Mental Discipline in Education. 447 



jects which come home to him most directly; and that 

 these are best fitted for rousing and sustaining a pleasur- 

 able mental activity is both declared by reason and con- 

 firmed by experience. 



And this leads me finally to observe that a mental cul- 

 ture, based upon science, and applied to the great questions 

 of the time, will give a type of mental discipline marked 

 by the elements of vigour and courage, and suited to brace 

 the mind for the serious work which comes before it with 

 the advance of society. In this respect the classical cul- 

 tivation is so faulty as hardly to deserve the name of dis- 

 cipline. Its ideal is European, and is shaped into accord- 

 ance with the requirements of the European system : it is 

 that of the refined and elegant scholar, fitted for medita- 

 tive retirement in some cloistered seclusion or " sacred 

 shade," immersed in the past, and disinclined to meddle 

 with the present. But what Sydney Smith calls " the safe 

 and elegant imbecility of classical learning," is not the 

 preparation needed by the cultivated mind of this country. 

 Here all the cumbrous machinery for taking care of people 

 and superseding thought — Monarchy, Nobility, and State- 

 Church, are gone, and we are thrown back upon first prin- 

 ciples, to work out the great problem of a self-governing 

 society, for weal or for woe. The finished classical 

 scholar blinks the issues, and shirks the responsibilities of 

 his time. He is disgusted with the '' noise and confusion " 

 of this degenerate utilitarian age, and longs to bury him- 

 self in the quietness of the past. " In proportion as the 

 material interests of the present moment become more and 

 more engrossing, more and more tyrannical in their ex- 

 actions, in the same proportion it becomes more necessary 

 that man should fall back on the common interests of 

 humanity, and free himself from the trammels of the 

 present by living in the past," says the advocate of the 

 English universities. Dr. Donaldson. But this will not do 



