Hard Times (Charles Dickens)

and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted

in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything

else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals

upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service

to them. This is the principle upon which I bring up

my own children, and this is the principle on which I

bring up these children. Stick to Facts, Sir!"

With these opening words of the novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens introduces us to the character and philosophy of Thomas Gradgrind, a prosperous retired merchant and (by his own lights, at any rate) public-spirited philanthropist, whose rigidity and narrow-mindedness make him the villain of the novel. In the passage quoted, Gradgrind is setting forth the principles he wishes followed in the school he has established.

A few pages later, we see an example of the educational program he has in mind. Girl Number Twenty (Cecilia, or Sissy, Jupe) is asked to give a definition of a horse. She is utterly flummoxed by the demand, and before she can even attempt a reply she is silenced: "'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr. Gradgrind.... 'Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals'" (Dickens, 1984, p. 5). We are then treated to Mr. Gradgrind's ideal of a student well-informed about the subject of horses, a boy named Bitzer:

"Quadruped. Graminiverous. Forty teet

. . .
to the Emperor Napoleon, Cuvier argued that: Our natural sciences are only the facts brought together, our theories only formulas which embrace a great number of them [facts]. And by a necessary consequence, the smallest well-observed fact ought to be gathered, if it is new, since it can modify our best accredited theories. (Appel, 1987, p. 47) By not-unreasonable extension, in terms of this view, we might suppose that even "the smallest well-observed fact ought to be" taught, so that the first specific that Bitzer provides in his recitation of facts about horses is a description of their teeth. Now, the emphasis on fact perhaps had some historical justification as a reaction to the somewhat reckless theorizing that had too frequently characterized science in earlier periods, when "systems," to use the eighteenth-century word, not infrequently ran so far beyond the facts available to support them that they ceased to have any serious analytical or predictive value. But in his emphasis upon facts--which concealed, as suggested above, many unacknowledged theoretical assumptions--Cuvier swayed much too far in the other direction, and thus cut himself (and a generation of French naturalists, who were subjected to his ac
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Napoleon Cuvier, Dickens' Gradgrind, Origin Species, City Hall, Hard Times, Shakespeare Dickens, Girl Twenty, Baron Cuvier, Darwin Wallace, Sissy Jupe, wise 1990, appel 1987, dickens 1984, natural selection, nineteenth-century science, evolution natural, evolution natural selection, hard times, wise 1990 234, girl twenty, origin species, charles dickens, darwin wallace 1858,
Approximate Word count = 1805
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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