IF, in accordance with the philosophy of things, we could trace effects from their immediate to their remote causes, it is presumed that we would find the momentous changes already accomplished in English society, whether in the Old World or in the New, to be the legitimate consequences of a single maxim, consecrated into a rule of action, both by the precept and the example of the master-spirit of the Protestant Reformation. That maxim is "Man by nature is, and of right ought to be a thinking being. Hence it is decreed that as a matter of policy of morality and of religion, he ought not only to think but to think for himself. This, as the paramount duty, was most successfully inculcated by that illustrious Saxon to whom, more than to any other mortal being, the sons of Japhet in Europe and America owe their best literary, moral and political institutions. To the inculcation of this obligation, more than to any other precept in the religious or moral code, was Martin Luther indebted for that eminent success which elevated him to the highest niche in the temple consecrated to the memory of European and American benefactors. Nor is the day far distant, in our anticipations of the approaching future, when the philosophic historian, in his attempts to trace to its proper cause the general superiority of that portion of our race which speaks the English tongue, in whatever land, under whatever sky, it may happen to have its being, will find it supremely if not exclusively, in the single fact that the English nation first adopted the Lutheran creed of [453] thinking, speaking and writing without restraint on every subject of importance to the individual and to society.

      But to set the mind abroach, to take off every restraint but that of moral law, to encourage free inquiry, especially in an age of comparative ignorance and superstition both in things political, religious and literary, is always a hazardous experiment. In such a revolution as must necessarily ensue, not only the institutions of false philosophy, unequal policy and arbitrary legislation, but also the altars, the temples, and the ordinances of reason and truth and justice, may be blended together in one promiscuous ruin. Who can arrest the progress of free inquiry? What human spirit can ride upon this whirlwind and direct this storm? What philosopher or sage can, with effect, say, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther," and here shall your investigations cease? Experience says it is much easier to communicate the spark than to arrest the flame. Still, however, we have this consolation that truth is in its own nature indestructible, and that however for a time it may be hid among the rubbish of human tradition, or buried in the wreck of revolutions and counter-revolutions in human affairs, it will ultimately gain the ascendant and command not only the admiration but the homage of all mankind.

      To those of the most enlarged conceptions of human affairs and of the natural tendencies of things, we imagine it will appear most evident that it is safer and happier for society that the mind should be permitted to rest with full assurance only upon its own investigations, and that perfect freedom of inquiry should be guaranteed to every man to reason, to examine and judge for himself on all subjects in the least involving his own present or future destiny or that of society.

      Happy is it, then, for the general interests of all science and of all society, that when men begin to think and reason and decide for themselves on any one subject, unrestrained by the proscriptions and unawed by the authority of past ages, it is not within their own power, nor within the grasp of any extrinsic authority on earth, to restrain their speculations, or to confine them to that one subject, whatever it may be, which happened first to arouse their minds from the repose of unthinking acquiescence and to break the spell of implicit resignation to the supposed superior wisdom of the reputed sages of ancient times. Hence, the impetus given to the human mind by the Protestant Reformation extends into every science, into every art, into all the business of life, and continues, with increased and increasing energy, to consume and waste the influence of every existing institution, law and [454] custom not founded upon eternal truth and the immutable and invincible nature of things.

      This spirit of free inquiry first seized the church, then the state, then the colleges, then the schools; and now, even now, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, it has invaded not only the penetralia of every temple but even the inmost recesses of the nursery, the infant head, the infant brain; and, in full harmony with the divining, spirit of the age, are we now in solemn conclave assembled to inquire if aught of error yet remains unscathed, or of truth undiscovered, in the most useful among, sciences and arts--that of educating man.

      The philosopher, the politician, the moralist and the Christian regard the subject of education as of transcendent importance to the individual and social well-being of man. If in other matters they differ, in this they agree--that nothing connected with time or sense so supremely deserves the best thoughts and most concentrated efforts of the human mind as the proper method of training and developing the physical, intellectual and moral powers of man. For, whatever may be, in the eye of the philanthropist, the chief desideratum in the future earthly destiny of man--whatever may be the measures of temporal bliss or temporal glory to which he would exalt his species, as the ultimatum of all his aspirations--he contemplates and designs to effect it all by a system of education in perfect unison with the whole nature of man. The Christian himself, in seeking the eternal happiness and glory of his own offspring and of society at large, forms no scheme, can conceive of no means in human power, to further his wishes and to secure his object, other than an education in perfect harmony with human nature as it now is under the remedial administration of Heaven.

      One of the most exhilarating and promising signs of a better era in human destiny is the increased and increasing interest displayed on this very subject. Happy are we to find that not only in the East and in the West, in the North and in the South, in the length and breadth of our own happy land, but in the land of our forefathers and in all the regions of English and American commerce, wherever the Protestant religion is known, men are awaking to the examination of how much has been done and how much remains to be done, not only in extending the means of education of some sort, but in adapting that education, according to the lights of true science, to the whole constitution and circumstances of mankind.

      Much, very much, indeed, remains to be accomplished to meet the exigencies of the times and to dispel the clouds and darkness yet resting upon various questions either intimately connected with a rational [455] system of education or forming a part of it. This is true not only of our own country, but of the most enlightened portions of the Old World. Among the resolutions of the British and Foreign School Society, of March, 1831, it is repeatedly acknowledged that "ENGLAND IS YET UNEDUCATED." Lord Brougham in 1833, in his speech at the Wilberforce meeting at York, strongly affirms that in England " IGNORANCE PREVAILS TO A HORRIBLE EXTENT"--ignorance, too, of a proper system of education. And certainly this is true of large portions of our own country.

      Creditable it is in the highest degree to our country that, in the estimation of all mankind, she stands foremost in the work of education; and to the honor of the founders of the College of Teachers, in the Valley of the Mississippi, it may yet be said that this institution has been the commencement of a new era in the literary annals of the West.

      But the subject before us demands, at least as preliminary, a definition not merely of the term education, but of that which is to be educated. And yet, plain and hackneyed as the subject is, it is not altogether without its difficulties. Education, as usually defined, imports no more than "the formation of manners in youth," or the cultivation of the intellectual powers. But, in its true and philosophic signification, it takes a wider range, and denotes the full development and proper training of all the human powers. These are generally called physical, intellectual and moral. But, as our physical powers are held in common with inferior animals, they are not regarded as strictly human; and, therefore, with the most accomplished thinker the human powers are purely intellectual and moral. Still, it will be conceded that even man's animal powers are susceptible of improvement under a scientific education; that even his external senses, with all his physical organization, by proper exercise and discipline, can be greatly improved.

      But who has accurately defined the intellectual and moral powers? Agreed it is on all hands that the human mind is composed of various innate and primitive powers, however they may be enumerated or defined, and that these are the proper subject of education. But because they have never yet been defined with authority--because no two philosophers, from the days of Plato to the beginning of the present century, have agreed in any one theory of the intellectual and moral powers--every system of education hitherto patronized is, in some respects, inadequate or imperfect. The words "intellect," "moral powers" and "affections" are of universal currency, and appear on many a [456] learned and eloquent page as the well-established representatives of the most precise ideas in mental philosophy. It has been our misfortune, however, never to have met with an author of standard value, in any of the schools of English or American literature, who could make us understand what are the intellectual and moral powers--"the understanding, will and affections"--which constitute that something called the human mind or soul, and concerning the education of which so many hundred authors have written to so little purpose.

