ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. O 



the absorbents, the brain and nerves, the lungs, the stomach and 

 viscera, &c. The structure and functions of all these ought to be 

 familiar to the teacher, and in an elementary way explained to his 

 pupils. The conditions of their sound and healthy action — in 

 other words, of bodily health and comfort — should be made plain ; 

 and the miseries arising from the abuse of any of them. 



Studies like these were thought to belong to medical education 

 alone. This is a grievous error, and one which is visited by much 

 severe suffering. In ignorance of what they do, multitudes ruin 

 their health, and if they are not hurried to early graves, drag on a 

 life of wretchedness. These consequences would not follow ; human 

 beings would have longer life, would cease to see one half of their 

 offspring cut off" before two years of age, and would be relieved from 

 much suffering, by very simple lessons on the structure and func- 

 tions of the human body. " I do not mean that every one shall 

 become his own physician,'' said a writer on the subject, *' but I 

 would save every man from being his own destroyer.'' 



The mind — that portion of man which feels and thinks — is com- 

 posed of, or rather acts by, distinct primitive faculties. These may 

 be classed as follows : — Feelings and intellect, inferior feelings 

 and superior feelings, knowing faculties, reflecting faculties. There 

 is no better definition of a faculty of mind than a power to perceive, 

 to reflect, or to feel in a particular way. The faculties are instinc-, 

 tive and innate, and may be called — even the highest of the reflect- 

 ing powers may — human instincts. The inferior feelings are so 

 called because their objects are lower, and because they are common 

 to man and the inferior animals. They include the propensities 

 necessary to the existence, continuation, safety, and physical com- 

 fort of the species. Such are the instincts of love of life, of food, of 

 sex, of the young, courage to repel danger, love of property, of self, 

 of estimation, of resentment, and caution or fear.* All these facul- 

 ties are given to man for use, and, as God's work, are good. The 

 abuse of them essentially constitutes vice and crime. This is the 

 law in the members which wars against the law in the mind. 

 Moral education will therefore regulate, but not repress these feel- 

 ings ; will confine them to their own useful and necessary sphere, 

 but will prevent them from going beyond it. 



* The reader will perceive that the faculties here enumerated are those 

 which are admitted to he natural and innate in man by the phrenologists, 

 although, for the benefit of those who have not as yet turned their attention 

 to the subject, the terms of ordinary parlance are adopted by Mr. Simpson, 

 instead of the phrenological nomenclature. — Eds. 



