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3merican Journal of Education.

[NEW SERIES, NO. 5.]

No. XXX.-MARCH, 1863.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR 1863, will be issued on the 15th of March,
June, September, and December-making one volume of 824 pages octavo, with at least four por-
traits from engravings on steel, and numerous wood cuts. TERMs, $2.50, if paid prior to 15th
March, and $3.00, if paid after March 15th. Single Number, $1.00.

I. AXIOMS.

APHORISMS representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire farther; whereas methods carrying the show of a total, do secure men, as if they were at farthest.

BACON.

Exclusively of the abstract science, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of Aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an Aphorism.

There is one way of giving freshness and importance to the most common-place maxims-that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Mature and sedate wisdom has been fond of summing up the results of its experience in weighty sentences. Solomon did so: the wise men of India and Greece did so: Bacon did so: Goethe in his old age took delight in doing so. . . . They who can not weave an uniform web, may at least produce a piece of patchwork; which may be useful, and not without a charm of its own. The very sharpness and abruptness with which truths must be asserted, when they are to stand singly, is not ill-fitted to startle and rouse sluggish and drowsy minds.

Guesses at Truth.

A collection of good sentences resembles a string of pearls.

Chinese saying.

Nor do Apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use: as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.-BACON.

How often one finds in life, that an idea, which one may have met in youth, made visible in words, but also veiled in them, and which in this shape has haunted one with a vague sense of something divine, but dim and inscrutable, becomes, at the call of conscience, or when real events and beings give it its fit body, the open aspect of a messenger from Heaven, and the familiar friend of all one's after days. STERLING.

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, &c., have the same use with burning glasses, to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination. SWIFT.

Harmony, the ultimate object of all things, should exist as in the universe, so in man also, who is a little world in himself.

It is to this end especially that education should be directed; which requires :

1. That youth should not hear of any thing which may awaken unchaste desires, until they are acquainted with the dignity and loftiness of human nature.

2. That youth should endeavor to attain a ripe development, by means of effort.

3. That parents are the proper educators; and that it is therefore the greatest injustice to separate parents and children.

4. That education should extend over the whole period of youth. PYTHAGORAS.

Man becomes what he is, principally by education; which pertains to the whole of life.

Education must begin even before birth, with the parents themselves; must constitute a rule of action during the entire life, and in a certain sense must exist during the whole of it.

A good education consists in giving to the body and the soul all the perfection of which they are susceptible.

Man becomes what he is, by nature, habit, instruction.

PLATO.

The last two, together, constitute education, and must always accompany each other; the former, however, preceding.

It can improve nature, but not completely change it.

The intellect is perfected, not by knowledge but by activity.

The arts and sciences are powers, but every power exists only for the sake of action; the end of philosophy is not knowledge, but the energy conversant about knowledge. ARISTOTLE.

The regimen that will insure

A healthful body and a vigorous mind,
A countenance serene, expanded chest,
Heroic stature and a temperate tongue.

So were trained the heroes, who imbued
The field of Marathon with hostile blood.
This discipline it was that braced their nerves,
And fitted them for conquest.

ARISTOPHANES. The Clouds.

There is no living being whose nature is so obstinate and cross-grained as that of man; who has a natural tendency towards what is forbidden and dangerous, and does not willingly allow himself to be influenced.

But these sinful natural tendencies can be improved by wise laws, by a mild and just administration of them, and by an education which unites firmness and love. SENECA.

Education awakes the innate power of the mind, and high cultivation confirms it. HORACE.

The specific signification of Education has often been defined by means of the distinction between educere and educare. But this is not a sufficient basis for a precise definition. E. M. Arndt, in his "Fragments on Human Culture,”* considers educare to signify the artistic process or art of education, and thinks that educere is more correctly translated by "to bring up," or "raise up;" pépeiv. Schmidt in one place considers educere to be the business of the mother, because she brings forth the child.t In another place, he says it means "to bring out of the family, into a larger sphere of life-into the world ;" and in a third, that it means awaken, set in activity and develop the inner higher faculties." Educare is in the latter place taken to mean, on the contrary, "to bring the boy out of his animalized state of existence; to change the animal man into the spiritual."

to

Let us now consider whether German etymology may not furnish a more definite answer. Ziehen means to remove any thing from one place to another, in such a way that the thing moved follows the power, and does it, also, in a steady manner, in contradistinction to throwing, striking, or carrying; and the thing moved is in a certain sense forced to go itself, even though it struggles not to do so. This radical word has gained a metaphorical meaning in the department discussed by this work, by its relation in meaning to the sense in which it is used to signify the gardener's production of flowers from a bulb. Thus ziehen describes the management of his assistants by a teacher; of his orchestra by a leader, (though the compound heranziehen is more precisely proper); and in these cases the meaning is still very nearly the same with that of the original word, for there is a drawing after himself by the leader, without however any reference to the means by which the influence is exerted. But when ziehen is used to denote the sort of training that is acquired by a wild young man who is sent to be a soldier, the most prominent idea is that of the means used; the strenuous discipline; and the design is not that he shall follow after his discipliner in any sense, but that by means of his receiving the action here denoted by ziehen, that is by means of the passivity into which the constraint of his discipline brings him, he shall learn a right passivity, which is the negation of his previous wrong activity; namely, by means of an obedience to persons, authorities, orders; which obedience is the negation of his own undisciplined self-will. Aufziehen has a definite pedagogical meaning. It is the continuation of that careful protection from dangers to life, which is given to young infants; and therefore the physical care of the child, up to the period when it can take care of itself; a duty which can after the death of the mother be performed, for instance, by a maid. Here

* "Fragmente über Menschenbildung.”

"Outline," &c., p. 40. "The child is brought forth into the light of day; educitur; as the proverb says, educit obstetrix, educat nutrix, instituit paedagogus, docet magister." * Ib., p. 221.

§ lb., p. 223.

1 Ziehen corresponds very nearly to the Latin root word of "educate,” viz., duco, to lead. draw, &c.

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