[Faraday frequently acknowledged the importance of Isaac Watts's mid-eighteenth-century handbook for self-improvers for his own views on mental discipline and the development of the faculties. In the year before the essay-circle was launched, indeed, he described The Improvement of the Mind as a book ‘no person ought to be without.’Watts provided his readers with the outline of a system by which fairly modest materials could be made to yield lasting results; he emphasized the vital importance of method in all aspects of self-education, particularly in reading. Like most eighteenth- and even nineteenth-century commentators on the matter, he saw indiscriminate or superficial reading as a waste of time and likely to weaken the mental faculties. Faraday, who was always anxious to make his time as productive as possible, practised a number of Watts's precepts during the 1810s and 1820s, including keeping a commonplace book; and the Faraday biographer, L. Pearce Williams, suggests that the formation of the essay-circle itself was in response to Watts's favouring discussion groups.]

Part I: ‘Introduction’

No man is obliged to learn and know every thing; this can neither be sought nor required, for it is utterly impossible: yet all persons are under some obligation to improve their own understanding; otherwise it will be a barren desert, or a forest overgrown with weeds and brambles. Universal ignorance or infinite errors will overspread the mind, which is utterly neglected, and lies without any cultivation.

Skill in the sciences is indeed the business and profession but of a small part of mankind; but there are many others placed in such an exalted rank in the world, as allows them much leisure and large opportunities to cultivate their reason, and to beautify and enrich their minds with various knowledge. Even the lower orders of men have particular callings in life, wherein they ought to acquire a just degree of skill; and this is not to be done well without thinking and reasoning about them.