244 RULES FOR THE PROPER EXERCISE 



is to develop the sentiments of Attachment, Bene- 

 volence, Justice, or Devotion, we must exercise 

 each of them directly and for its own sake, other- 

 wise neither it nor its organ will ever acquire prompti- 

 tude or strength. 



It ought never to be forgotten, that in education 

 it is the brain, or organ of mind, and not the abstract 

 immaterial principle, which requires cultivation, and 

 that hence education operates invariably in subjection 

 to the laws of organization. In improving the ex- 

 ternal senses, we admit this principle readily enough ; 

 but whenever we come to the internal faculties of 

 thought and feeling, it is either denied or neglected. 

 With gross inconsistency, we admit that the superior 

 quickness of touch, sight, and hearing, consequent 

 upon judicious exercise, is always referable to in- 

 creased facility of action in their appropriate organs ; 

 but when we explain, on the same principle, the 

 superior development of the reasoning powers, or 

 the greater warmth of feeling produced by similar 

 exercise in these and other internal faculties, few 

 are inclined to listen to our proposition, or allow to 

 it half the weight or attention which its importance 

 requires, although every fact in philosophy and ex- 

 perience concurs in supporting it. We see the men- 

 tal powers of feeling and of thought unfolding them- 

 selves in infancy and youth in exact accordance 

 with the progress of the organization, we see them 

 perverted or suspended by the sudden inroad of dis- 

 ease, and as suddenly restored : nay, we sometimes 

 observe every previous acquirement obliterated from 

 the adult mind by fever or by accident, leave edu- 

 cation to be commenced anew, as if it had never 

 been ; and yet, with all these evidences of the organic 

 influence, it is still a novelty in education to propose 

 that the established laws of physiology, as applied 

 to the brain, should be considered as bur best and 

 surest guide ; and scarcely a volume can be pointed 

 out in which it is even hinted that these laws have 



