PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION.

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

SECTION I.

On the Object of Education.

THE object of education should be so to train up a child as to render him capable of fulfilling the future destination of his life. But what is the general destination of human life? On the answer to this question the direction of all education must evidently depend. Nor must we imagine that we have determined what this direction should be, when we say that the aim of education is to develope the faculties; this is rather its business than its aim.

No doubt the faculties are cultivated and expanded by education; and were it our only object to afford our pupil the means of existing in this world, it would still be the business of education to unfold them. In savage as in civilised life, certain qualities are cultivated; but are there not some which we would favour VOL. I.

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in preference to others? And do we not wish to give some particular direction to that progressive improvement and expansion of the human mind for which we are so anxious? As the slightest difference in the proportion of its constituent elements influences the nature of our moral constitution, it is of the highest importance to know what end we propose to ourselves, in order to decide on our mode of action.

Now, the most striking and sublime characteristic of Christianity is, the having proposed to men something more than mere earthly felicity as their object. Christianity declares to us in its sacred language, that with the assistance of Heaven man may, even in this life, begin to recover the lost image of his Creator; and that if he fulfil the conditions proposed to him in the Gospel, -conditions, the fulfilment of which will, of itself, tend to the purification of his heart, the great expiation which has been offered for his sins will procure for him eternal salvation; that is to say, reunion with God in another life.

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Ideas so sublime are in harmony with their We could neither wish for more, nor expect less, from a divine revelation. Reason, experience, cool reflection, the aspirations of the heart, all declare to us that we must often renounce present happiness in order to satisfy the demands of conscience; and that though

misery is the invariable attendant on vice, virtue is not always rewarded with prosperity in

this world.

We are apt to mistake the means for the end. The desire of happiness is one of the motives which urges us to the improvement of our faculties, and it thus favours our progress towards the true end of our existence. But the knowledge of one of the springs which impels us to action, is not the knowledge of our final destination. He who is ignorant of the use of a watch, and who examines its interior attentively, may, by his sagacity, comprehend its mechanism, may discover wherein its moving power consists, and how its action is distributed, but could not find out that this complicated machine is intended to be a measurer of time. That is the secret of the inventor, and can be known only to those who are acquainted with his intentions. And so neither can we determine the destination of human life, if we consider only the mechanism of our actions. But if the result, to which the course of life leads us, be observed, we shall find that our supposed end-happiness has not been attained.

Besides, this is considering only one of the many motives by which we are influenced. It cannot be denied that the love of what is good, just, or true, is also natural to man. No being is so abandoned of Heaven as not to feel that

he is subject to some moral obligations, and that he has certain duties to fulfil in this world. This is the true law; that law of the soul, which is always admitted on cool reflection: that law, which, though we continually transgress, we cannot disown. The mere desire of happiness is but a physical propensity, acting upon our senses, and those inclinations which are under their dominion, as the force of gravity acts upon inert matter; whilst the real privilege and distinction of man consists in his power of resisting such impulses.

The contradictory results presented by the intricate study of the human heart can never be explained, if we allow of only one motive of action. In the physical world we meet with a continual opposition of forces, a continual balancing and counterbalancing; and why should we expect to find only one principle of action in the moral world? St. Paul tells us that we have two laws within us * ; and our inward feelings, our experience, our reason, all confirm this declaration. A blind instinct, necessary perhaps to the physical order of things, impels us to seek after pleasure, and thus favours the developement of our faculties; but we feel that these faculties, and life itself, are intended only to elevate us to a superior state of

* Romans, vii. 23.