216 Practical Education. [May, 



not to lop off those branches which, if carefully trimmed, will afford the 

 richest, and most delicious fruit. And though with good reason we 

 may reject the useless and senseless propositions of the Schoolmen, yet 

 the thought that nothing is good or important oy practical, unless it can 

 actually be applied to the commonest affairs of life, should be at once and 

 forever discarded. Such a spirit of utility, pursued to the fullest extent, 

 would change all that is beautiful in the earth, all that is grand in 

 mountain, hill, and valley, rivulet, river, and ocean, into one monot- 

 onous plain. The Alps and the Appcnincs would be leveled, the bending 

 rivers would be made straight, that they might in less time accomplish 

 their journey ; all that is beautiful in art, or lovely in nature, would be 

 lost sight of; the world would be one great farm, and man, having 

 expunged from his nature one of its noblest attributes, would become a 

 sordid changer of money. 



Mind holds all forms of matter in a great degree subservient to itself. 

 The lightnings of heaven and all the elements have been harnessed to 

 do its bidding ; still it must be remembered, that in order to maintain 

 this supremacy and control, the mind must not only be furnished with 

 important facts, but it must be so trained, that it can combine them, and 

 develop principles to an indefinite extent ; so that when it selects any 

 individual object from the great laboratory of nature, it may compare it 

 with all other objects, notice its agreements and differences, analyse it, 

 examine all its properties, and then give it a place in its appropriate 

 order and class. 



Neither steam nor electricity can ever shorten the process of mental 

 disci|)line, nor can they in any form be applied to the education of mind, 

 unless perhaps, by means of the galvanic battery, applied to the senses, we 

 might rouse its dormant energies, and cause it to move on thenceforth by 

 its own inherent power ! It is equally true,that there can be no substitu- 

 tion of natural endowments and sagacity, for the result of hard study 

 and patient research. Instead of submitting to severe labor in making 

 his own deductions, man may take the results of other men, and thus 

 failing ever to come in sight of those great and original prin- 

 ciples which have been evolved by those men who have penetrated far 

 into the temple of science, as mere copyists, intellectual cripples, they 

 hobble on their crutches, only whither their great masters lead. 



It is not proposed now to point out any course of study best adapted 



the full development of all the mental power, nor to recommend the 



study either of the ancient classics, the mathematics, or natural sciences. 



These have had their advocates and their enemies. The very citadel of 



the classics has been stormed by men who obtained their weapons from the 



