James Beattie — a remark

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“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”

Advocating education that cultivates independent judgment rather than mere accumulation of others' ideas · Elements of Moral Science

About James Beattie

James Beattie

25 October 1735–18 August 1803

James Beattie, born on 25 October 1735 and dead on 18 August 1803, occupied an unusual and revealing place in eighteenth-century British culture. He was at once a Scottish professor, a poet of landscape and sensibility, a popular moral philosopher, a Christian apologist, a music lover, a man of sociable ambition, and…

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