32 I MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



Memory, imitation, imagination, and the faculty of forming mental 

 habits, exisl in early life, while the judgment and the reasoning 

 powers are of slower growth." Hence less attention should be 

 given to tin- development of the reasoning faculties, than to those 

 of observation : the juvenile memory should be stored rather with 

 facts, than with principles: and he condemned as mischievous "the 

 proposition frequently advanced, that the child >)i' iul< I be taughl 

 nothing but what he can fully comprehend, and the endeavor in 

 accordance with this, to invert the order of nature, anil attempt to 

 impart those things which cannot be taught at an early age, ami to 

 neglect those which at this period of life the mind is well adapted 

 to receive. By this mode we may indeed produce remarkably 

 intelligent children, who will become remarkably feeble men. The 

 order of nature i- that of art before science; the entire concrete 

 first, ami the entire abstract last. These two extremes should run 

 gradually into each other, the course of instruction becoming more 

 ami more logical as the pupil advances in years." — "The cultiva- 

 tion of' the imagination should also be considered an essential part 

 of a liberal education: and this may be spread over the whole 

 course of instruction, for like the reasoning faculties the imagination 

 may continue to be improved until late in lite." 



Applying this same reasoning to the moral training of' youth, he 

 considered that (as in the intellectual culture) the object should be 

 "not only to teach the pupil how to think, but how to act and to do; 

 placing greal stress upon the early education of the habit-. - 

 We are frequently required to act from the impulse of the moment, 

 and have no time to deduce our course from the moral principles 

 of the act. An individual can be educated to a strict regard for 

 truth, to deeds of courage in rescuing others from danger,to acts of 

 benevolence, generosity, and justice. - The future character 



of a child and that of the man also, is in most cases formed prob- 

 ably before the age of seven years. Previously to this time 

 impressions have been made which shall survive amid the vicissi- 

 tudes of' life, amid all the influences to which the individual may 

 be subjected, and which will outcrop a- it were, in the last stage of 

 his earthly existence, when the additions to his character made in 

 later years, have been entirely swept away." Childhood ibeinti- 



