education as a preliminary to a moral and intellectual Constituted as we are conjointly of body and soul, the two interlacing at every point, the physical being the counterpart of the spiritual, it is in vain to think of a healthy mental action without a healthy bodily frame, or at least without a healthy nervous system. Bodily conditions we know by experience may create any form of mental disease-weakness of mind-indolence of mind-unnatural propensities— headstrong passions; fanaticism, or indifference. And not only this, but there is good reason to believe on sober physiological grounds, that every impulse given to the nervous system produces a permanent change in that system, which is never effaced;-that every impression leaves a trace which may afterwards come back at any time into consciousness;—and that it is by the accumulation of such traces, that habits, tendencies, and ultimately to a large extent character is formed. So delicate is the nervous organisation in early life, that no pains can be too great to preserve it from shock;-to give it a healthy action ;to surround it with impressions, that may have a beneficial influence upon the after life. We know not how many fine organic systems, even in infancy, lose their tone and are crippled for life by a false or absurd treatment. Whole nations can be affected with superstition by the tales of their nurses;-and even if the reason rise up afterwards in rebellion against them, yet the nerves themselves never recover the cold thrill which their young life experienced; and which has peopled the very pulp of the brain with uneffacable spectres.

We will suppose, then, a sound physical frame and a healthy nervous system to exist;-let us go on next to trace the process of mental development, when the inward mental activity begins to shew itself in a more decided form. A careful analysis of mental phenomena shews us, that all our activities of mind may be easily grouped under three heads-those relating to

intelligence; to emotion; and to the will. I cannot stop now to shew you the process by which this classification has been arrived at; all I can do is to point out the fact, that philosophical thinkers in all parts of Europe have come virtually to this result. At the same time you are not to regard these as three distinct and separate faculties. The mind is one, and indivisible; its whole being is really thrown into every act. An act of the intellect implies a power of will; —and every act of will is impelled more or less by some inward emotion. All we can say is-that these are three forms of mental activity, which come from time to time (either one or the other) into a conscious predominence. If this, then, be a true analysis, one preliminary conclusion is very obvious,-that each form of activity needs to be harmoniously developed; i. e., that education must contemplate contemporaneously the expansion of the understanding;-the culture of the feelings;-and the guidance of the will. This result is happily so much the easier arrived at, inasmuch as the mind being a unity, and putting out its whole nature in every act, we cannot possibly develop any one form of activity, legitimately without at the same time influencing the rest. Thus, for example, you cannot cultivate the understanding, without influencing both the emotions and the will; nor the will, without its reaction on the feelings, and the intellect.

And this observe is a complete psychological answer to that thoughtless utterance, to which this age has sometimes given vent;-namely, that there is an actual danger in giving a mere intellectual education to the people at large; that you only give them more power for evil without checking the exercise of it. It ought to be remembered, I reply, that if we give more power for evil by intellectual culture, we also give more power to understand that it is evil; and a clearer insight into its consequences. Moreover, we cannot cultivate the intellect without at the

same time giving a more refined play to the emotions, and a greater power of control over the will. The man of a cultivated intellect has in every respect an advantage morally over the uncultivated. His motives to virtue are increased, his powers of selfgovernment vastly multiplied-he cannot yield to degradation and vice ever after, without at least inwardly dispising his own wickedness and folly. I do not say that a mere intellectual culture can do every thing-but I say it can do much, that if it ever does bring danger it carries also with it the antidote; -and that viewed, any how you like, it is the one necessary foundation for all other improvement whether individual or social. But to return to our point, the three-fold classification of the faculties.

Are we, then, to take the young mind just when it begins to bud forth and put it under this full course of intellectual and other training;-are we to commence by stimulating at once the intellect, the emotions, and the will, into immediate development? Nay, far from it. The mind grows up together with the body organically, from a mere germ. Exactly as the plant does, when it puts forth a tender shoot;then the leaf;-then a blossom;—and then the fruit;-and just as a plant requires different treatment in every stage of its growth, so also does the mind of man require a very different culture in each period of its development. The chief art of all education lies in fact exactly here-in appreciating the wants of each era in our mental development, and applying the proper food and stimulus to it.

Our next aim then must be to find out what these stages of development are; to shew in what order the mental faculties and habitudes make their appearance:—and what is the nature of the stimulus they severally require for their sound and healthy expansion.

Now the first stage of our life, I need hardly tell you, is one in which we live entirely in our sensations.

The whole apparatus of the organs of sense, (unlike the rest of the nervous system) is complete from the earliest infancy, and the child, placed in a world of objects which stimulate these sense-organs, is wholly absorbed for a time in the impressions which thus crowd in together upon the mind. This sensational period (by which we commence our life's pilgrimage) is mainly characterised by the mind being wholly sunk in the feeling of the moment;-it shews us the incipient man in perfect unity with nature. The world, as a world distinct from, and opposed to self, has not yet dawned on the soul; we see that soul on the contrary just rising up from the realms of mere physical existence; and just as we are unable literally to perceive the distinct nature of any thing in which we are bodily immersed, so mentally the soul, while half mersed in matter, perceives not the material world as distinct from itself, but is borne along simply on the tide of its own evanescent sensations. The education of the senses accordingly (for education may begin even here) is almost wholly physical. It consists almost entirely in keeping up a proper relation between the stimulous on the one side, and the organ on the other. The following laws, for example, hold good universally:-1st, That if the organ be overtaxed it will be proportionately weakened. Overstraining the eye, e. g. by too long attention to small objects, or by excessive light, dims and finally destroys it. 2ndly, The periodical exercise of an organ tends directly to strengthen it-it gains power by alternate exercise and rest. 3rdly, Freshness and vitality are imparted to all the organs of sense, by presenting to them fresh and natural objects. An eye accustomed to dirt and squalor and deformity gets dull and heavy; while the beauties of nature stimulate the very power of the sense itself. So an ear dimmed by noise and confusion gets insensible to all the finer harmonies of nature, or of music. The practical lesson we should learn is-that we

ought, if possible, to surround childhood with decency -cleanliness-propriety-and if possible with beauty, whether of nature or art. The senses require food and stimulus appropriate to them, as well as the stomach and digestive organs; neither can the one be healthily developed any more than the other, without the nutriment which nature dictates. I pity often a crowd of infants when I see them confined in a dark, chilly, bare, unadorned, prison-like schoolroom, where every effort of the teacher to awaken the dormant consciousness is counteracted by frightful objects, which repel instead of alluring the senses; and still more to be pitied are those squalid denizens of our courts and alleys, to whom the universe_can appear little less than a combination of grey dirtiness, unrelieved by one of those charms of nature, for which the senses unconsciously thirst and pine. You, who must live encircled by brick-walls, surround your abodes at least with some objects of natural interest;-train up a flower or two in your windows; let a few tender blossoms tell of the glory of the spring, or the luxuriance of summer without; or if not this, yet your very household implements, in this age of cheap manufacture, may have something artistic about their form and colouring, that will attract the eye and throw some straggling beam of beauty to the soul within.

The sensational age, however, rapidly passes away. Although the education of the senses may continue on into after life; yet the period in which they form the whole experience and activity of the man lasts not long. The mind soon begins to struggle, as it were, out of itself. As self-consciousness develops, a world-consciousness develops step by step with it, until at length the mind places itself and the world in a clear opposition the one to the other.

The power of doing this, ushers in the perceptive age; the age of simple intuition;-that in which the mind stands face to face with nature, and receives