"PICKING UP" KNOWLEDGE.
TN replying to one of the most stupid questions ever put in the House of Commons, Mr. Mundella was reported to have said that he had never seen the National Reformer. Whether he had or had not, is .no great matter, and perhaps -what he really said was that he had not seen a particular amber of it. That periodical may, we presume, be called Mr. Bradlaugh's organ, and if to look into it now and then is an ,easy way of catching the tone of the muscular school of Seen- larists, it seems worth while for a public man to know some- thing about it. Who can know too much ? In the August number of the Contemporary Review, Professor Plumptre quali- fies, in a foot-note, a statement he had made in the text about -the respectful tone of the more recent anti-Christian advocacy, the qualification being evidently founded upon a little late study of the class of periodicals to which the National Reformer belongs. One is always being reminded by something like this of good Dr. Watts's simple-hearted counsel in his book on logic, namely, that you should store your mind with facts of all kinds, in order to be able to find middle terms for your syllo- gisms. Who, we repeat, can know too much ?
Bat this question suggests another. How can everybody know everything ? And we may observe, in fact, everybody -does not know everything. It came out, upon the Labouchere- Lawson trial, that Lord Chief Justice Coleridge had never heard -of Mr. Corney Grain. His livelier predecessor frequently betrayed a somewhat surprising ignorance of things that were, so to speak, in the air. Mr. Carlyle, who was very fond of
referring to Morison's pills, never succeeded in spelling the name correctly. It may be noted, when a distinguished man dies, that the funeral sermons are, many of them, full of blunders,—not mere mistakes, such as anyone might make, but downright bad shots, which show that the preachers did not know how to take aim. These prove ignorance, but they often prove besides that, on account of some irreceptivity of mind, true knowledge was impossible to the speakers; they have " crammed " all of a sudden, and have shown the texture of their faculties in doing so. The Judges are, as a rule, wonder- ful fellows, but, in spite of the peculiar habit of " cram " which belongs to barristers, they sometimes fail in their estimates of men and things, for want of what might be roughly de- scribed as picked-up knowledga. Not long ago, Mr. Glad- stone admitted that he did not know what spruce beer and mum were. Most of us knew what spruce beer was, and journal- ists have, perhaps, more picked-up knowledge than any other class ; but it is to be suspected that there was much searching of heart and turning over of cyclopsedias, before the world was informed, in those buoyant short leaders of the next day, what mum was. Spruce is, or was in, say, the days of old Weller, supposed to be wholesome to drink, and good for cats and coughs, and it was and is sold in all public-houses ; but as to mum, would Whewell himself have known what it was ?
It is easy to see that the gift of taking in knowledge as you go along is a very different thing from that of cramming, or of study in the higher and better sense. It goes rather with " mooning " than with application and inquiry, though, of course, not with stupidity. It is different from the gift, natural or acquired, which Houdin the conjuror possessed, and conveyed to his son by a process which he has in a well-known stock quotation described. And though it goes with "mooning," it by no means follows that all who take life easily should have it, if they own in addition a certain amount of ability. For example, Lord Palmerston did not possess this gift. He would certainly have known what spruce beer was, but some of his speeches displayed just the sort of ineptitude that never exists along with the kind of receptivity we mean, and his pensioning poet Close stamped the ultimate character of his mind. If a man has the faculty in question, it does not matter how busy he is, or whether he is a great minister or a mere clerk—whether he dwells in marble balls or in small lodgings—somehow or other, he knows things, and puts them together.
The disciples of Gall and Spurzheim used to have much to say upon what they called the organs of Individuality and Eventuality, and they were fond of quoting, as an illustration,. Dame Quickly's appeal to Falstaff:—" Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor; thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. Caust thou deny it ? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me Gossip Quickly ?' coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar, telling us she had a good dish of prawns ; whereby thou didst desire to eat some ; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound." Here we have a mass of small observation and combination, of a kind which is essentially feminine ; and women, of all degrees and forms of capacity, may have Dame Quickly's gift. Indeed, we constantly hear that women are more quick to observe than men. But more quick to observe what ? Discursive receptivity is not specially a faculty of women ; they have, fortunately, less of it than men. Nor have they, in general, the scientific recep- tivity, or faculty of observing and combining, which stands at the pole opposite to theirs. Making every allowance for the peculiarities of the lives led by most of them, we find that, with all their faculty of observation and their sensitiveness of temperament, they are not remarkable for picking up miscellaneous facts. Nor are scientific men, nor administrators, if you take them off their beat. Nay, adminis- trators and high officials are often curiously ignorant of matters on their beat, and just for want of this very gift of miscellaneous receptivity. There is many a lively journalist, with half the brain-force of, say, Colonel Henderson or Sir William Harcourt who could tell either of them things on his own line which he would get on all the better for knowing.
Discursive receptivity of mind does not imply any incapacity for special studies, or serious energetic pursuits, of whatever kind—with, perhaps, one exception, namely, that of studies or
pursuits in which mach has to be done before you come to the region of intellectual clues,—such, for instance, as chemistry or geology. For the end contemplated by Dr. Watts, it is necessarily a great help. Where it exists, there must, of course, be an incessant, spontaneons curiosity—a thing which is very different from restlessness or inquisitiveness, or the tendency which -a, servant who objected to her mistress's visits to the kitchen, would call "poking noses into every- thing." This ever-mindful, spontaneous curiosity is, in truth, a very difficult thing to describe, because there is no effort and no method about it ; it is simply like a gift of scent, which cannot be laid to sleep, and which is a pleasure to its possessor. Whether it would be correct criticism or analysis to say that we must add a quick memory, is not obvious. As it does not involve what is called inquisitiveness, so it does not involve suspiciousness ; and yet there must be a sensitive feel- ing—a sort of hankering for the something else that every piece of knowledge suggests ; the new thing known comes with a clue attached,—how is it possible to stop without taking up that clue, and following it to the something else ? Whether it is of present or any consequence, or not, is of no matter. If per- sons of this sort of faculty—insatiable spontaneous curiosity, a gift of catching at clues, a memory that takes in everything (whether it looks useful or not) and keeps it—could be utilised as assessors in any of the great departments of human labour, the result would be at least enlivening. Perhaps, also, some of the decisions given in the Law Courts would be more just, and some of the clauses in Acts of Parliament less ignorantly silly. But, of course, it would be difficult so to manage a competitive examination as to make sure of the best men. Very recondite questions are put to candidates, but the information required for answering them is often of a kind which does not fall into the lap of a discursive receptivity ; and there is not an examiner in the country who would think the worse of a man for having read the Times all his life without finding out Who Mr. Corney Grain was, or who would pluck him for not knowing that mum is a beer made in Brunswick.
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