Providence. The individual man may, and often does, never come to a full development of his faculties at all. The whole circumstances of his life perhaps conspire to stunt his nature, and impede both intellectual and moral growth. But such cannot be the case with universal man. So sure as there is purpose in the universe-and so sure as there is a mind which regulates it, humanity has a course to run and an end to fulfil which no temporary checks can or will finally contravene,—and we have now in this age enough of the course of human progress already before us, to trace somewhat of its true character, and measure at least a portion of the vast cycle which it is destined to accomplish.

Perhaps there is nothing which so strikingly places before us the necessity of a careful and an enlarged education for the individual, as a comparison of the earlier with the later stages of human history. Look at man as he appeared in the rude aspect of primeval times, and even still appears amongst those tribes which are only commencing the race of human civilization; and then contrast him with man as he now appears on the busy arena of modern civilized life. In the one, we see the absolute reign of sense,-of passion,-of brute force,undisguised even by the cloak, which custom now obliges the vicious and the brutal to throw around their excesses; in the other cases we see (at least in every true representative of the spirit of his age) the animal nature under due control,-the emotions refined, the will regulated, and reason sitting at the helm to conduct the whole movement of the mind itself by wise and enlightened counsels.

Now remember that the whole of the difference between these two developments of human nature is due essentially to the historic process of man's education in the world; and that we have, in educating ourselves, to concentrate the whole of this process into the brief period which each individual can afford to

devote to his own mental development. We come naked into the world as our remotest forefathers did; --and why is it that, ere twenty summers have rolled over our heads, we can attain a degree of knowledge, -of power,—and of moral control, to which they were utter strangers? It is clearly because the education of the race is concentrated in a certain sense in the individual;-because we each of us stand upon the shoulders of the past-and become, or ought to become, in ourselves a summary of all that which has before been slowly and laboriously attained by time, and by labour.

Man in his savage state is like a rough block just hewn from the quarry: there is all the material in him which nature can or will ever put there;—there is the strength, and tenacity of substance, the fineness of grain, the white marble in all its pristine purity;-but the sculptor's hand has not yet been there, to shape the material into the delicate proportions of humanity. What the sculptor then has to do with the marble, education has to do with the soul; and it has already required many an agemany a century-nay many a millenium, to bring that soul out from the rough block and fashion it into its present human proportions. The educator, however, guided and assisted by the past has to perform this very work upon the individual, during the few short years which in each case at most can be allotted to his task; and therefore it is that he needs all the wisdom which the history of the past can cast upon the problem of human education itself. That there must be some analogy between the development of humanity at large, and the development of the individual is almost self-evident: for they both start from the same point; both contain the same elements to work upon; and both tend to the same result. The historic course of the one, therefore, ought to cast some light upon the individual course of the other; and humanity should be a

guide to us in training and educating the man.

We must try then to catch a few glimpses of human truth to night, as they arise from the light of history, and are reflected from thence on the great problem of education.

If you carry your minds back into the most distant antiquity, and contemplate the state of mankind when the vast plains of Asia were the central point of human culture, how immense is the difference presented between the patriarchal life of the primitive world, and the busy scene of our modern civilization! We feel at once that mankind was then, compared with now, in its infancy-or at any rate in its early childhood. Everything indicates the predominance of the intuitive faculty over all the rest. The man (like a child) is luxuriating in the mere exercises of the senses, and of his bodily vigour. The culture of the young, if then attended to at all, consisted only in physical exercises, such as in riding, and shooting with the arrow ;-in displays of muscular strength and agility;—or perhaps in the art of managing those vast herds of cattle in which property chiefly consisted.

The Oriental mind, as displayed in those early ages, possessed, accordingly, all that freshness,-all that absence of self-consciousness;-all that warmth, and fantastic impetuosity, which always characterize a mere intuitional life. This peculiar temperament,this total want of reflective self-consciousness-you may see manifested in every department of their mental or practical activity.

Take, for example, the Oriental idea of society. Here the individual was not yet mature; he had not yet come to the sense of his own personal worth, in the community of minds;-so far from that, his only idea of society consisted in submission to authorityan authority which first grew out of the paternal relation, and still bore upon it a sacred and almost theocratic character. Look, again, at the Oriental phil

osophy. Thought indeed, even in the abstract sense of that word, existed; but all attempts at philosophy were crude efforts to frame a cosmogony;-to solve the problem of creation;-i. e. to answer the very questions which the child in his simplicity even now puts, when he would fain know how it is that the trees can grow, and the sun can shine,-and the rain can fall,—the flowers blossom, and the sea heave up its waters upon the sandy shore.

In religion, again, the Oriental nations were almost universally pantheistie; their inward sense of reverence led them necessarily to adore; but they had not yet been able to separate in their thoughts God from nature;-any more than they had separated the thinking, willing, and acting mind, from the material body, in the whole phenomena of human existence.

Such being their position in the scale of intellectual development, it was impossible that they should have any distinct theoretical ideas about education. Practical rules they might have for the conduct of human life (objectively considered), but as they knew nothing about the mind and its faculties-as they had no such conceptions as are included in, what we now term Psychology or Ethics, it could not possibly be the case that any principles of education should be either developed or even required. Nature alone was their Educator; and the very highest point to which they attained was merely a vivid intuition of nature, or of human life; without any of that mental discipline which leads either to a moral control over the passions, or an intellectual insight into scientific truth. One exception alone existed in the whole circle of the oriental nations, I mean in the case of the Jews. They alone, of all their ancient contemporaries, succeeded in breaking through the cloud-land of pantheism, and of grasping the idea of Jehovah as a living personality. But with all this, as we well. know, their intellectual culture was extremely contracted, and the only instruments of popular educa

tion consisted in an elaborate symbolism, in which the elevated theistic conceptions they had attained were presented rather as an instinctive faith, than planted like positive principles of realised truth in the understanding.

So soon as we pass from the Oriental world into the active scene of Greek civilization, we feel at once that the whole atmosphere of human existence is changed. The great drama of human history has commenced a new act, and the elements which form the chief interest in it are now all of a totally new character. In the Greek we no longer see humanity guided merely by intuitive impressions;-the elements of self-consciousness there appear from the very first. The Greek knows that he has a soul and an intellect within him; he can place himself in bold contrast with nature;-he can look within as well as without; detect the secret workings of his own mind; analyse the phenomena of his own consciousness; and strip away the fleeting impressions of the moment from the permanent elements of his more fixed ideas. In a word, he can not only form within himself ideal representations of nature, but he knows that they are ideal representations, and is fully conscious of the part which his own mind has had in constructing them. In the Greek, accordingly, the representative faculty is in the ascendency. The ideas which he creates are vivid and exuberant, -the memory is inexhaustible-the imagination fertile almost beyond conception, and the power of expression utters itself in a tongue the most harmonious, the most plastic,-the most versatile, and fruitful which humanity has ever produced. This exuberant power of representation, however, not only manifests itself in their life and language; it not only pours itself forth in poetry and song; it becomes still further the parent of Art. The Greek is not content with forming ideals in his own mind;he feels impelled to express them externally;-he