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Let them alone. We

obstinacy which cannot be broken. reverently adopt the language of scripture; they are joined unto idols, let them alone. If efforts are more judiciously directed, a better race will succeed them. It seems a strange project, indeed, in our plans for benevolent exertion, to leave out of account a whole race, and that race too, with which we happen to be contemporary. But among the endless generations, which throng the earth, and will continue to do it, a single one does not bear a large proportion to the whole. And it is correct to reason upon this subject, as if we ourselves were to live forever, while others could attain only to the common age of man.

We have digressed a little from our purpose, but by so doing we have intimated the wide bearing, which any improvement in conducting the education of the young would have; and that those who are engaged in reforming the morals and religion of the world, or in other words, in sending christianity to the inhabitants of the whole earth, would be among the first to derive advantage from them, in accomplishing their benevolent designs.

A more energetic system of public instruction, and as a branch of such a system, more skilful teachers have long been needed; and moreover, the whole community are beginning to be sensible of it. It has become a public want, and unless the ordinary laws of nature are suspended or reversed in this case, the supply will in due time be forthcoming by some means and from some quarter. In order to give the public more skilful teachers, the science of education must be made the ground of a more distinct profession. And why should it not be so. While the number of inhabitants in the United States is doubling once in twenty-five years, and especially while so small a part of this vast increase is by immigration, a large proportion of the whole. population must be of that age, when the chief concern in regard to them should be to prepare them for the successful discharge of their duties as members of a civilized society and as citizens of a free government. We cannot speak with confidence in regard to the southern and western sections of our country; but in New England and in some of the Middle States, it is a moderate estimate, and probably much below the truth, to state that four persons are on an average employed in the instruction of youth to one in preaching the gospel, and that exclusive of all domestic and private instruction. The number of public teachers, therefore, male and female, employed, on an average will probably be found nearly equal to that of all the other professions. When we estimate in this connexion the influence of early edu

cation upon the future character, it seems to us that the view of the subject must arrest the attention not only of those who would promote our greatest moral and intellectual improvement, but of those whose duty it is to provide for the permanence and stabilty of our political institutions.

It may be new to some of our readers to hear the subject of education spoken of as a science. And we must confess that we apply the term to it, rather in consideration of what it should be, than of what it really is, or is understood to be even by some who have paid most attention to it. But is it incredible, or even improbable, that a new science may yet be disclosed? The searching spirit which has gone forth, has developed within a few years several new sciences, which before were almost unknown; or were made up of a few scattered facts, and those not systematically arranged or reduced to any general principles. Among these we might name chemistry, geology, and political economy. These are all sciences which are found to have important bearings upon the interests of society; and all sciences which now engross a liberal share of the public attention. And even these may be again subdivided, and others spring out of them which do not now exist even in the imagination of men.

So we believe it will be with education as a branch of moral and intellectual philosophy. There is a whole science wrapped up in that mysterious little thing, the infant mind, which has never been developed ;—a science, too, which will have a stronger influence upon the condition and prospects of men than any other. We say stronger, because it relates to that part of ourselves, which is susceptible of the highest, perhaps of indefinite improvement, at a period in our lives when every bias is soonest and most permanently felt; and because it has for its object to call forth in their natural order, and put in healthy and vigorous action, all those intellectual powers, that constitute the very instruments with which we must proceed to accomplish whatever is within the reach of man.

Moral philosophy has been studied, reduced to principles, and inculcated in all systems of public instruction; but it only teaches men their duty and the reasons of it. We have a moral nature and moral feelings, which are susceptible of influence, development, and direction, by a series of means, before we can reason upon them ourselves. This is the field for the moral philosophy of education. It opens almost with our existence, and extends through all the stages of childhood and youth, till our intellectual faculties are so far developed as to enable us to excite, suppress,

and control our feelings and regulate our actions with reference to distant motives. Then we may begin to study moral philosophy; before that time, we must act from motives, placed before us by those who control our education, without being able to comprehend the ultimate tendency or the reason of our actions. And his moral education is most perfect, whose feelings and habits are so formed, that he needs not to change them, when his reason comes to decide upon their fitness with reference to his being's end and aim. The skill of the instructer, therefore, in this department of education, consists in comprehending the temperament and disposition of his pupil, and in addressing those motives only to him, which will induce such actions as he approves, and lead to the formation of such habits as he wishes to establish. If this view of the subject be correct, we think it must occur to every one, that there are several stages in the development of our moral nature, and the formation of our moral character, which have never been subjected to a sufficiently minute and rigid examination. General principles in the moral education of youth must be established like all other general principles, by a regular process of induction. And in order to this, a great variety of particular cases must occur, and a great many discriminating observations must be made; or in other words, we must have at hand large experience either of our own, or of those upon whose observations we may safely rely. With sufficient materials for philosophy, or the facts of the case, we know not why we may not establish general principles upon this subject as well as upon any other of a similar nature. And when they are so established they must be of incalculable utility to those of slight experience in the management and government of youth; and such there must always be, while men attain only to three score and ten.

