How to Observe: Morals and Manners

How to Observe.
Morals and Manners. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU
Hélas! où donc chercher, où trouver le bonheur? ——Nulle part tout entier, partout avec mesure.
Voltaire.
Opening my journal-book, and dipping my pen in my ink-horn, I determined, as far as I could, to justify myself and my countrymen in wandering over the face of the earth. Rogers.
LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO. 22, LUDGATE STREET. 1838.
LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
The best mode of exciting the love of observation is by teaching 'How to Observe.' With this end it was originally intended to produce, in one or two volumes, a series of hints for travellers and students, calling their attention to the points necessary for inquiry or observation in the different branches of Geology, Natural History, Agriculture, the Fine Arts, General Statistics, and Social Manners. On consideration, however, it was determined somewhat to extend the plan, and to separate the great divisions of the field of observation, so that those whose tastes led them to one particular branch of inquiry might not be encumbered with other parts in which they do not feel an equal interest.
The preceding passage is contained in the notice accompanying the first work in this series—Geology, by Mr. De la Bèche, published in 1835. Thus, the second work in the series is in continuation of the plan above announced.
Inest sua gratia parvis.
Les petites choses n'ont de valeur que de la part de ceux qui peuvent s'élever aux grandes. —De Jouy.
There is no department of inquiry in which it is not full as easy to miss truth as to find it, even when the materials from which truth is to be drawn are actually present to our senses. A child does not catch a gold fish in water at the first trial, however good his eyes may be, and however clear the water; knowledge and method are necessary to enable him to take what is actually before his eyes and under his hand. So it is with all who fish in a strange element for the truth which is living and moving there: the powers of observation must be trained, and habits of method in arranging the materials presented to the eye must be acquired before the student possesses the requisites for understanding what he contemplates.