      The mental and moral philosophy of the schools--especially the latter--in spite of all our efforts and predilections, yet appears to us a science about words rather than things--a science without a solid basis. Fine discourses have been written and eloquent speeches have been pronounced about the passions and affections, the intellectual and moral powers; but whose definition of these is canonical or of general credit? Such being the fact, who can affirm that the science of mind is perfect, or that a perfect system of education can exist, while no two philosophers or teachers of note agree about what it is that is to be educated?

      In the schools of the highest reputation there appears little certainty in the department of the intellectual powers. Operations of the mind in one school are regarded as primitive powers; while in another the primitive powers are ranked amongst mere operations of the mind. Thus, we read of the faculty or primitive power of perception, of attention, of reflection, of memory, of consciousness, &c.; while, according to other authorities, these are but mere "modes of mental action"--mere operations of certain energies or powers innate, which are known and designated under other names.

      Need we a single argument to show that a system of education which sets about improving operations, mistaking them for the operating powers, must fail--wholly fail--of any practical utility? And such--unless we are greatly mistaken--is one of the most injurious errors in all the systems that have reigned from Aristotle to Dr. Watts.

      It is to be hoped that the present century, already distinguished for many useful discoveries, inventions and improvements, if it have not already, in the new science of phrenology, ascertained a solid basis for a truly inductive system of mental philosophy and literary and moral education, will add to its renown the glory of substituting psychological fact for hypothesis, and of discarding from our schools and colleges the imaginative conjectures and metaphysical theories of ages more speculative and romantic than the present. Then we are [457] disposed to imagine that it will be universally conceded that the excellence of education will consist in three things--in teaching and training man to think, to feel and to act in perfect harmony with his own constitution and with the constitution of nature and society around him; not merely to think, not merely to feel, not merely to act right, but to think, to feel and to act rationally, morally and religiously, or in harmony with the whole universe and with his relations to each and every part thereof.

      If we might be indulged in another preliminary and introductory observation we would hasten to suggest that as there is but one way of learning mind viz.--by its own manifestations--so there cannot be a proper or philosophical system of education that is not founded upon the manifestations of mind. In the universe there is nothing to be seen but the manifestations of mind; for it is all the effect of mind, and under the dominion of one Supreme and Omnipotent Intelligence. If there be sublimity, grandeur or beauty in the height and depth, in the length and breadth, of creation--in the extent, number and variety of organic and inorganic existences--it is in the manifestations of mind that all this beauty and magnificence consist. Hence, the most refined and exquisite pleasures of which we are now or ever shall be susceptible, are the pleasures of mental communion with that Infinite Intelligence which will be manifesting itself to us in an infinite series of creations through an endless succession of ages. If there were no mind displayed in the universe, to human eye there would be no beauty, grandeur or magnificence in it; and exactly in the ratio of mind possessed by each individual will be the sources of enjoyment opened in all the works and ways of the Infinite Intelligence. He that has most mind will see and enjoy most mind in creation; and in this will be found the philosophy of that oracle which says, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

      But neither the divine nor the human mind can be manifested to human reason but by an organized system. If we are too sanguine, and if it be not yet discovered, in this truth will be found the immovable basis of the true philosophy of mind and of education. The created universe is not God; but God is manifested in and by the universe. The human mind, so far an image of the divine, is not the human head nor heart nor body; but in and by these it is manifested. God, however, is not more distinct from the universe which manifests him, than the human mind from the brain and heart and body, by which it manifests itself.

      As, then, we learn God by and through his works and words, or [458] through the universe, so we learn the human mind through that organic mass through which it operates and by which it is operated upon. Now, it is obvious that all our organs, whether called the brain or the muscles or the external senses, are the means or energies by which our spirit operates, and by which, so far at least as mundane things are concerned, it is operated upon. Consequently, no philosopher can overlook the organs by which the mind acts and by which it is acted upon in adopting a system of education suited to the culture and development of our intellectual and moral powers.

      To illustrate this view of ascertaining and educating mind, let it be supposed that we have a thousand or any definite number of concentric circles the common centre of which is a radiating point: it will then be apparent that all the light in these thousand circles is in fullest splendor in the innermost circle. The manifestations of light will improve in every circle from the one-thousandth to the first. The most brilliant manifestations will, of course, be found immediately around the radiating centre. So of the supreme and human intelligence. The manifestations of the Deity are found in ten thousand concentric spheres. But it is in the innermost circle--in the palace of the universe--the sanctum sanctorum of creation--that he is seen and known in his glory.

      The human mind is manifested in all the works of man, as the architect is seen in the castles he has reared or the author in the volumes he has written. Still, we approach nearer to the human spirit when we approach the human body, and to the head of that body in which it is located. The cranium is the innermost circle which the spirit, the radiating point, fills with the most splendid manifestations of itself. Hence, the "mind-illumined face," with the five senses most ingeniously situated around the head and in it, with all the displays of the organs of thought, moral feeling and passion which adorn its outside, manifest all that is to be educated, whether we call it mind or spirit--the animal the intellectual or the moral man. The activity of the human spirit--that great intellectual and moral radiating centre in the human system--must necessarily first appear in the walls of that apartment in which it first begins to operate. We ought not, then, to wonder that at this punctum saliens its strength should be equal to manifesting itself by indenting and depicting its activities on the bony circumference which encloses all those organs by which it first acts in all its animal, intellectual and moral operations.

      Thus have we very circuitously arrived at the solid basis of mental philosophy and moral education--if, indeed, there be yet any such [459] basis found. It is indeed already fully ascertained that the mind acts, and that, as a matter of course, it will have power and variety of action according to the variety, strength and activity of its organs. Again, it is ascertained that as the mind sees by an eye, hears by an ear, strikes by a hand and thinks and reasons and feels by a brain, and as the strength of every organ is in the ratio of its size and firmness, so the mind's energies or faculties will be improved as these organs are enlarged, strengthened or made active by well-directed exercise.

      If now we may be pardoned for this circular approach to our subject, it would be presumption to expect remission should we further delay by an attempt to detail either the organs or faculties, intellectual and moral, to be improved by education. This, indeed, we are not able to do; for these all are not yet to us individually and fully ascertained. It is, however generally agreed that we have intellectual and moral powers, and that both are innate and primitive and susceptible of improvement; and this is all that our subject, strictly regarded, demands. Moreover, there is, perhaps, a more general concurrence in the number and distinct character of our moral than of our intellectual powers; and these are they whose culture is the burden of the present essay.

      What the metaphysician or the moral philosopher calls the active powers or affections, and the phrenologist the moral impulses or instincts, are much nearer allied than their theories of the perceptive and reflective powers. All men of sense of all philosophic creeds agree that benevolence, veneration, hope, self-love, love of approbation, a sense of justice, conscientiousness, firmness, &c. are essential elements in the formation of moral character, and that they are positive, primitive and independent powers of mind, susceptible of culture, and that they ought to be educated.

      True science affirms that all that is in man, and only what is in him, is to be educated; that every organ and sense and power, whether animal, intellectual, moral or religious, can be improved, and ought to be improved by education. The accomplished teacher aims not, indeed, at working miracles, by creating new powers or faculties of any sort: he regards only what is innate in man as the proper subject of education. He has two objects supremely in view--the improvement of the faculties and the communication of knowledge. As respects the improvement of the faculties, his theory is very simple. With him, every faculty has some organ or organs susceptible of improvement. These organs are improvable only by exercise. His whole creed contains but seven articles, and these are [460] rather definitions of terms than abstract speculations. They are the following:--

      1. The human soul incarnate operates only through organs and through organs only can it be operated upon.

      2. An organ is a natural instrument--such as the brain, the eye, the ear, the tongue, the hand. The human soul thinks and feels by the brain, sees by the eye, hears by the ear, speaks by the tongue and operates by the hand.

