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



their hope, being thus based on the sand, is as unstable as the house 

 of the " foolish man." Pestalozzi well remarks, " It will be indispen- 

 sable to convince many a fond mother that what was well meant is 

 not always well done, and strongly to impress upon her mind the fact 

 that, by a mode of proceeding flowing from the most benevolent mo- 

 tives, but which would not have stood the test of matured judgment, 

 she may entail on her children all that misery against which it was 

 her only wish to protect them." 



If we continue our examination into the more important depart- 

 ments of knowledge, we shall find that, next to Phrenology and Ana- 

 tomy, which make us acquainted with the mental and bodily constitu- 

 tion of man. Physiology, Medicine, Zoology, Geography, Geology, 

 Chemistry, and Astronomy, hold out seductions tempting, nay irre- 

 sistible, to the pupil. But instead of entering on these noble subjects 

 of investigation, the teacher, with a strange perversity and blindness, 

 persists in directing, or misdirecting, his chief energies to the deve- 

 lopment of the organ of Language, which is at the base of the brain, 

 and the lowest of all the intellectual faculties. Disregarding the sub- 

 ordinate place the Creator has thus assigned it, man persists in raising 

 it into the highest. Verily he has his reward ! 



Language does not constitute knowledge : it is mere learning. A 

 person may know the various names a Horse has received in various 

 languages, and yet have no knowledge of the Horse ; and, again, he 

 may not know any of these names, yet if he possesses an acquaint- 

 ance with the natui-al history, the structure, the qualities, and the uses 

 of the animal, then he will have acquired some very interesting know- 

 ledge. Again, Arithmetic is not knowledge ; a person may know 

 that 2 and 2 make 4, and even be a Bidder in Arithmetic, and yet 

 he may not have acquired any knowledge. But if, by the learning 

 he has acquired, he calculates that our globe is nearly eight thousand 

 feet in diameter, then he has acquired an item of knowledge. Thus 

 we see that learning and knowledge are verj- distinct, and that learn- 

 ing is barren and useless in itself, and only useful in so far as it en- 

 ables us to acquire knowledge. Hence we perceive the truth of the 

 maxim that a very learned man may be a very ignorant man. 



But, overlooking this distinction, teachers continue to ply their 

 pupils with learning, as if it were knowledge itself, instead of, as is 

 really the case, only a ladder to knowledge, and often an useless one, 

 too ; for the latter, in nine cases out of ten, can be arrived at without 

 the former. Thus, Greek and Latin are totally useless as a means of 

 acquiring knowledge, and for two reasons : 1st. The Greeks and Ro- 



