342 WRITINGS OF JOSEPH HaNRY. [1854 



father with senile garrulity, transmits the history of his 

 early times, as it were, across an intervening generation to 

 his grandson. This again makes an indelible impression 

 upon the plastic mind of his youthful auditor, to be alike 

 transmitted to his children of the third generation. Abund- 

 ant examples might be adduced to illustrate the proposition 

 of the vivid recurrence of the effects of early impressions ap- 

 parently effaced. Persons who have for long years been 

 accustomed to speak a foreign language, and who have for- 

 gotten the use of any other, have frequently been observed 

 to utter their dying prayers in their mother tongue. 



In this country, so far as I have observed, the course of 

 education is defective in two extremes; it is defective in 

 not imparting the mental habits or facilities which can most 

 easily be acquired in early life, and it is equally defective in 

 the other extreme, in not instructing the student, at the 

 proper period, in processes of logical thought, or deductions 

 from general principles. While elementar}'- schools profess 

 to teach almost the whole circle of knowledge, and neglect 

 to impart those essential processes of mental art of which we 

 have before spoken, our higher institutions, with some excep- 

 tions, fail to impart knowledge, except that which is of a 

 superficial character. The value of facts, rather than of 

 general principles, is inculcated. The one however is almost 

 a consequence of the other. If proper seeds are not sown, a 

 valuable harvest cannot be reaped. 



The organization of a system of public education in ac- 

 cordance with my views would be that of a series of graded 

 schools, beginning with the one in which the mere rudi- 

 ments of knowledge are taught, and ending with that in 

 which the highest laws of mind and matter are unfolded 

 and applied. Every pupil should have the opportunity of 

 passing step by step through the whole series, and honors 

 and rewards should be bestowed upon those who graduated 

 in the highest school. Few however as I have said before, 

 would be found to possess the requisite talent and perseve- 

 rance necessary to finish a complete course. But at whatever 

 period the pupil may abandon his studies, he should be 