      3. A faculty, contradistinguished from its organ, is the power of the organ. The eye is an organ; but seeing is its faculty or power. The ear is an organ; but hearing is its faculty.

      4. Organs, and faculties are simple and compound. The eye and the ear are simple organs; the brains and the hand are compound organs. Each and every subdivision of the brain, as every finger on the hand, is a single organ and has a single faculty. But there are faculties which require a plurality of organs: thus, while the faculty of apprehending requires but a finger, the faculty of comprehending a substance requires the whole hand. The faculty of perceiving a single object requires but one organ of the brain; while the faculty of remembering an event requires various organs. The faculty of perceiving requires the organs of perception; the faculty of reflecting requires the organs of reflection; the faculty of remembering requires all the organs originally employed in perceiving the object and in reflecting upon it.

      5. Operations are to be distinguished from the organs and the faculties. Organ is the instrument; faculty, the power of the instrument; operation, the act of the faculty or of the organ. Thus, the eye is an organ; seeing, the faculty of that organ; and a particular look, sight or seeing, the operation of that organ. Again, there is one organ of the brain by which we perceive color--this is the organ of color: perceiving color is the faculty of that organ, and the observance of any particular color is the operation of that organ.

      6. The strength of an organ is its size and firmness. It is a law of the animal economy that exercise directed by reason enlarges and confirms every organ; hence, every fibre of the human system is improved by exercise. To improve a faculty is to enlarge and confirm its organ or organs. By strengthening and making more active an organ, we not only improve its faculty, but also every particular operation of that organ. Education, if rational, will, therefore, seek to improve the mind by improving its organs: it will seek to improve the organs by improving the faculties, and the faculties by improving their operations. The natural order of education, in seeking to improve the [461] intellectual and moral powers, is first the operation, then the faculty, then the organ, then the mind. It is by this course the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the orator and the practical moralist attain to perfection. Single acts precede habits and strengthen faculties, and these faculties strengthen the organs, and then the organs in turn strengthen the faculties, and the faculties strengthen their particular acts and operations. Thus, we strengthen the muscles in the arm by acts or operations; these operations strengthen the faculty of the whole arm or increase its muscular power, and that strength increased redounds to the improvement of those very acts by which it was itself improved. Hence, if the natural organs did not decay by age, the mind would, like the rotation of a wheel on an infinite declivity, be perpetually increasing its activity and its momentum in a series of infinite progression; which, no doubt, after it has "shuffled off this mortal coil," will be its eternal destiny.

      7. It must be laid down with all the formality of a positive precept that the exercise of any one organ only improves itself. That we cannot improve the eye or the ear without exercise is not more incontrovertible than that we cannot improve the eye by improving the ear, or the faculty of tasting by the faculty of smelling. No person will, therefore, seek to improve the memory by improving the imagination, nor the organs of perception by the organs of reflection; neither will a wise man seek to improve the moral powers by exercising only the intellectual.

      This synopsis or summary of definitions, constituting the essential articles of the skilful teacher's creed, leads us directly to the very point of the specific task assigned us--viz. "the importance of uniting the moral with the intellectual culture of the mind."

      In the proposition that it is important that the culture of the moral powers should be united with the culture of the intellectual powers, it is implied that both are susceptible of cultivation and that both are to be cultivated. It is only affirmed that both are to be cultivated at one and the same time. But the point to be elaborated is, that the moral powers are especially to be educated, or that moral culture is the chief end of education.

      Three good reasons are, in our judgment, sufficient to enforce the superlative importance of moral culture.

      Of these the first is that man has received from the hand of his Creator certain innate moral powers, and that these are, without education, not more perfect than his physical and intellectual powers. Now, as the five senses--the perceptive and reflective faculties-- [462] require the special attention of those intrusted with the formation of the human constitution and human character, certainly the moral affections and feelings, simply as an essential ingredient in man, as one of the gifts and endowments bestowed on him by his Creator, are deserving of improvement. But this argument is not yet set forth in all its strength; for it is agreed that the moral powers, because of the peculiar and ever-changing character of the objects on which they are to be employed and of the actions to which they impel, are more imperfect by nature, or, what is the same thing, differently expressed, naturally more unfit for discrimination and guidance than are our physical and intellectual powers; therefore their cultivation is the more necessary.

      But, in the second place, the paramount necessity of moral culture is argued from higher considerations than can be offered in favor of the development and proper training of our physical and intellectual powers. It is argued from the fact that moral nature is superior to intellectual and to animal nature, as the means are superior to the end; for, in man, animal organization is but the means to intellectual organization, and intellect itself is but the means to moral endowment. A proof of this is experienced by all the cultivated, in the fact that animal pleasure is but the positive degree, intellectual pleasure the comparative, while moral pleasure is the superlative of human bliss: just as man's animal organization is the positive, his intellectual the comparative, and his moral the superlative, of his excellence and glory, graduated on the scale of all earthly existence. True, indeed, we cannot view these as simple elements and compare them as so many ingredients in the human composition; still, we have no difficulty in forming a comparative estimate of their respective value in human nature and in human character. Our second argument, therefore, is, that as three superlatives--viz. that of moral nature, that of moral pleasure and that of moral glory--constitute the superlative of human excellence, moral culture above the physical above the intellectual, deserves to occupy the superlative place in the education of youth.

      The evidence of this position, and consequently the conviction of its truth, are susceptible of much augmentation as we improve in the knowledge of man as a social being--as related to other intelligent and moral agents. It is for society, and for society alone, that man possesses a moral nature; and, therefore, it is only in society that man can fully enjoy himself. Need we ask of what use were benevolence, justice, generosity, compassion, love of approbation, any more than the power of communicating intelligence, were there no kindred beings as objects of the exercise of these endowments? And certain it is, that [463] without benevolence, a sense of justice, the love of approbation and the power of communicating information, man would be unfit for society and incapable of enjoying any pleasure from it. Hence the conclusion that the animal passions are not more necessary to the preservation of our own existence, or to the continuance of our species; than our moral nature is to the enjoyment of society. And hence says the moralist, oxygen is not more essential to combustion nor respiration to human life, than morality to the well-being of society. The Christian philosopher ascends only one step further, and alleges that, as without a material constitution a material universe could not be enjoyed, as without a moral nature society could not be appreciated, so without that religious affection called veneration--a sublime part of man's moral constitution--God himself could not be known or enjoyed.

      But, to reinforce this topic, we shall only add that it is not the simple possession of any capacity or power, but the exercise of it, that affords either utility or pleasure to ourselves or others. Hence, it is not the possession of a moral nature any more than the possession of an animal organization, but the employment and exercise of that nature in society, in all religious and moral feeling, according to, enlightened intellect, that promotes our own felicity or that of others: so important is it, then, that our moral nature should be properly educated.

