THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. LXV.

FEBRUARY, 1859.

ARTICLE I-THE TRUE STYLE AND MEASURE OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION.

He who should carefully measure the dimensions of man's whole complex being, and conceive of him as in a state of full preparation, in respect to all his powers, for the issues of both time and eternity, would be best able to appreciate and determine the true style of his education. And yet how far would be the thoughts of such an one, if of earth, from filling the entire horizon of the subject!

As it is our design, in this Article, to furnish but a general map of what belongs to the full-orbed idea of real education, it will be impossible to dwell at length upon any one part of it. The following view, it is believed, will furnish an outline, at least, of what ought to be included in the idea of a complete education.

First. In reference to the body.

Our physical system is certainly the basis, while we are in this world, for the manifestation of all the rest of our nature,

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whether to our own consciousness or to the eyes of others. Our intellectual and moral faculties abide in it as their tabernacle, and work through it, as their instrument, upon the surrounding universe. While fastened to the body, therefore, and compelled to receive all our impressions and enact all our deeds through it, it is a matter of great moment what its best condition and development demand.

God, himself, always places the physical first, in both individual and national advancement. And how, in preparing the way for his church, so dear to him that her name has been always graven upon the palms of his hands, did he deal with her as we do with children, in her earlier years: educating her by appeals to the senses at the first, in impressive forms, ordinances, ceremonials, and symbols. "First, that which is natural," saith Paul, "and then that which is spiritual."

Men are now, indeed, beginning to realize the vast importance of a right physical education. The ancients were far wiser in this particular than we. Not only their literature and history, but also their very houses, as still standing disentombed in Pompeii and Herculaneum, show that their life was one passed out of doors. Their active games, so many, so varied, and so exciting; their military movements, in which all engaged, statesmen and scholars, as well as others; and all the preparatory training which these necessitated and inspired; their frequent bathing; the vitality and social hilarity of their daily activities and experiences; and the constant summons everywhere made upon them for quickness and pow. er of action, gave them an arm, and a breast, and a pulse of far greater strength than men now-a-days possess. Such a busy, bustling style of life accounts for the high estimate in which they held action in oratory: so that Demosthenes once, in stating that three things were necessary to oratory, declared them emphatically to be "actio! actio! actio!" And, for the same reason, we do not find landscapes among the paintings of the ancients, as in modern art, but only men, or gods, and their agents not still life, but demonstrations of energy in some form; and so likewise their imaginations animated and impersonated everything around them.

And yet the bodily development of the ancients was but a moiety of what ours might become, from their utter want of those high, moral, and religious stimulations to all the secret springs of health which we have, as well as from the positive injurious influence upon them of their frequent and various heathenish excesses.

A wonderful diversity of ends can be gained by special bodily training, in the different directions of strength, endurance, agility or skill, in deeds of muscular force, personal bravery, mechanical contrivance, or elaborate workmanship in forms graphic, pictorial, surgical, musical, gymnastic, or artistic. An absolutely special education by itself is not yet much in vogue among us, where so many departments of successful labor are open, on every side, to those who possess a more general style of qualifications for honorable toil.

I. What, then, it is our first question, are the ends to be gained, in the body, as a matter of general attainment, applicable to each individual, in the course of the "higher education ?"

1st. Soundness or health.

With the fact of health, as with the very word itself, what a variety of things is closely connected! Health, heal, hale, whole, and holy are all, etymologically, derived from one common root. The same man with health is as different, certainly, from what he would or could be without it, as almost any two men can be from each other.

(1.) Health is a duty. It is not indeed wholly, but it is surely to a great degree in our own power, and, so far as it is, God holds us responsible, not only for its safe keeping, but also for its improvement. Good health is one of the greatest endow. ments that a man can receive at his birth, and one of the greatest treasures that he can obtain at any time afterwards, whether by accident or design. When every man is taught to feel that there are definite laws of bodily health, and that he wrongs himself and his Maker in violating them, as truly as in taking up arms against reason and conscience in any other direction, human life and human labor will receive, at once, a great enlargement.