" THOUGHTS ON PHYSICAL EDUCATION." 91 



remembering, or calculating by numbers. Now the former are as 

 susceptible of improvement as the latter ; but, when improved, the 

 result is never considered as consisting in any amendment of simple 

 spirit, but of compound organized matter. For example, when 

 vision is improved the amendment is uniformly referred to the eye, 

 the optic nerve, and that portion of the brain which is immediately 

 associated with them ; they being the organs wherewith the mind 

 sees, and without which it cannot see. The position is so plain 

 that to state it simply is to prove it to a demonstration. With re- 

 gard to the higher mental operations the same may be affirmed. In 

 performing these, the mind works with the brain as its machinery, 

 as certainly as it does with the eye in seeing, the ear in hearing, 

 or the muscles in performing voluntary motion. By practice, man 

 becomes more powerful and expert in reasoning and judging; but 

 in this case the mind is not changed ; no — the improvement is con- 

 fined to the organ in the brain, with which the mind reasons and 

 judges. For man to claim the power of operating immediately on 

 spirit, and of amending or deteriorating it by any means he can 

 employ, is an assumption perfectly gratuitous, and, in his opinion, 

 the Doctor adds (too modestly) not a little extraordinary and arro- 

 gant. It is enough that man is able to change matter, and to con- 

 trol it to his purposes, by material agents. All the means used in 

 teaching are material : when, therefore, we wish to improve men- 

 tal operations, we have only to amend the organs which the mind 

 employs in performing these operations. There is good reason to 

 believe that spirit cannot be altered or modified by any thing short 

 of the Creative Will, by which it was primarily brought into existence. 

 Dr. Caldwell divides education into three distinct branches — the 

 physical, moral, and intellectual. Nothing is more certain, he says, 

 than that the intellectual and the moral powers may be educated 

 separately — the former being amended while the latter are not, and 

 the converse. There is as real a difference between moral and in- 

 tellectual education, as there is between these and physical educa- 

 tion : but they are all three so intimately connected, that the im- 

 provement of any one of them may be made conducive to that of 

 the rest. Nor can it be otherwise, except through mismanagement: 

 moral action, intellectual action, and physical action, all have their 

 sources and instruments in different parts of the human system : 

 these parts are essentially connected by sympathy, and other ties 

 more mechanical and obvious: wherefore, one or more of them being 

 injured or benefited, the rest must necessarily be affected. Thus, 

 for instance, the human body is a very complicated system. It con- 