      Our third argument is that "nature itself or the universe is constituted in harmony with the supremacy of the moral powers guided by intellect." Our most profound moralists and our most accomplished teachers have been constrained to announce it as the result of their most studious and deep researches into the physical constitution of the world, that "it is actually arranged on the principle of favouring virtue and punishing vice," just as evidently as it is "adapted to all the faculties of man as an intelligent, moral and religious being." "Whenever"--says one of our best writers on the constitution of man--"whenever the dictates of the moral sentiments, properly illuminated by the knowledge of science and of moral and religious duty, are opposed by the solicitations of the animal propensities, the latter must yield; otherwise, by the constitution of external nature, evil will inevitably ensue." This is what we mean by alleging that nature is constituted in harmony with the supremacy of the moral feelings, guided by intellect. Hence, the happiness not merely of the individual himself, but of the whole human race, by the insuperable arrangements of the Creator, are made consequent upon the obedience of a cultivated and enlightened moral nature to a moral code. This being conceded--as, indeed, it must be by every philosopher enlightened in [464] the studies of nature--it authorizes the conclusion that the voice of the Creator is heard in all his works and by all his laws, bearing testimony in favor of bestowing superlative attention on the moral culture of youth. May we add, that if this be apparent to the philosopher, who sees the bearings of physical nature upon the physical and moral constitution of man, much more evident is it to the student of the Bible, that the violation of moral principle, not only in consequence of the constitution of the realms of nature, but also and more especially in pursuance of every divine law and institution, must be accompanied with pain. So important is it, then, that the moral culture should not only occupy a place, but the most prominent place, in the education of youth.

      Although we have in these three arguments, as we judge, evidence enough of the sovereign importance of moral culture, still, to illustrate and enforce the importance of the subject, we shall confirm our reasonings by the testimony of two or three distinguished names in the commonwealth of letters.

      Lord Kames says, "It appears unaccountable that our teachers generally have directed their instructions to the head, with very little attention to the heart. From Aristotle down to Locke, books without number have been composed for cultivating and improving the understanding; few in proportion for cultivating and improving the affections. Yet surely, as man is intended to be more an active than a contemplative being, the educating of a young man to behave properly in society is of still greater importance than the making him even a Solomon for knowledge."

      Locke says, "It is virtue--direct virtue--which is the hard and valuable part to be aimed at in education, and not a forward pertness or any little arts of shifting. All other considerations and accomplishments should give way and be postponed to this. This is the solid and substantial good, which tutors should not only read lectures and talk of, but the labor and art of education should furnish the mind with and fasten there, and never cease till the young man hat a true relish of it, and placed his strength, his glory and his pleasure in it.

      "Learning must be had, but in the second place, as subservient only to greater qualities. Seek out somebody (as your son's tutor) that may know how discreetly to form his manners; place him in hands where you may as much as possible secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations and settle him in good habits. This is the main point; and, this being provided for, learning may be had into the bargain. [465]

      "But, under whose care soever a child is put to be taught, during the tender and flexible years of his life, this is certain--it should be one who thinks Latin and language the least part of education; one who, knowing how much virtue and a well-tempered soul is to be preferred to any sort of learning or language, makes it his chief business to form the mind of his scholars and give that a right direction; which, if once got, though all the rest should be neglected, would, in due time, produce all the rest; and which, if it be not got and settled so as to keep out ill and vicious habits, languages and sciences and all the other accomplishments of education will be to no purpose but to make the worse or more dangerous man."

      Milton says, "The end of learning is to repair the ruin of our first parents by the knowledge of God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest, by possessing our souls of true virtue, which, being united to the heavenly grace of faith, make up the highest perfection."

      And St. Pierre, in his "Studies of Nature," often enjoins that religion and morality should be the first lessons communicated to children, because this education more than any other fits them for society, for usefulness and happiness.¹

      Unpopular and unpleasant as the task may be, it is necessary, to the accomplishment of the object contemplated in the discussion of this question, that we not only state the fact that moral culture is an essential part of national and popular education almost wholly neglected, but also examine the reasons why it is so. That it is neglected to an alarming degree is, alas! too easily proved from the fact that the great majority of the best-educated portion of our youth are decidedly immoral, at least in the Christian acceptation of that word.

      It is to be regretted that we have not regular and authentic statistics of the educated classes of society as respects the influence which they exert in society for or against religion and morality. Had we correct reports of the amount of moral and immoral influence exerted upon the whole community through only the graduates of English and American colleges and universities, we should feel ourselves much more able to understand and set forth their actual value in forming the character and in deciding the destiny of a people. In the absence of such definite information, we have to depend too much on gross estimates, founded upon our own observation and the conjectural calculations of others. [466] Something very like what we want, yet not exactly in kind, has been attempted in the reports of the Minister of Public Instruction in France. From a recent report on the state of education in that country, by M. Carle, it appears that, in that country at least, there is no apparent connection between education and morality, but, upon the whole, that education is extremely prejudicial to both religion and morality. And certainly from every document to which we have access, it would appear that in Germany, Spain, Italy, and, indeed, on the European continent generally, the educated classes, taken as a whole, exert a very immoral influence upon the whole community. It were, indeed, well for our own and the mother country that the evidence were less decisive than it is that such, at present, is the actual tendency of the established modes of education in both communities.

      Were I to make my own personal observation and acquaintance the exclusive data of my estimates of the moral tendencies of the grammar-school, college and university course of education--judging from hundreds, if not from thousands, of individual cases that have come under my inspection both in Europe and America--I must say that the tendencies are decidedly immoral, and that I remember no instance of distinguished moral worth that owed not its existence to the influence of parental piety, which at an early period had so deeply imbued the mind with moral sentiment, or so fully developed the moral powers, as to place the virtuous youth beyond the contaminating influence of the polluted fountains of Grecian and Roman literature or the vitiated and impure atmosphere of licentious classmates, who happened to be less favored with a pious parentage than himself.

      It is remarkable how much more men are wont to admire intellectual than moral worth. Parents are usually far more delighted to perceive in their children the dawnings of talent and of genius than of benevolence and philanthropy; and history dwells with peculiar complacency upon the names of those who have rendered themselves illustrious for depth of learning or for genius and ambition--of sages and philosophers--of chiefs and warriors: while most of the true benefactors of the human family are scarcely noticed, and their superior merits are undiscovered and forgotten. This disposition to enhance mental endowments above moral excellence is manifested in the admiration bestowed upon those to whom belong a precocious development. Thus, men are filled with astonishment when they read of a Henderson, who taught Latin, at eight years of age, in Kingswood School, and Greek at fourteen, at Lady Huntingdon's College, in Wales--of a Candiac, who could translate Latin at five years, and at six read Greek and Hebrew [467] to the admiration of the learned, being at the same time well versed in arithmetic, geography, history, geometry and antiquities--of a Baratier, who, at the age of four, could converse with his mother in French, with his father in Latin and with the servants in German; who was perfectly acquainted with Greek at six, with Hebrew at eight, and in his eleventh year translated from the Hebrew into French the travels of the Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, which he enriched with valuable annotations; and who, when, upon visiting the University of Halle, he was offered the degree of Master of Arts in his thirteenth year, drew up fourteen theses, upon which he disputed next morning with such ability and precision that he delighted and surprised a crowded audience--or of a Mirandola, who, when a boy, was one of the best poets and orators of the age; who commenced the study of the canon law at fourteen, and at sixteen comprised the "Essentials of the Decretals" (contained in three volumes, folio) in an abridgment which won the applause of the most learned canonists; who, at eighteen, knew a great number of languages, and, at twenty-three, published at Rome nine hundred propositions in logic, mathematics, physic, divinity, magic and cabalistic learning, drawn from Latin, Greek, Jewish and Arabian writers, upon which he challenged the learned in all the schools of Italy to dispute with him.

