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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



his thoughts, should never be recalled from them 

 to think about his words. In this respect, much 

 of the higher education of the world is conduct- 

 ed on an essentially faulty principle, by which 

 the words and phrases of a language are made 

 subjects of reflection. The operation in these 

 cases may be good for the mental faculties, but 

 it is very bad for the language, and it is still 

 worse for the language-using faculty. The 

 shrewd sense of Cobbett enabled him to antici- 

 pate the results of physiologists, when he said 

 that children should learn languages as birds 

 learn to chirp and sing — that is, by imitation. 

 The genius of Mr. Prendergast led him to the same 

 conclusion ; and the principles laid down in his 

 " Mastery System of learning Languages " are 

 in absolute accordance with all that is known 

 about the proper relations of the nervous cen- 

 tres to the act of speech. 



As the power to arrest a sensation from 

 going out in action, the power to detain it and 

 dwell upon it, so as to become acquainted not 

 only with its general character but also with the 

 small peculiarities by which it may be differenti- 

 ated from others of like kind — as this power lies 

 at the root of the faculty of observation, so the 

 power to prevent an idea from going out in ac- 

 tion, the power to detain it and examine it in all 

 its bearings, lies at the root of the faculty of re- 

 flection, and affords materials for the operations 

 of the judgment and of the will. The former 

 steps in to decide upon the conduct that shall 

 be pursued, the latter carries the decision into 

 effect. Want of space forbids us to point out 

 how little is intelligently done, in ordinary 

 schools, to cultivate the power of observing — 

 although without this power there cannot only 

 be no accuracy, but even no love of truth ; and 

 we can only glance in the slightest way at the 

 bearing of educational methods upon judgment 

 and will. It is comparatively easy to restrain 

 ideas which excite no feeling, but the great work 

 of the educator should be to give a similar con- 

 trol over those which have been mentioned as 

 the emotions. Using the words in their widest 

 sense, conduct must in every case be determined 

 either by emotion or by will. The human 

 agent, when an idea which is associated with 

 pleasure or pain is presented to his conscious- 

 ness, either acts on the emotional impulse, to 

 secure the pleasure or to avoid the pain, or he 

 considers and decides. Between the typical 

 cases on both sides there will be many in which 

 emotion and volition have a struggle for mas- 

 tery, a struggle that may terminate in favcr of 



either. But it should be one great aim of educa- 

 tion to withdraw conduct from the control of 

 emotion, and to place it securely under the con- 

 trol of will ; the word conduct, in this relation, 

 being used to include the direction of the 

 thoughts as well as of the acts. The predomi- 

 nance of an emotion, whether it be good or 

 bad when abstractedly considered, means the 

 predominance of the emotional state over the 

 will ; and the volition which is habitually subju- 

 gated by a so-called laudable emotion will be 

 subjugated with equal ease by any other when 

 the first is exhausted or superseded. This is a 

 matter of familiar experience in those emotional 

 forms of religion which are continually being 

 displaced by the ascendency of other kinds of 

 passion. Emotion invests certain ideas wilh an 

 inherent attractiveness which renders it easy to 

 dwell upon them, but which does not on that 

 account render them any the more trustworthy 

 as motives of conduct. 



The power to retain ideas before the con- 

 sciousness, and to examine them in all their bear- 

 ings, has an equal applicability to the moral and 

 to the intellectual side of man's nature. When 

 exerted with reference to the former, it leads to 

 the growth of a standard of duty in accordance 

 with knowledge, and to the shaping of the life in 

 harmony with this standard. When exerted with 

 reference to the latter, it leads to the possession 

 of mastery over the attention, to the ability, that 

 is, to fix the thoughts upon some predetermined 

 object of pursuit. How these great ends, which 

 are necessary conditions to the attainment of ex- 

 cellence, may be worked for, and compassed, we 

 must leave our readers to learn from Dr. Carpen- 

 ter himself, saying only that he tells the story in 

 the language of a master of English, with a sim- 

 plicity and directness before which difficulties 

 and obscurities vanish like ghosts in sunbeams, 

 and with a copiousness and aptness of illustration 

 which are rendered the more valuable by being 

 derived from the most ordinary acts and circum- 

 stances, so that the experience cf daily life is 

 made to furnish a key to some of the most recon- 

 dite problems of physiology. It would be diffi- 

 cult to exaggerate the benefit which a full com- 

 prehension of the principles thus dealt with would 

 be calculated to confer upon the coming genera- 

 tions of the human race. 



Lastly, in a concluding chapter of eloquence 

 and dignity worthy of its subject, Dr. Carpenter 

 grapples boldly with the attitude of Science tow- 

 ard Religion, and with the doubts and difficulties 

 of those who are unable to reconcile a reign of 



