mon sense.

Blindness of employers.-Illustrated.

In other things besides education men are wiser. They follow more the teachings of nature and of comBut in education, where a child has but one opportunity for mental training, as he can be a child but once,-where success, unerring success, is every thing to him for time and eternity, and where a mistake may be most ruinous to him,-in education, men often forget their ordinary wisdom and providence, and commit the most important concerns to the most incompetent hands. "The prevailing opinions," says Geo. B. Emerson, "in regard to this art are such as the common sense of mankind and the experience of centuries have shown to be absurd as to every other art and pursuit of civilized life. To be qualified to discourse upon our moral and religious duties, a man must be educated by years of study; to be able to administer to the body in disease, he must be educated by a careful examination of the body in health and in disease, and of the effects produced on it by external agents; to be able to make out a conveyance of property, or to draw a writ, he must be educated; to navigate a ship, he must be educated by years of service before the mast or on the quarter-deck; to transfer the products of the earth or of art from the producer to the consumer, he must be educated; to make a hat or a coat, he must be educated by years of apprenticeship; to make a plow, he must be educated; to make a nail, or a shoe for a horse or an ox, he must be educated;-but to prepare a man to do all these things;-to train the body in its most tender

Many poor teachers.-Defects in teaching.

years, according to the laws of health so that it should be strong to resist disease; to fill the mind with useful knowledge, to educate it to comprehend all the relations of society, to bring out all its powers into full and harmonious action; to educate the moral nature, inwhich the very sentiment of duty resides, that it may be fitted for an honorable and worthy fulfilment of the public and private offices of life; to do all this is supposed to require no study, no apprenticeship, no preparation !"

Many teachers, therefore, encouraged by this unac countable indifference in the community, have entered the teachers' profession without any idea of the responsibilities assumed or of the end to be secured by their labors, aside from receiving, at the close of their term, the compensation for their service in dollars and cents. And even many who have entered this profession with good intentions, have made the most deplorable mistakes from a want of an adequate idea of what constitutes an education. Too often has educating a child been considered simply the act of imparting to it a certain amount of knowledge, or of "carrying it through” a certain number of studies, more or less. Education has too frequently been held to be a cultivation of the intellectual to the neglect of the moral powers; and the poor body, too, except among savages, has had but little share in its privileges or benefits. In a very large number of our schools, the physical and the moral have both been sacrificed to the intellectual. Even some of our public speakers have dwelt upon the necessity of

Knowledge may be unsafe.-A great question.

intelligence to the perpetuity of our free institutions, scarcely seeming to be aware that intelligence, without moral principle to direct and regulate it, might become the very engine through which evil men might effect our overthrow. Who has not seen that an educated man without virtue is but the more capable of doing evil? Who does not know that knowledge misdirected, becomes, instead of a boon to be desired, a bane to be deprecated?

From what has been said, I place it among the highest qualifications of the teacher that he should have just views of education. I consider it all-important that he should have a well-defined object at which to aim, whenever he meets a young mind in the transition state. He should have an ideal of a well-educated human soul, tenanting a healthy, well-developed human body; an ideal which he at once and systematically labors to reach, as does the sculptor when he commences his work upon the quarried marble. "What is it to educate a human being aright?" should be one of the first questions the candidate for the teacher's office should ask himself with the deepest seriousness. I say the candidate; for this question should be settled if possible before he begins his work. It is a great question, and he may not be able to answer it in a day. Let him consult the dictates of his own mind,-let him consult the teachings of experience and of wisdom, as they are to be found in the writings of Milton, Locke, Wyse, Cousin, Brougham, and others of the eastern continent, and of Wayland, Potter, Mann, G. B. Emer

Results of inquiry.-Knowledge not undervalued.

son, Dwight, and many others of our own countrymen. Let him, enlightened by all this, carefully observe human nature around him; consider its tendencies, its wants, and its capabilities; and after a patient survey of all the truth he can discover upon the subject, let him come to an honest conclusion as to what is a correct answer to the query with which he started-" What is it to educate a human being aright?"

The conclusions of the honest and intelligent inquirer after the truth in this matter, will be something like the following :-That education (from e and duco, to lead forth) is development; that it is not instruction merelyknowledge, facts, rules-communicated by the teacher, but it is discipline, it is a waking up of the mind, a growth of the mind,—growth by a healthy assimilation of wholesome aliment. It is an inspiring of the mind with a thirst for knowledge, growth, enlargement,—and then a disciplining of its powers so far that it can go on to educate itself. It is the arousing of the child's mind to think, without thinking for it; it is the awakening of its powers to observe, to remember, to reflect, to combine. It is not a cultivation of the memory to the neglect of every thing else; but it is a calling forth of all the faculties into harmonious action. If to possess facts simply is education, then an encyclopædia is better educated than a man.

It should be remarked that though knowledge is not education, yet there will be no education without knowledge. Knowledge is ever an incident of true education No man can be properly educated without the ac

The body-the intellect-the heart.-Mr. Fox.

quisition of knowledge; the mistake is in considering knowledge the end when it is either the incident or the means of education. The discipline of the mind, then, is the great thing in intellectual training; and the question is not, how much have I acquired?--but, how have my powers been strengthened in the act of acquisition?

Nor should the intellectual be earlier cultivated than the moral powers of the mind. The love of moral truth should be as early addressed as the love of knowledge. The conscience should be early exercised in judging of the character of the pupil's own acts, and every opportunity afforded to strengthen it by legitimate use. Nor should the powers of the mind be earlier cultivated than those of the body. It is the theory of some, indeed, that the body should engross most of the attention for several of the first years of childhood. This I think is not nature's plan. She cultivates all the powers at once,—the body, mind, and heart. So should the teacher do. "Education," in the pertinent language of Mr. Fox,* "has_reference to the whole man, the body, the mind, and the heart; its object, and, when rightly conducted, its effect is, to make him a complete creature after his kind. To his frame it would give vigor, activity, and beauty; to his senses, correctness and acuteness; to his intellect, power and truthfulness; to his heart, virtue. The educated man is not the gladiator, nor the schoiar, nor

*Lecture before the Am. Institute, 1835.