      Hence a Crichton has been surnamed "The Admirable," and excited the wonder of the age in which he lived. Before he was twenty, he spoke and wrote ten different languages, and was master of all the sciences, of riding, singing and dancing, and played upon almost all sorts of musical instruments. At Paris, he challenged all who were skilled in any art or science to dispute with him in any of them--in Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Sclavonian, French, Spanish, Italian, English, Dutch and Flemish, in prose or verse--at the end of six weeks; during which time he regarded nothing but his amusements, while his learned competitors were preparing for the contest. He acquitted himself beyond all expectation. At Rome, also, he displayed astonishing powers and knowledge, and sustained for three days a scholastic conflict against all opposers, in any form they chose.

      Hence, too, a Dousa, who was conspicuous as a translator and a poet, was called by Joseph Scaliger "the ornament of the world;" and we are called upon to admire a Marcilia Euphrosyne, who at, ten years of age had made extracts from the most famous historians and orators, and could write Latin and Greek correctly, and at thirteen was conspicuous for her knowledge and taste in architecture; or the self-taught Constantia Grierson, of Kilkenny, who was mistress of French, [468] Latin, Greek and Hebrew at nineteen, besides having a good knowledge of mathematics and other branches of learning; or a Dermody, who was an eminent linguist and poet at ten years of age.

      And hence Juliette d'Aulincourt--who, at the age of eleven, was perfectly acquainted with ancient and modern history and possessed of great powers of mind and memory--was cited by French mothers as a model for their daughters; while those of Italy pointed to a Lilia Fundana, who, though she died in her fifteenth year, was celebrated beyond the Roman territory for her learning and accomplishments.

      Yet, after all the applause and admiration which men are accustomed to bestow upon mere intellectual superiority, it is no more to be compared with moral virtue than is the transient splendor of the meteor to the life-giving radiance of the orb of day. Some of the illustrious persons just enumerated died in childhood or in youth from the delicacy of their organization; while the gifted Dermody perished through intemperance, and "the Admirable Crichton" lost his life in a quarrel about a mistress in the streets of Mantua. None of them can be said to have benefited humanity, and the world is nothing the better for their having lived in it.

      Far different, indeed, are the merits of those honored spirits, and their conduct far more worthy of imitation, who have devoted their intellectual powers to the service of morality and their lives to the happiness of mankind, and who, if they have not been crowned with bays, have been embalmed in the tears of the orphan, the widow or the oppressed, and by their example have so illustrated the beauty and dignity of virtue that generations yet unborn will feel its influence. The names of Penn and Wilberforce will deserve to be remembered while men have rights and human nature has a friend; while to the remotest ages the victims of misfortune will be cheered by the name of Howard, who in the language of Burke, "visited all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples, not to make accurate admeasurements of the remains of ancient grandeur nor to form a scale of the curiosities of modern art, not to collect medals or to collate manuscripts, but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of human misery, depression and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken and compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan was original, and as full of genius as it was of philanthropy: it was a voyage of discovery--a circumnavigation of humanity." [469]

      It is a misfortune that parents not a few often speak in the presence of their children as if they would rather see them great than good, talented than moral, cunning than candid, selfish than generous, knavish than honorable. They would seem as if at all pains to cherish in their infant bosoms contempt for the poor, pride, arrogance, deceit, ambition, selfishness, rather than to have them admire goodness for its own sake, whether associated with wealth or poverty, beauty or deformity. And yet they are sometimes heard to complain that their children are what they have taught them to be, and are not what they never inculcated by precept or example.

      So commonly have all the rank vices of the age been found most conspicuous among the educated classes, that philosophers for the last century have been often employed in inquiries into the causes of this sad discrepancy. They have generally agreed that it is owing, in a great measure, to the devotion to Pagan literature, mythology, and morality necessary to collegiate honors. There is so much more of Grecian and Roman ambition, cruelty, perfidy, murder, rapine, injustice, selfishness, debauchery, general licentiousness and lewdness in an academic course, than of the Christian virtues and morality, that most theorists on the moral condition of the learned would ascribe to this the delinquencies of the age. "I do not hesitate a single moment," says that moral and beautiful writer, St. Pierre, "to ascribe to our modern education the restless, ambitious, spiteful, pragmatical and intolerant spirit of most Europeans. The effects of it are visible in the miseries of the nations. It is remarkable that those which have been most agitated internally and externally are precisely the nations among which our boasted style of education has flourished the most. The truth of this may be ascertained by stepping from country to country, from age to age. Politicians have imagined that they could discern the cause of public misfortunes in the different forms of government. But Turkey is quiet, and England is frequently in a state of agitation. All political forms are indifferent to the happiness of a state, as has been said, provided the people are happy: we might have added, and provided the children are so likewise.

      "The philosopher Laloubere, envoy from Louis XIV to Siam, says, in the account which he gives of his mission, that the Asiatics laugh us to scorn when we boast to them of the excellence of the Christian religion as contributing to the happiness of states. They ask, on reading our histories, how is it possible that our religion should be so humane while we wage war ten times more frequently than they do. What would they say, then, did they see among us perpetual lawsuits, the [470] malicious censoriousness and calumny of our societies, the jealousy of courts, the quarrels of the populace, the duels of the better sort and our animosities of every kind, nothing similar to which is to be seen in Asia, in Africa, among the Tartars or among savages, on the testimony of missionaries themselves? For my own part, I discern the cause of all these particular and general disorders in our ambitious education. When a man has drunk, from infancy upward, into the cup of ambition, the thirst of it cleaves to him all his life long, and it degenerates into a burning fever at the very feet of the altars." Here we have the fact and one of its chief causes clearly and forcibly set before us. To this we would add a second cause--viz.:--

      Intellectual greatness is estimated far above moral excellencies. Intellectual splendor is as the ruby and the diamond, while moral goodness, however eminent, is as the pavement in the street. The eulogies on splendid talent, great eloquence, diplomatic skill, forensic tact and clever management are long and loud and numerous; while the praises of virtuous deeds, in gentle whispers, short and far between, in private corners, fall upon our ears as matters of inferior moment.

      But a third reason of the neglect of moral culture is found in a very common error--viz. in the supposition that in cultivating the intellect we are cultivating the moral sentiments and feelings--that in enlightening the head we are improving the heart.

      Were it not a matter of fact, forcing itself upon our daily observation, that there is a possibility of intellectual culture without moral culture, one might be induced, from speculative reasonings, to conclude that in cultivating the mind he was cultivating the morals of youth. To the philosophic Christian it is impossible to study nature without seeing God in every law and in every arrangement of nature. The Christian philosopher will therefore be apt to conclude that the knowledge of nature and the knowledge of God are not only intimately, but, in some degree, inseparably, connected; yet society, as it now exists, presents to him the phenomenon of an avowed atheistic philosopher--of one who not only studies nature without seeing God the Supreme Architect and Lawgiver of nature, but of one who, while he boasts of the knowledge of nature, denies the existence of the God of nature. This being possible, it must not be thought incredible that we may have a system of intellectual culture without any moral influence, or that the intellectual powers of youth may in some degree be highly cultivated, while the moral powers are in no respect improved.

