70 EDUCATION, AS IT IS AND AS IT SHOULD BE. 



surdities under his name, while a science is absolutely necessary for 

 the elucidation of the subject, and that science is Phrenology, without 

 which all systems of education must be empirical. 



Education would indeed be a disagreeable and irksome occupation 

 if the passage which the Pestalozzians were pleased to designate as 

 " dangerous" were untrue. The best systems, and everything which 

 ingenuity could suggest, might then be thrown away, all through the 

 caprice of the pupil. But, no ! the Creator has ordained that it shall 

 be otherwise ; and those who reflect at all on the matter will imme- 

 diately perceive that, as Pestalozzi says, the failure in education al- 

 most always proceeds from an absence of interest, and this, again, is 

 always owing to the unfitness of the teacher. And the phrenologists, 

 knowing this, gave unqualified praise to that which the Pestalozzians, 

 being destitute of all certain guide, pronounced dangerous.* 



Mr. Owen, of New Lanark, goes even further than the article al- 

 luded to ; he says, " From the earliest ages it has been the practice 

 of the world to act on a supposition that each individual man forms 

 his own character. This error cannot longer exist, for every day 

 will make it more and more evident that the character of man is, 

 without a single exception, always formed for him ; that it may be, 

 and is chiefly, formed by his predecessors : that they give him, or 

 may give him, his ideas and habits, which are the powers that govern 

 and direct his conduct. Man, therefore, never did, nor is it possible 

 he ever can, form his own character." Mr. Owen has unquestionably 

 effected most admirable results in his village of New Lanark, but his 

 views possess neither originality nor soundness. Those who are in- 

 terested in this subject will find their erroneousness exposed in vol. 

 i. of the Phrenological Journal, by Mr. Combe, and in vol. ix. by 

 Mr. Holm. The former well remarks, " Mr. Owen, like many of 

 his predecessors, proceeds to speculate on the modifying power of cir- 

 cumstances witliout previously ascei Luiuiiig the priruitive atiribalco uf 

 the subject to be modified." Such a work as the Constitution of Man, 

 or Gall's immortal Fonctions du Cerveau, will benefit mankind 

 more than a dozen New Lanarks ; for the former will put the people 

 in the way of procuring these latter by their own exertions, indepen- 

 dent of any individual. 



All the errors in education which I have named, and many others, 

 have been reprehended by Locke, Kames, Gibbon, Bentham, Pesta- 

 lozzi, and many other great men, but all has been in vain : and what 



• See Phren, Joum., and Anthrop. Mag. 



