Johnson has, however, observed:
'But the truth is that the knowledge of external nature and the
sciences, which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the
great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide
for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing,
the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and
wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and
with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by
events the reasonableness of opinions.[16] Prudence and justice are
virtues and excellences of all times, and of all places--we are
perpetually moralists; but we are geometricians only by chance. Our
intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations
upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. Physiological learning is
of such rare emergence, that one may know another half his life,
without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or
astromony; but his moral and prudential character immediately
appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that
supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and
most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served
by poets, orators, and historians' (_Life of Milton_).
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