CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



to the very soul of the child, and therefore it can 

 consist not of one act, but of a number of acts 

 intended and fitted to alter the state of the child's 

 feelings and desires. 



Finally, there is the child's attitude towards 

 God. Religion arises mainly from two feelings 

 the sense of dependence and weakness, and the 

 belief in a Being of superior intelligence and 

 power, who can do for man what he is utterly 

 incapable of doing for himself. The sense of 

 dependence is the groundwork of the whole. Man 

 realises how limited are his faculties, how frail 

 the tenure of his life, how inexorable the powers 

 of nature, in the midst of which he is placed ; and 

 he longs to repose his soul on some one that is 

 unchangeable, that is unlimited, that is eternal 

 But this is not enough. He must believe that 

 this Being is interested in him, that He loves 

 him, that He cares for him. And then, through 

 this faith, he gathers strength to support his weak- 

 ness. There are thus two special duties to do in 

 regard to religion. The educator has to produce 

 a deep sense of man's weakness, and he has to 

 exhibit the character of God as full of mercy and 

 love. The child's nature is adapted for these 

 lessons. At the earliest stage he is absolutely 

 helpless and ignorant He therefore clings to his 

 father as his protector and helper. The father is 

 the God to the child. And it is out of the father's 

 conduct to the child that the child's idea of God 

 should arise. Afterwards, in the course of life, 

 there are many occasions on which the weakness 

 and dependence of man are brought home to the 

 mind. These should be used. Deaths in the 

 family, distresses and calamities of every kind, 

 extraordinary appearances on earth or in heaven, 

 awaken the mind to the mystery of existence. 

 Subsequently every act of the life may do this. 

 Then the child must be taught the nature of God, 

 the kindness, the tender mercy, the unbounded 

 love. No book is so fitted to teach this as the 

 New Testament But care must be taken not to 

 use the book for any other purpose than awaken- 

 ing and sustaining the religious feelings. It is 

 not to be used as a lesson-book. It is not to be 

 a mere means of training the memory. The effect 

 of every lesson ought to be an increase of love to 

 God and man. The educator must measure the 

 success of his lessons by this one test how far 

 the child's heart has been opened up to love God 

 and man. This test, of course, cannot be employed 

 always, or even often. The child must not be 

 taught to watch his own feelings or dissect them. 

 But the educator can weigh well with himself how 

 far the lesson which he has given is by its method 

 and manner calculated to produce love. 



We have said very little of the formation of the 

 feelings. A feeling takes place when the mind 

 becomes conscious of the difference between one 

 state and another. The feelings are therefore 

 entirely dependent on the representations that 

 have been made in the mind, whether of percep- 

 tions, desires, or volitions. But they are of great 

 importance as indications of the moral state. 

 Only, children are very apt to be unfairly judged. 

 A child's father dies, but the child feels little or 

 no sorrow. Why? Simply because the child 

 does not realise the difference of his position. He 

 expects his father to come back ; or after he finds 

 that he does not come back, he sees that all things 

 go on much the same as before. Or at any rate 



568 



the child's consciousness of the past is so weak that 

 it does not offer itself as a contrast to the present. 

 There are many other feelings for which there 

 are no foundations as yet laid in the child's mind, 

 and which therefore he ought not to be expected 

 to have, such as anxiety for the future, continued 

 distress for a mistake, continued joy over a 

 success. He lives, in the earliest stages, in a 

 continuous present ; and all his feelings must be 

 estimated according to this fact 



There is one class of feelings, however, which 

 deserves notice in connection with the moral train- 

 ing : we mean the sense of the beautiful. The 

 feeling of pleasure which we derive from the 

 beautiful arises from our perception of the 

 beautiful. We have just been looking at an 

 ordinary object. Immediately afterwards we see 

 a beautiful one. The difference between the two 

 strikes the mind, and as it were elevates it. And 

 this elevation is accompanied with a feeling of 

 pleasure. Now, here it is plain that we must first 

 learn to perceive the beautiful. But there is but 

 one way to accomplish this. It is by looking at 

 it. The soul of man is made for the perception 

 of the beautiful. It is requisite only that the 

 proper conditions be fulfilled, and then the soul 

 of man will see what is beautiful But a training 

 is required here as in other things. The child's 

 mind cannot form a perception of a wide land- 

 scape so as to make a unity out of it, and there- 

 fore he cannot feel the beauty of the landscape. 

 He has to rise by degrees to a sense of that which 

 is most beautiful. But the beautiful and the 

 moral are nearly allied. And therefore it is of 

 consequence, that at the earliest stage he be 

 habituated to see what is beautiful, that every- 

 thing around him be neat and tidy. At a later 

 stage he should learn ,all those arts which help 

 the development of the sense of the beautiful, 

 such as caligraphy, drawing, and painting. His 

 educator must lay before him beautiful landscapes 

 and beautiful works of art, and through sympathy, 

 and by carefully looking at them, the pupil will 

 rise to a perception of what is beautiful 



In these remarks on education we could only 

 give an indication of the many topics which have 

 to be discussed in connection with it. Some of 

 these subjects are of peculiar difficulty, and justice 

 could not be done to them without a minute and 

 full treatment of them, and an accurate exposition 

 of the psychological laws which regulate them. 

 In fact, the discussion of details is often of the 

 greatest importance, but it is at the same time true 

 that all such discussion will be fruitless, unless 

 the educator grasp the principles with his own 

 mind, and work them according to the best of his 

 wisdom. 



INSTRUCTION. 



The object of instruction is to act on the intel- 

 lectual powers. The instructor aims at developing 

 these in full perfection. The means is the infor- 

 mation which he conveys. But it must not be 

 supposed that instruction is mere giving of infor- 

 mation. On the contrary, the whole success of 

 instruction consists in enabling the person in- 

 structed to procure the information for himself, 

 and to procure it in such a way as to bring all his 

 faculties into play. This instruction must proceed 

 according to the laws of the evolution of mind. 



