A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

‘Quick as Thought.’––The influence of his rationalistic philosophy is by no means confined to those who read this author’s great works, or even to those who read his manual on education. ‘Quick as thought’ is a common phrase, but it would be interesting to know how quick thought is, to have any measure for the intensity, vitality, and velocity of an idea, for the rate of its progress in the world. One would like to know how soon an idea, conceived in the study, becomes the common property of the man in the street, who regards it as his own possession, and knows nothing of its source. We have no such measures; but there is hardly a home, of even the lowest stage of culture, where this theory of education has not been either consciously adopted or rejected, though the particular parents in question may never have heard of the philosopher. An idea, once launched, is ‘in the air,’ so we say. As is said of the Holy Spirit, we know not whence it comes, nor whither it goes.