also the pieces of money of which that sum consisted, the jury
unhesitatingly assigned to him the ownership of the purse and its
contents. A mathematician could have calculated, from the number
of coins, what were the chances against the correctness of a mere
guess; but no such calculation could have added to the assurance
afforded by common sense, that the man who could tell not only the
number of coins in the purse, but the value of each one of them,
must have been its possessor.
Familiar instances of the like formation of a basis of judgment by
the unconscious co-ordination of experiences, will be found in many
occurrences of daily life; in which the effect of special training
manifests itself in the formation of decisions, that are not the less to
be trusted because they do not rest on assignable reasons:—Thus, a
literary man, who has acquired by culture the art of writing correctly
and forcibly, without having ever formally studied either grammar,
the logical analysis of sentences, or the artifices of rhetoric, will
continually feel in criticizing his own writings or those of others, that
there is something faulty in style or construction, and may be able to
furnish the required correction, whilst altogether unable to say in
what the passage is wrong, or why his amendment sets it right. Or,
to pass into an entirely different sphere, a practised detective will
often arrive, by a sort of divination, at a conviction of the guilt or
innocence of a suspected person, which ultimately turns out to be
correct; and yet he could not convey to another any adequate
reasons for his assurance, which depends upon the impression made
upon his mind by minute details of look, tone, gesture, or manner,
which have little or no significance to ordinary observers, but which
his specially cultured common sense instinctively apprehends.
But in the ordinary affairs of life, our common sense judgments
are so largely influenced by the emotional part of our nature—our
individual likes and dislikes, the predominance of our selfish or of
our benevolent affections, and so on,—that their value will still more
essentially depend upon the earnestness and persistency of our self-
direction towards the right.[4] The more faithfully, strictly, and
perseveringly we try to disentangle ourselves from all selfish aims,
all conscious prejudices, the more shall we find ourselves
progressively emancipated from those unconscious prejudices, which
cling around us as results of early misdirection and habits of thought
and which (having become embodied in our organization) are more
dangerous than those against which we knowingly put ourselves on
guard. And so, in proportion to the degree in which we habituate
ourselves to try every question by first principles, rather than by the
supposed dictates of a temporary expediency, will the mechanism of
our unconscious thinking form itself in accordance with those
principles, so often as to evolve results which satisfy both ourselves
and others with their self-evident truthfulness and rectitude. It has
been well remarked by a man of large experience of human nature
and action, that the habitual determination to do the right thing,
marvellously clears the judgment as to matters purely intellectual or
prudential, having in themselves no moral bearing.
Of this we have a good illustration in the advice which an eminent
and experienced judge (the story is told of Lord Mansfield) is said to
have given to a younger friend, newly appointed to a colonial
judgeship:—“Never give reasons for your decisions; your judgments
will very probably be right, but your reasons will almost certainly be
wrong.” The meaning of this may be taken to be:—“Your legal
instinct, or specially trained common sense, based on your general
knowledge of law, guided by your honesty of intention, will very
probably lead you to correct conclusions; but your knowledge of the
technicalities of law is not sufficient to enable you to give reasons for
these conclusions, which shall bear the test of hostile scrutiny.”
But further, in any of those complicated questions that are pretty
sure to come before us all at some time or other in our lives,—as to
which there is a great deal to be said on both sides; in which it is
difficult to say what is prudent and even what is right; in which it is
not duty and inclination that are at issue, but one set of duties and
inclinations at issue with another,—experience justifies the
conclusion to which science seems to point, that the habitually well-
regulated mind forms its surest judgment by trusting to the
automatic guidance of its common sense; just as a rider who has
lost his road is more likely to find his way home by dropping the
reins on his horse's neck, than by continuing to jerk them to this
side or that in the vain search for it. For continued argument and
discussion, in which the feelings are excited on one side, provoke
antagonistic feelings on the other; and no true balance can be struck
until all these adventitious influences have ceased to operate. When
all the considerations which ought to be taken into the account have
been once brought fully before the mind, it is far better to leave
them to arrange themselves, by turning the conscious activity of the
mind into some other direction, or by giving it a complete repose. If
adequate time be given for this unconscious co-ordination, which is
especially necessary when the feelings have been strongly and
deeply moved, we find, when we bring the question again under
consideration, that the direction in which the mind gravitates is a
safer guide than any judgment formed when we are fresh from its
discussion.
Not only may the range and value of such common sense
judgments be increased by appropriate culture in the individual, for,
of all parts of our higher nature, the aptitude for forming them is
probably that which is most capable of being transmitted
hereditarily; so that the descendant of a well-educated ancestry
constitutionally possesses in it much higher measure than the
progeny of any savage race. And it seems to be in virtue of this
automatic co-ordination of the elements of judgment, rather than of
any process of conscious ratiocination, that the race, like the
individual, emancipates itself from early prejudices, gets rid of worn-
out beliefs, and learns to look at things as they are, rather than as
they have been traditionally represented. This is what is really
expressed by the progress of rationalism. For although that progress
undoubtedly depends in great part upon the more general diffusion
of knowledge and the higher culture of those intellectual powers
which are exercised in the acquirement of it, yet this alone would be
of little avail, if the self-discipline thus exerted did not act
downwards in improving the mechanism that evolves the self-
evident material of our reasoning processes, as well as upwards in
more highly elaborating their product. If we examine, for instance,
the history of the decline of the belief in witchcraft, we find that it
was not killed by discussion, but perished of neglect. The common
sense of the best part of mankind has come to be ashamed of ever
having put any faith in things whose absurdity now appears self-
evident; no discussion of evidence once regarded as convincing is
any longer needed; and it is only among those of our hereditarily
uneducated population, whose general intelligence is about on a par
with that of a Hottentot or an Esquimaux, that we any longer find
such faith entertained.
There is, in fact, a sort of under-current, not of actually formed
opinion, but of tendency to the formation of opinions, in certain
directions, which bursts every now and then to the surface;
exhibiting a latent preparedness in the public mind to look at great
questions in a new point of view, which leads to most striking results
when adequately guided. That “the hour is come—and the man” is
what history continually reproduces; neither can do anything
effectively without the other. But a great idea thrown out by a mind
in advance of its age, takes root and germinates in secret, shapes
the unconscious thought of a few individuals of the next generation,
is by them diffused still more widely, and thus silently matures itself
in the womb of time, until it comes forth, like Minerva, in full panoply
of power.
Those who are able to look back with intelligent retrospect over
the political history of the last half-century and who witness the now
general pervasion of the public mind by truths which it accepts as
self-evident, and by moral principles which it regards as beyond
dispute, can scarcely realize to themselves the fact that within their
own recollection the fearless assertors of those truths and principles
were scoffed at as visionaries or reviled as destructives. And those
whose experience is limited to a more recent period, must see, in
the rapid development of public opinion on subjects of the highest
importance, the evidence of a previous unconscious preparedness,
which may be believed to consist mainly in the higher development
and more general diffusion of that automatic co-ordinating power,
which constitutes the essence of reason as distinct from reasoning.
Thus, then, every course of intellectual and moral self-discipline,
steadily and honestly pursued, tends not merely to clear the mental
vision of the individual, but to ennoble the race; by helping to
develop that intuitive power, which arises in the first instance from
the embodiment in the human constitution of the general resultants
of antecedent experience, but which, in its highest form, far
transcends the experience that has furnished the materials for its
evolution,—just as the creative power of imagination shapes out
conceptions which no merely constructive skill could devise.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Note by Editor. Sir Henry Taylor in “The Statesman”