      True, indeed, philosophically and religiously regarded, every man is [471] uncultivated, uneducated and impolite who is immoral or profane. With the man of true science, every person is uneducated who cannot or who does not discern moral excellence, who cannot or does not appreciate it. And, if we except pure mathematics, we find it difficult to conceive how a person can understand any one science without discerning and appreciating the nature and value of moral and religious truth; for vapors do not more naturally ascend to the tops of the mountains, nor rivers more uniformly descend to the valleys, than do all the facts and truths of genuine science lead to religion or morality. Yet, by some unpropitious management, intellectual and moral culture have been divorced, and we have got up systems of education and schools for youth, the unnatural and unscientific object of which is to cultivate the perceptive and intellectual powers without the moral, and to give a fashionable, a popular and a scientific education without any knowledge of religious or moral truth. The consequence has been, that amongst the most highly educated there is often less religion and less morality than amongst the uneducated community. So generally has the notion obtained that religion and morality are neither sciences nor arts, neither useful nor elegant accomplishments, that it has become expedient to prove that moral culture is an essential part of a good education.

      The innumerable instances of moral degradation and ruin found in the ranks of the most talented and best educated in popular esteem, are beginning to excite a laudable interest on the subject of education. The fact that thousands of the flower of the community are forever ruined by receiving a college education, and that thousands of the wisest and best fathers, who have sons full of promise and ample means of giving them a liberal education, are deterred by the countless bankruptcies in fame and fortune amongst the educated, imperiously demands a change in the whole system, or at least furnishes an unanswerable argument in favor of uniting a rational system of moral training with the intellectual in the education of youth.

      Not only the absolute ruin of many of the educated, but the widespread mischief entailed upon society by the powerful influence of educated talent, shows that there is no necessary union between talent, education and morality, and also admonishes us of the necessity of a more infallible moral culture than is at present in existence. All the world acknowledge that education gives power--that it enables its possessor to be greatly advantageous or greatly injurious to society. A few educated persons in society are like an armed band well practised in all the tactics of war amongst an unarmed and undisciplined [472] community. They may be its best friends or its worst enemies, according to circumstances and as they employ themselves. We all know what talent and some learning could achieve in the life and labors of Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert, Rousseau, and in the other profane and licentious wits who introduced the "reign of terror" and the horrid scenes of the French Revolution, and whose writings to this hour, sustained by Hobbes, Volney, Chesterfield, Hume, Paine, Taylor and others of minor fame, are flooding society with profanity, impiety, debauchery, rapine, duelling, assassination, and every species of sensuality, fraud and injustice. The influence on society of such men, contrasted with that of Bacon, Locke, Newton, Boyle, Euler, Addison, Milton, Grotius, Butler, and a thousand kindred spirits who have bestowed science, religion and morality on millions of our race, fully proves that talent and learning, with religion and morality, are the choicest blessings. Without these, they are the most grievous curses to the individual and society.

      A fourth reason we shall now offer for the general neglect of moral culture in popular systems of education is that "religion and morality are matters of private and individual concern, and that it belongs to, parents and ministers of religion, rather than to the preceptors of literature or to schools and colleges, to take charge of such concerns."

      And what shall become of those who have irreligious and immoral parents and no ministers of religion? This view of the matter appears to us exceedingly erroneous and in the highest degree detrimental to the whole community. I am aware, indeed, that, like the Berlin and Milan Decrees, it is a special arrangement authorized only in preternatural circumstances by the great belligerent and antagonist powers, in contravention of the common and supreme decisions of the international code in times of general amity and peace. It is, indeed, a melancholy fact that we have no common religion even amongst Protestants, and that in a distracted, divided and alienated community, to secure party interests and to prevent rival ascendencies, we make a decree that it shall be unfair, ungenerous, impolitic and even immoral, if not irreligious, in any teacher, guardian or other person having in ward any infants or minors, to make a single suggestion on the whole subject of religion, lest in so doing his party should gain some advantage or its rival some loss by the operation. Therefore it is decreed that the subject of religious instruction shall belong exclusively to parents and ministers of religion, and, by consequence, all the grand, vital impulses to morality are taken away from schools and teachers; for, in spite of skepticism, deism, atheism or pantheism, there is an [473] inseparable connection between true morality and true religion. It is religion--the religion of the Bible, as we all agree--that suggests the master-motives and controlling impulses to morality. It is the belief of the Self-Existent, of the Eternal Majesty, whose omniscient eye pierces night and day, earth and sky, time and eternity; whose ear tries every sound, hears every whisper, and whose memory records every thought and word and action for a day of trial; that prompts, impels and guides the heart, the tongue, the hand, the foot, in the paths of virtue and morality. Apart from this belief, morality is mere policy or public utility, or the hypocrisy of a polite education.

      And can we not have a common religion, and free ourselves from this incubus that paralyzes every vital effort to introduce a purer, a brighter and a happier day on our country and the world? Protestants will all say, We may--we can--we ought. Let them say, We will--we shall; and it is done. Meanwhile, let the simple facts, without the theories of religious belief--let the belief of God, of Christ, of immortality, of eternal life and eternal death, without any partisan theory--let temperance, righteousness, benevolence, and judgment to come, without metaphysics, be inculcated on one, on all, by every parent, guardian, teacher, and in every school and college and university in our land--and we may have--nay, we shall have--quite another and a better state of things. The evidences, the absolute certainty and divine authority, of the Christian religion, of the Old and New Testaments, ought to be taught and inculcated, as an essential part of a good and liberal and polite education, in every high-school in Christendom.

      But there are some who, in their ultra-republicanism, say we ought to keep our children from any religious bias, creed or sentiment till they are of mature age and reason, and then leave it to themselves to choose what religious or moral system they may, in their independent judgment and full maturity of intellect, judge most suitable and profitable. This is the superlative of ultraism. Such a being as that described, free from religious or moral bias, educated, too, in the principles of literature and general science, marching forth in manhood's prime in quest of a religious creed, in search of religious and moral principles, never yet appeared amongst the children of men. It is full as rational and as probable as the late theory of making man immortal. Some French physiologist recently discovered that all the diseases that infect the human family are swallowed down into the stomach in the form of aliments of nature, and, therefore, logically argues that men would never be sick, and, consequently, would never die, if they could [474] live without eating, and very philosophically recommends a new art of living by absorption, as a salutary substitute for the dangerous and alarming process of eating and drinking.

      Some principles of religion and morality, or of irreligion and immorality, must be imbibed in society as it does now, or as it ever did, exist, by every child before it can reason or judge for itself; and the only alternative left is to decide whether parents and teachers shall leave it to accident what these principles shall be, or whether they shall attempt, in obedience to philosophy, to Solomon and to Paul, (for, in this, these three are one,) to "train up the infant in the way he should go," in the persuasion that "when he is grown he will not depart from it."

      The soil of the human understanding and heart must receive some seed before we arrive at boyhood, much more before we arrive at manhood. The question then is, whether we ourselves, the parents and the teachers of our youth, ought to plant the seeds of piety and humanity in their understandings and hearts, or whether we ought to let the soil bring forth the thorn, the thistle, the brier, or the other rank weeds of vice and immorality whose seeds may happen to be borne upon every polluted breath which at this hour infests the city and the country, the public and the private walks of life. It is not, methinks, the part of reason to prove a self-evident proposition: we, therefore, proceed to the last point of our discussion, without which it would seem to be without any interesting point and without much profit. That point is embraced in the question--

      How shall moral culture best accompany intellectual in the education of youth?

