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we do all in our power to put our children into the same false position, and to nurture in them the same false spirit. Thereby we render them slaves of their sensual nature, and, through it, of the outward world, instead of educating them to that dominion over the earth, for which man is intended. This dominion, which ought to be sought in subjection to the law of God, and with a view to the glory of God, is claimed in bondage to the law of selfwill, and with a view to self-gratification. The relation in which man is to stand to one part of creation, is, from the beginning, deranged; and, of course, as a proper direction of the child, in this relation, would have had a beneficial influence upon the development of other faculties, so the mismanagement of this first step of education has a prejudicial effect upon the subsequent periods.

Nothing can be more erroneous than the common notion of separating physical from intellectual and moral education, as if the former had for its object, only, the physical nature of the child. This is one of the consequences of that oversight of the original unity of purpose, on which I have enlarged in my last lecture. If that unity was apprehended, and the faculties were all cultivated in reference to it, the physical education of the child would, as it ought to do, form the beginning of its intellectual and moral education. We should then watch, with solicitude, the first conscious movements of the child's eye and hand; the first attempts at articulated sound; we should study both, the spontaneous impulses of his self-activity, and the tendency manifested in the manner, in which he yields and attends to the impressions made upon him. Thus, to instance one of the many important considerations, which we ought to keep in view, we might ascertain the proportion, which spontaneity and receptivity, activity and passivity, bear to each other, in general, and in the exercise of each particular faculty; and we might be enabled to judge, likewise, which of the two agents before mentioned presides, at different times, over different operations.

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It is not so difficult, as might be supposed by some, to discover whether the child, when exerting his energies, is impelled by the power of life, directing him to such objects, and such experiments, as will become to him a source of instruction and discipline, and fill his soul with the heavenly satisfaction of having recognized, or expressed, something divine;—or, whether he is swayed by the evil spirit of self, inciting him to an endless, and impassioned exercise of his powers, from which he can only derive the momentary gratification of having indulged a wanton caprice, and, as an immediate consequence of it, the dissatisfaction of internal restlessness. The same distinction is to be made, when the child is passive, lending itself, as it were, to the activity of others; in one case, there is a look of calm delight, or of anxious inquiry; in the other case, the expression of greedy desire. Another important point, for the knowledge of the human character, is, the proportion in which intellect and feeling are combined, in every individual, and by which the preponderance of some faculties over others is determined. For, whilst spontaneity and receptivity are inherent in every faculty, rendering it capable of the two different, though sometimes simultaneous, operations of giving and receiving, of pouring forth and imbibing:-the two other opposites, and, at the same time, correlatives, intellect and feeling, divide be tween themselves, with a few exceptions, the whole range of the faculties, and, consequently, their opposition and co-operation is observable at the earliest period of infancy. The faculty for the perception of space, for instance, appertains to feeling; whilst that for the apprehension of time, is an intellectual faculty. For the reception of all the impressions, conveyed through space, we have two faculties; the one belonging to feeling, whose object is light, and its modifications, shade and colour; the other, an intellectual one, appropriated to the conception, or, if spontaneously exerted, to the creation of form and shape; and, in the same manner, there are two faculties, corresponding

