HIGHER ANALOGUES OF ASSIMILATION. 167 



imagery, are extracted by the understanding, and the upshot is re- 

 ferred to the judgment and the will. The broadest common sense 

 strikes home the first ; is received at once without any process, and 

 identified with the life of the mind ; the details, difficulties and am- 

 biguities of sense, which seem to suggest no present action, are long 

 and passively retained in the entrance, and only come back to mind 

 through other and oblique considerations ; being not the chief, 

 though the bulkiest sustenance of the human understanding. 



Passing from bare consciousness to practical education — from the 

 mind to the man — What is education but an assimilative career ? 

 The full social form is the blood into which we are to enter; the 

 nature of the child, or the roughness of the adult, is the material 

 to be admitted or refined — Delight and curiosity, with tiny gestures 

 and sparkling eyes, come tripping forth to their lessons' time in the 

 classes of existence. The cradle and the mother are one organic 

 school; the nursery is another; the school-proper is another; the 

 workman's probationary bench, and the student's table, are another; 

 the life-calling is another still ; and there is no finish to education, 

 because there is no end to the refinement of mutual good works, 

 or to the closer friendship of the human family. That grand indi- 

 vidual, mankind, true to the spirit of Him who evokes it — can it 

 less than reflect what is "infinite in conjunction, and eternal in per- 

 petuity V 



Does this throw any light of probability on the dim hereafter ? 

 Somewhat of a luminous hope seems to overshadow and tremble 

 around us, while we follow the analogies that proclaim the oneness 

 of God's laws in nature and in man. Are these primordial laws so 

 divine that they govern with their own flexibility even in the future 

 life? Are we attracted thither to feed a mightier organization? 

 Is the good received and welcomed, and the ill renounced, with a 

 selection more discriminating, a rejection more total, and a wisdom 

 more unconceived and irresistible, than even in that human form 

 which comes from the spirit, and returns to the spirit ? Or rather, 

 is the principle one and the same in both cases ? Let us lean on 

 nature's arm, and follow the analogy until we have better lights : the 

 rather because analogy itself is assimilation. 



But to condense and finish. — The possibility of assimilation lies 