      If at any time we might indulge in a solecism, or in a paradox, or in something not exactly represented by either of these words, we would here ask the privilege to say that moral culture must always accompany intellectual culture, by always preceding and always following it. But how can it precede it and at the same time accompany it? It can precede it in the work of training or improving the moral faculties themselves, by exercising them before we artificially exercise the intellectual faculties. By presenting an object worthy of sympathy or of benevolence, and by exercising the mind, or the faculty of benevolence, upon this subject, we may improve the special organ by which the mind operates, if there be any, and certainly the faculty of benevolence; and, while the object is presented and the faculty exercised, we may direct the perceptive and perhaps employ the reflective powers upon this object. In some such way would we explain ourselves [475] when asked to unriddle this rather enigmatic representation. One thing we know, that all the feelings have appropriate objects in nature, and that the objects must be present before the senses or the mental vision or the feelings can be moved. Now, it happens that the feelings in infancy are much more easily moved and directed than the intellectual powers; and this is one reason--and the best reason--why they should be first exercised, in order not merely to give them a proper direction, but to strengthen and improve them. There are few who have not observed how soon an infant can feel the expressions of anguish or distress, and sympathize with them. Now, if any one wish to give a strong bias this way to the mind of a child, on the principle that frequent and healthy exercise always strengthens or makes more active and easy of operation every organ and faculty of man, all that is necessary to secure this distinctive attribute of character is to accustom the infant to many such scenes, accompanying and following them up with suitable instructions addressed to the intellectual powers. And so of every other affection and feeling in its constitution; for all are under the same law, and what is true of one is true of all.

      Another reason why the moral feelings ought to be first cultivated is found in the fact that if not cultivated soon they can never be so fully and successfully cultivated afterwards. This nature points out by giving them the greatest susceptibilities at first. Indeed, the excellency of the human constitution requires this; for if at more advanced developments of the mind and at riper years the moral nature of man could easily take on a new color or immediately assume another hue, then stability--the very basis of character, without which every thing in morals is modish and freakish--would be unattainable. It is, therefore, necessary to human excellence that only in early youth should the moral nature of man be susceptible of being moulded into any form. It is, then, true in philosophy, because true in fact, that moral culture must be attended to in perfect infancy and childhood, if we would have our pupils attain to high degrees of moral excellency.

      In harmony with this, we believe, are all human experience and observation; so that in the inductive science of mind and morals, it has become a law, or rather it is ascertained to be a law, of human nature, that early impressions are always the strongest. Therefore, sings the poet,--

And it is a maxim fast passing into popular use; and Heaven speed [476] its progress through all nations and languages! "There is but one moral seedtime in human life"--one time for moral training with certain effect, and that one period is that of infancy. The perceptive and reflective powers are susceptible of improvement, and have been improved almost to the end of life; whether the moral feelings become too rigid or have not room for expansion, it may not be the province of philosophy to decide; but the fact is certain that they are not greatly to be improved by education after the periods of infancy and early childhood have passed away. Hence, always excepting the omnipotent power of truth and love divine when interposed, we find the cunning, knavish and covetous lad a dishonest, secretive and roguish man; while we have in the benevolent, noble, generous youth the liberal, magnanimous and philanthropic citizen.

      The Bible offers no theories of astronomy, geology, chemistry or mental philosophy. It fears nothing, however, from the developments of the sciences of matter or of mind. Ignorance of nature, of the Bible and of true science led the Pope and his ecclesiastics to denounce all the leading scientific innovations upon ancient opinions, on the ground that they were unfriendly to religion and would finally destroy the credibility of the Bible. But a better knowledge of nature and of the Bible has shown that there is no discord or contradiction in their testimonies. Hence, without theorizing, the Bible says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The most improved science of mental philosophy says the same. Phrenology, rightly understood, demonstrates it.

      The philosopher of human nature, to illustrate the formative influence of early education, will tell us that if we habituate an infant to acts of cruelty towards animals or to his associates--if we early familiarize him with blood and carnage, though it be only with the destruction of innocent birds and innoxious insects--if with this we accustom him to deceit, debate, contention--it will require no spirit of prophecy to foretell that such a child will become a cruel, resentful and savage tyrant, fit for wars and stratagems and spoils. The Bible, without speculating on the force of habit, prohibits the use of blood as an article of food; forbids cruelty to animals; enjoins benevolence to all; and affirms that the sable Ethiopian and the spotted leopard can as easily change their color as those who have been habituated to doing evil can cease from it and change their course of action.

      Every monster in crime, when he tells the truth, tells such a story as Murrel the famous land-pirate of the West, now in the Nashville [477] penitentiary, has told. "My mother," says he, "was of the pure grit: she learned me and all her children to steal as soon as we could walk, and would hide for us whenever she could. At ten years old I was not a bad hand." We have not the history of any one who has come to an infamous end whose story does not begin with some early depravity that was fostered, or, if not fostered, that was not restrained by the hand of discipline of those whose office it was to be the guide and the guardian of his youth.

      That there is the bona indoles of the Romans--a good natural disposition, a better and a best, though sometimes this may be owing to an early and unperceived bias, and that in such cases less labor will be requisite to form a strong moral inclination--will be admitted; and that there is also the prava indoles--a bad, a worse and a worst disposition, though this is not unfrequently the creature of bad nursing, and that in such instances much more attention will be necessary even at the beginning--will not be denied; yet still it will be contended that both the good and the bad disposition will be overcome by education, and that by the early appliances of a rational moral culture the worst natural disposition may be completely subdued, and the best greatly improved.

      In proof of this innate and incorrigible prava indoles and of the natural bias to a certain course of action, it is said that Alexander the Great, when asked in his youth to contend for a prize in the Olympic games, answered, "he would if he had kings to run against him." And Cassius, who conspired against Cæsar for the good of Rome, is said, when a lad, to have struck the son of Sylla because he said his father was master of the Roman people. Now, of these and many such instances it may be affirmed with all certainty, and proved by many incidents, that a proper education might have changed their character--might have turned the ambition of Alexander into another direction, and the patriotism of Cassius into the love of human kind.

      In illustration, if not in proof, of this also, this same Alexander may be again summoned from the repose of many centuries. On the authority of his most credible biographers, it is said that he was naturally and decidedly of a generous and even of a merciful disposition; yet he was guilty of some very barbarous actions--such as dragging at the wheels of his triumphal chariot the conquered governors of vanquished cities. Plutarch, says the "Spectator," explains this by informing us that "Alexander, in his youth, had a teacher named Lysimachus, who, though he was a man destitute of all politeness, ingratiated himself both with Philip and his pupil, and became the second [478] man at court, by calling the king Peleus, the prince Achilles, and himself Phœnix. It is no wonder if Alexander, having been thus used not only to admire Achilles, but to personate him, should think it glorious to imitate him in this piece of cruelty and extravagance."

      There are none so good or so bad by nature as not to be greatly improved by moral culture. I know that Seneca, in his own pretty style, has somewhere said, "As the immortal gods never learned any virtue, though they are endued with all that is good, so there are some men who have so natural a propensity to what they should follow, that they learn it almost as soon as they hear it." Still, let it be remembered that it is conceded by this distinguished philosopher that they must hear it and learn it. There is nothing that lives, animal or vegetable, that is not susceptible of improvement by proper training. Plants and flowers and fruits of every sort are improved by the science and art of man. But even here the hand of cultivation must be timeously applied.

      If any thing further on the power of early education were necessary, we would remind our hearers that it is to be found in Spartan history. The care of the Spartans, and their ingenuity in the early training of their children, have become proverbial; and history, amply testifies that "Sparta became the mistress of Greece, and famous throughout the earth for her civil and military discipline, as the fruit of her system of infant education." The Spartan boy who suffered the fox he had stolen and concealed under his garment to eat into his bowels rather than be detected in a theft--which, according to his education, was the most shameful of all things imaginable--speaks volumes to those who are intrusted with the education of children.

