INTRODUCTION. 13 



its benefits in the improvement of the corporeal, temporal, and 

 earthly condition of Man, which regards as its direct advantages 

 the contributions it makes towards his comfort, his luxury, his 

 refinement, and which considers as a mere collateral result, or as 

 an accident by the way, its influence on his spiritual, immortal, 

 celestial being. Surely it is here that we are to look for its most 

 permanent, most direct, most important advantages. The works 

 of the Creator, when they afford neither sustenance nor physic 

 for the body, yield both food and medicine for the mind. It is 

 surely a more worthy occupation, to study the works of Infinite 

 Wisdom and boundless Power, than to bestow the labour of a 

 life upon the critical examination of a Greek Drama or a Latin 

 Satire. And it is surely a more likely means of advantageously 

 developing the intellectual and moral faculties of the young, to 

 exercise them upon the objects which are everywhere around 

 them, and a knowledge of which will be useful to them in almost 

 every possible scene of their future lives, than to confine them to 

 subjects which leave many of their powers unemployed, and 

 numerous sources of the purest pleasure undeveloped. "Strange 

 indeed," it has been well remarked, " must be the perversion of 

 that mind, which is made neither wiser nor better, by studying 

 the works of Him, whose own wisdom is infinite, and all whose 

 operations tend to good and happiness." 



The observing powers are especially cultivated by the study of 

 Natural History. The organs of the senses are the portals, 

 through which all our knowledge of the world around us makes 

 its entry into our minds. In the infant and the young child, 

 they are set wide open; and we see how rapid is the develop- 

 ment of the faculties by the information they communicate. Yet, 

 in ordinary systems of education, this process is almost entirely 

 checked, during the period when it might be continued with the 

 greatest advantage ; and the learning of the schools is substituted 

 for the teachings of the great Book of Nature. It is not enough 

 that the senses should be used ; they must be used aright. 