says:—
“If there be in the character not only sense and
soundness, but virtue of a high order, then, however little
appearance there may be of talent, a certain portion of
wisdom may be relied upon almost implicitly. For the
correspondencies of wisdom and goodness are manifold;
and that they will accompany each other is to be inferred,
not only because men's wisdom makes them good, but
also because their goodness makes them wise. Questions
of right and wrong are a perpetual exercise of the faculties
of those who are solicitous as to the right and wrong of
what they do and see; and a deep interest of the heart in
these questions carries with it a deeper cultivation of the
understanding than can be easily effected by any other
excitement to intellectual activity.”
 A LIBERAL EDUCATION

Top

PROFESSOR T. H. HUXLEY

[In 1868 Professor Huxley delivered an address to the South

London Workingmen's College, part of which follows. The
address appears in full in the third volume of the author's
essays, published by D. Appleton & Co., New York.]

What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a

thoroughly liberal education?—of that education which, if we could
begin life again, we would give ourselves—of that education which,
if we could mould the fates to our own will, we would give our
children? Well, I know not what may be your conceptions upon this
matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our views
are not very discrepant.
Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every
one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his losing or
winning a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider
it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and moves of the
pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the
means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we
should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the
father who allowed his son, or the State which allowed its members,
to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight?
Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of
those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing
something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and
complicated than chess? It is a game which has been played for
untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two
players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world,
the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game
are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is
hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and
patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a
mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man
who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of
overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in
strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated—without haste, but
without remorse.
My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in
which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his
soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong
angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than
win—and I should accept it as an image of human life.
Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this
mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the
intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not
merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the
fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving
desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education
means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to
call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to
stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force
of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side.
 It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such
thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that
an adult man, in the full vigour of his faculties, could be suddenly
placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to
do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not
five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the
ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be
at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow
degrees the man would receive an education which, if narrow, would
be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there
would be no extras and very few accomplishments.
And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still,
an Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral
phenomena, would be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with
which all others would seem but faint shadows, would spring from
the new relations. Happiness and sorrow would take the place of the
coarser monitors, pleasure and pain; but conduct would still be
shaped by the observation of the natural consequences of actions;
or, in other words, by the laws of the nature of man.
To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to
Adam. And then, long before we were susceptible of any other
modes of instruction, Nature took us in hand, and every minute of
waking life brought its educational influence, shaping our actions
into rough accordance with Nature's laws, so that we might not be
ended untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak of
this process of education as past for any one, be he as old as he
may. For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day,
and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.
And Nature is still continuing her patient education of us in that
great university, the universe, of which we are all members.
Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the
laws which govern men and things and obey them, are the really
great and successful men in this world. The great mass of mankind
are the “Poll,” who pick up just enough to get through without much
discredit. Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you
can't come up again. Nature's pluck means extermination.
Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as
Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and
passed long ago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is
harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as
wilful disobedience—incapacity meets with the same punishment as
crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the
blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out
why your ears are boxed.
The object of what we commonly call education—that education
in which man intervenes and which I shall distinguish as artificial
education—is to make good these defects in Nature's methods; to
prepare the child to receive Nature's education, neither incapably
nor ignorantly, nor with wilful disobedience; and to understand the
preliminary symptoms of her pleasure, without waiting for the box
on the ear. In short, all artificial education ought to be an
anticipation of natural education. And a liberal education is an
artificial education which has not only prepared a man to escape the
great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to
appreciate and to seize upon the rewards, which Nature scatters
with as free a hand as her penalties.
That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so
trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and
does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is
capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its
parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a
steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work and spin the
gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is
stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of
Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted
ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to
come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience;
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