Metaphysicians have analyzed the human mind often enough, and, perhaps, minutely enough; but it has been the mind in a state of maturity. This class of philosophers always open their subject, and vindicate its claims to extraordinary dignity, by saying that the materials to be analyzed, and the instruments to be employed upon them, are all within themselves. So indeed they And for that very reason they describe only those faculties and those operations, of which no one can be conscious, whose mind is not yet in the same advanced stage of development. But there is a series of years, and important years, in our education, of the intellectual operations peculiar to which, we can in manhood have no recollection, and of which we can

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form no adequate conceptions by reference to the operations of a mature mind under similar circumstances. Neither can children, at the early age of which we speak, describe the operations of their own minds so as to throw much light upon the subject. Whatever we learn, therefore, of their intellectual habits we must learn by means very different from those we employ afterwards, when their minds can take cognizance of their own operations and describe them intelligibly to others. Here then, although the instruments of observation, to use the language of metaphysicians, are within the philosopher, the subject of upon which they are to be employed, or the materials to be analyzed, are not. And this important circumstance constitutes a difference between the subject of metaphysics as it has usually been understood and defined, and the new branch of it, which, we contend, is abo it to be developed. We suppose nature proceeds by uniform laws in the development of the mind as well as in every thing else. What then are these laws, and how shall we trace them? These seem to our mind to be questions of the deepest interest to mankind, although they are not very easily answered. The analogy between the processes carried on in the infant and a mature mind, as we have before intimated, is not so close as to afford us much assistance. And the child itself cannot give us much aid, because it cannot comprehend our purposes in subjecting it to an examination; and if it could, it has not yet any language for expressing to us its intellectual states or processes. Though the infant mind is ever active in itself, it is passive in regard to our object. Altho gh it is constantly manifesting new phenomena, it cannot direct or aid us in the observation or classification of them; so as to form a general or uniform law, by which we might predict what phenomena would follow given circumstances. We are upon a level far above it, and must look down upon its shadowy, complicated, and varying operations, as we look down upon a map, whose shades and lines are almost too minute to be traced by our blunted sight. We must observe and arrange by our own ingenuity the circumstances which excite it, and trace its operations or rather the results of its operations when it is excited; somewhat as we observe phenomena and trace laws in chemistry, by noticing the results of given combinations of elements, when we cannot see the operation going on or comprehend the mode of it.

We hold, and have held for many years, undoubting belief that the science of education is capable of being reduced, like other sciences, to general principles. By a partial induction, or a long

series of discriminating observations, the infant mind may be so far analyzed or its phenomena classed, as to enable us not only to define accurately its several powers with their mutual connexions and dependencies, but to fix with precision the natural order of their development, and to adapt to them such exercises as will develop them most successfully. It might perhaps seem presumption to call in question the axioms of the science; and it certainly would not be easy to point out in a few words the false principles which lie at the foundation of our systems of instruction. Moreover we should not lightly undertake to calculate the perplexity, and time, and perversion of talents they cost the young, the waste of money they cost parents and the public,— and the waste of patient and laborious effort they cost instructers. We shall name only two false principles, which seem to us to lie at the root of the matter, believing that if they could be reformed the whole subject would assume a new aspect.

1. Education is understood to consist in the acquisition of knowledge. This we infer from the pompous catalogues of books and subjects, which are arrayed and set forth as constituting the course of every petty school in the land. They are subjects oftentimes for which the youthful mind is not at all prepared, and by which of course it must be baffled and discouraged. When a subject is presented to a pupil, which requires the exercise of an intellectual faculty not yet developed, he must be as much confused as a blind man would be, if called upon to criticize colours. Education we believe, at least elementary education, does not consist in the acquisition of knowledge; but in the development of the mind. And subjects should be selected and arranged with reference to this object, the acquisition of knowledge being only incidental.

2. When the subjects are selected, perhaps judiciously, they are presented in a form, which neither affords a salutary discipline to the mind, nor facilitates the acquisition of knowledge. They are all too abstract, or are generalizations of facts which are themselves unknown to the pupil. Particularly, the whole courses of the physical and exact sciences, to use a common but expressive phrase, come precisely the wrong end foremost ;-first the general principle, then the particular instances illustrating it. Lord Bacon has taught us that this is not the method by which the human mind takes in knowledge, and it is time we had attended to his instructions. Upon all new subjects of which we have no knowledge or experience, we must, first, have the particular cases, instances, or facts, abstracting the qualities or points.

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