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with the impressions received through time, the one a faculty of feeling, for the reception or creation of sound, and the other an intellectual faculty, whose object is number. The different degrees of intrinsic power, in which every individual is gifted with these and other faculties of the same order, the measure of activity or passivity, which is manifested through them, and the extent to which they are under the controul of the good or the evil agent in man, determine the character of that intricate being, called, the human mind, at the first stage of life, when the faculties, appertaining to man's existence as a physical being, have the principal share in the development of the inner man; the faculties of the two remaining classes growing, at that period, as it were, under ground. That there are symptoms, by which we can ascertain those different facts, in every child; that these symptoms are, every day, every hour, every moment, displayed before our eyes; and that there is, in our own minds, a capability of apprehending and understanding them, who will deny? That the knowledge of them, and of the character, of which they bear witness, is the indispensable condition of our exerting a correct, and, therefore, a beneficial influence upon the child, at that period of life; and that, upon that influence, and its effects, in the child's mind, the character, and efficiency of our influence, at subsequent stages, entirely depends, who will contradict? How, then, is it to be accounted for, that, at a period when such interesting observations can be made, and so decisive an influence exercised, mothers should consider, and treat their infants, as little animals; and fathers think them unworthy of their notice? Is there any other evidence required, to convict us of that fearful moral indolence, with which we set aside the most important facts, if they lie any deeper than the evidence of our senses, or the most superficial reflection can penetrate, and neglect the most important duties, if they are not urged upon us by the necessities of our earthly subsistence? The thousand vain and vexatious purposes, to

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which we have subjected ourselves, so entirely absorb our energies, that the most immediate objects of our care and attention are entirely forgotten; and the mass of presumptuous and superficial knowledge, with which we fill our heads, renders us so completely blind, that we have not a faculty left for the apprehension of truth, when presented to us in that divine simplicity, in which it is exhibited and illustrated in a little child.

This indolence and blindness become, however, still more prejudicial to the cause of education, when the child reaches the next stage of his development, in which the faculties of the second class, or those which appertain to our existence, as human beings, come into full play. It is then, that man is, as it were, emancipated from the bondage of necessity, under which he was kept, as long as his life expanded itself chiefly upon the outward world; a new sphere of life, for him a new world, is thrown open to his view, and affords ample scope for his activity. This world is no other, than that invisible and boundless world of thought and feeling, the existence of which, within us, is an incontrovertible evidence, both of the immateriality and the immortality of our soul.

Heretofore he had tried his physical strength, in the struggle with physical power; now he begins to ascertain the measure of his mind in the conflict with mental and moral powers, and advances or retreats, according to the feeling which he has of his own superiority, or of that of others. He takes and maintains, or changes, his position as a human being, in human society; he penetrates beyond the outward facts of nature, searching for their meaning, and for the spirit that lives and manifests itself in them; his own mind, as well as the images of other minds, reflected in it, become an object of his attention, and he is thus introduced into an assembly of beings, who, although outwardly accessible to his senses, have an existence independently of the outward, which, by the abstraction of his own thoughts and feelings from the

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connexion with sensible objects, he unconsciously acknowledges. In this new world there is no absolute necessity, to which he must willingly or unwillingly submit; here all is freedom, all choice, all volition. He cannot help noticing the outward fact which strikes his senses, but he is free to observe, or to overlook, to recognize, or to set aside, the cause from which it proceeds. There is no room for scepticism, for caprice of intellect, in the question, whether or not twice two make four, whether the part is smaller or larger than the whole; the experiment, as often as it is made, returns the same answer, because the world, in which it is made, is one of necessity, and extends the rule of this necessity over our faculties, when concerned in its investigation, so much so, that a madman only can evade it, and say, as I have actually heard a madman address me: "I see you, Sir, but I do not know that you are here; I hear you speak, but I do not know that you speak; I see that your coat is black, but I do not know what colour it is." The whole of man's intellectual and moral existence must be given up, a step which is not so easily taken, before he can oppose himself, in this manner, to the necessity of the impressions made upon his faculties by the outward world. Not so with reference to that world of thought and feeling, which is thrown open to him in the society of immortal beings, endowed with intellectual and moral faculties, and of which, he himself, as one of those beings, constitutes a part. The impressions which are made upon him by his fellow-creatures, are subject to his interpretation; the truth which is addressed to him, he may acknowledge, or he may treat it as nonsense; his own notions, his own assertions, he is free to consider, now, as conformable to truth, and, then, as fallacious; the motive from which his friend acts, may be believed in, as a motive of love, or suspected as a motive of selfishness and deceit; and his own motives, no less, are liable to be called into question, even by himself, so that the same thing which he would have at once decreed to be dis