836 WRITINGS OF JOSEPH HENRY. [1854 



burn," and which long after will spontaneously spring up 

 from the depths of the mind, at the proper moment, to em- 

 bellish and to enforce the truths of the future author, states- 

 man, or divine. ^ 



But the period of life when acquisitions of this kind are 

 most readily made is not that in which the judgment and 

 reasoning powers can be most profitably cultivated. They 

 require a more advanced age, when the mind has become 

 more matured by natural growth and better furnished with 

 the materials of thought. 



Mental education consists in the cultivation of two classes 

 of faculties, viz., the intellectual and the moral. 



Intellectual instruction, of which we shall first speak, 

 should have at least three objects: — 



1. To impart facility in performing various mental opera- 

 tions. 



2. To cultivate the imagination and store the memory 

 with facts and precepts; and 



3. To impart the art of thinking, of generalization, of 

 induction and deduction. 



The most important part of elementary mental instruction, 

 and that which I have placed first in the foregoing classifi- 

 cation, is that of imparting expertness in the performance 

 of certain processes which may be denominated mental arts. 

 Among these arts are spelling, reading, penmanship, draw- 

 ing, composition, expertness in the first rules of arithmetic, 

 and in the use of different languages. These can only be 

 imparted by laborious drilling on the part of the teacher, 

 and by acquired industry and attention on the part of the 

 pupil. The practice in each case must be so long continued, 

 and the process so often repeated, that it becomes a mental 

 habit, and is at length performed with accuracy and rapid- 

 ity almost without thought. It is only in early life, while 

 the mind is in a pliable condition, that these mental facili- 

 ties can most readily and most perfectly be acquired, whereas 

 the higher principles of science, on which these arts depend, 

 can only be thoroughly understood by a mind more fully ma- 

 tured. Expertness in the performance of an art does not de- 