      But enough, and more than enough, for the intelligent, has been said on the necessity, importance and power of early moral culture; and that moral training must, and, of right, ought, if possible, to precede, to accompany and to succeed every other kind of education, from the very dawnings of mind to the valedictory oration of the university, is, we presume, satisfactorily decided in the judgment of all.

      But yet, in answer to the question, How shall moral culture be most successfully promoted as the most important branch of early education? we would presume to suggest that, in addition to all that intelligent and virtuous parents and nurses can accomplish at home, infant schools, exclusively for moral culture, should be patronized in every city, village and hamlet in the land. These schools, having behavior alone for their object, could be made most interesting and pleasing to children. It would not be easy to describe any thing more interesting than a class of infants from two to six years old, formed into a little [479] commonwealth, for the sake of learning, practising and displaying all the social virtues. Under an accomplished male or female teacher or teachers, by oral instruction, by precept, by example, by the early and healthy exercise of the moral powers, every thing that is pious, just, true, good, kind, merciful, benevolent, honorable, dignified--by a thousand incidents, amusements, recreations, adapted to health, pleasure, and the development and control of passion, feeling and propensity in perfect unison with nature and age--could be most happily and successfully inculcated and deeply impressed upon the juvenile constitution.

      The only thing we recollect to have met with in our reading similar to this project is the Persian school of equity, of which Xenophon, in his life of the great Cyrus gives some account. It would appear from those brief notices that the Persian children went to this school to learn justice, sobriety, temperance and the social virtues useful to the state, as children in other countries went to the schools of literature to learn the arts and sciences of a liberal education. We are told that the governors of these schools spent much of the day in adjusting differences and in teaching their pupils to give judgment against their companions convicted of the crime of violence, cheating, slander or ingratitude.

      We would be far from proposing these Persian schools as a model to a Christian community; yet, so far as they bear witness to the supremacy of morality, they deserve our admiration, and suggest to us the utility and practicability of having schools for the cultivation of the social virtues.

      Perhaps the present infant-school institutions might be converted into seminaries of moral excellence, or have appended to their literary and scientific character a moral regimen, which would for the first years be their principal rather than their secondary concern, and thus make the simple rudiments of knowledge an interlude between the different scenes of moral culture.

      To the domestic and infant-school system of moral training--which only gives a bias to virtue and sows the seeds of moral excellence in the human constitution--must be added the influence of every school and every seminary through which the pupil advances in his literary career. Every teacher must himself be moral; and whatever truth or fact or event he teaches or communicates to his pupils--if moral meaning or moral bearing it have, he must either point it out himself or induce the students to point it out to one another. They must be made to perceive and to feel that in man's physical endowments and in [480] his intellectual powers there is neither virtue nor vice, good nor evil, honor nor dishonor, except as they are or are not guided by the moral sentiments. It must be placed before them in the strongest colors and enforced by the brightest example, that the most beautiful person and the most splendid intellect render not their possessor respectable or amiable unless he be adorned with the graces and excellencies of virtuous character. To them the idea must be made most pleasing and acceptable that honor comes not from country, family, place, or fortune, but from good behavior; and that not a renowned or titled ancestry, but virtue itself, is the true and the sole nobility; that, in one word and in the true sense of that one word,

Gentlemen of the College of Professional Teachers:--

      Permit one who for several years has experienced your toils, who has felt your responsibilities and shared in the pleasure of your calling, both in Europe and America, to remind you that you are engaged in an object of superlative importance, not only to the present generation, but that, in a good measure, is intrusted to you the destiny of the future. The youth of this generation are the hope of the next; and, consequently, in forming the intellectual and moral character of this germ of future generations, you cannot but in some good degree shape their destiny. But, further than this, gentlemen, your influence extends beyond the mere temporal conditions of our being. On the bias which you may give in favor of truth and moral principle, may depend the eternal destiny of many generations. Next to the parents of your pupils, you possess a power over human character paramount to any officers in the whole community--I would say, if I had time to qualify it, beyond even the ministers of religion. It is only sometimes that we can trace to the conscientiousness and benevolence of an individual benefactor the happiness and prosperity of a whole community; but this has been occasionally done, as in the case of Roger Williams and William Penn. And, were we more observant of the concatenation of things in the way of cause and effect, we would more frequently find that to the nursery and to the school we are indebted for that first impulse which has turned the current of human action into a new channel and materially changed the complexion of society for many venerations. May it not, then, be in your power--co-operating, as [481] you do, in your efforts to introduce a more philosophical and moral system of education in harmony with the human constitution--to stamp a character upon future times alike honorable to yourselves and beneficial to the world?

      Give me leave, then, gentlemen, to say to you, and, through you, to all intrusted with the formation of a better character, for the next and future generations, than that which the present has attained, that this cause can never flourish as it ought till the public mind is so imbued with its importance and practicability as to make it the paramount duty of the whole government of every State to take into its most grave and deliberate consideration the whole chapter of the ways and means by which it will be impossible for ignorant and vicious parents to exist, or, if existing, to corrupt their offspring; and by which a solid, substantial, literary and moral education shall be made accessible to every child born upon its territory, and not only accessible, but unavoidable in all cases where nature has not withheld the powers and susceptibilities necessary to its attainment.

      It is only, indeed, when the maxim that intelligence and virtue are the essential pillars of the state shall have deeply penetrated the public mind and indelibly engraven itself upon the apprehension of all, that it will become entirely obvious that it is incomparably more rational and commendable to legislate for the training of children than for the punishment of vicious men; that it is much more economical and philanthropic to raise funds to educate and discipline youth in the paths of true science and moral excellence than to erect houses of correction or to provide ways and means of preventing rapine, violence and murder, or of suppressing tumults and insurrections among the people; that the rational education of youth is the highest object to the whole community--to the patriot, the philanthropist and the Christian; and that those who will improve and elevate its character and facilitate its operations are to be honored and ranked amongst the most useful citizens and the best benefactors of mankind.

      You have the honor, gentlemen, of having begun at the right place, of having selected the best subject in existence on which to concentrate your powers of doing good. While other friends of human kind--the patriot, the politician and the economist--have taken the country--its convenience, its trade, its commerce, its resources--under their kind auspices, you have wisely selected the human species--the human soul itself--on which to exercise all your powers of doing good. If, then, he who, by his science and devotion to his country's interest, has made two blades of grass grow where formerly nature produced but [482] one is worthy to be ranked amongst a nation's benefactors, how large the dimensions of his fame, how wide the circumference of that Christian's glory who shall have doubled, trebled, and perhaps more than quadrupled, the powers and capacities of his race for knowing, for doing and for enjoying good!

      It will not satisfy this community to be told of what has been achieved in Rome, in [483] Philadelphia, in New York, by the defenders of that religion. We all wish to hear what they can say for themselves in the Valley of the Mississippi; for we are fully persuaded that this is the place to which they look with most earnestness as the seat of their American empire; and therefore it behooves them to be ready to sustain themselves, if they feel that assurance and infallibility which they profess. And surely amongst the vigilant and able shepherds of that orthodox flock, some one will be prompt to defend from Protestant wolves their feeble sheep now scattered in this vast wilderness. Our confidence in the Protestant principles is such as to banish all fear of the issue of meeting any prelate of the East or West on any of the propositions which have already been most respectfully submitted.

A. C..      

[PLA 453-484]