The first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay; and though whatever capacity of this sort I attained was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments of this drilling. I am persuaded that nothing, in modern education, tends so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing to it; for in mathematical processes, none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur.

When we consider the positive evil caused to the disqualified half of the human race by their disqualification - first in the loss of the most inspiriting and …

The Benthamic standard of 'the greatest happiness' was that which I had always been taught to apply; I was even familiar with an abstract discussion of it, for…

What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptor…

Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

Education: 'Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than filling it with the accumulated misconceptions of the…

I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions …