Education. 29 $ 



tory of which we are acquainted. We now see 

 every day, in the houses of those who belong to the 

 middle class of society, instruments of music, and 

 productions of the pencil, which, a century ago, 

 were rarely seen in the houses of the most conspi- 

 cuous and wealthy. This increase of attention to 

 music, as a part of female education, during the 

 last century, is more especially remarkable in 

 Great-Britain and America. 



On the subject of Education, the century under 

 review has given birth to a doctrine, which, 

 though noticed in a former chapter, is yet too re- 

 markable and too pregnant with mischief to be 

 suffered to pass without more particular consider- 

 ation in the present. It is, that Education has a 

 kind of intellectual and moral omnipotence; that to 

 its different forms are to be ascribed the chief, if 

 not all the differences observable in the genius, 

 talents, and dispositions of men; and that by im- 

 proving its principles and plan, human nature may, 

 and finally will, reach a state of absolute perfec- 

 tion in this world, or at least go on to a state of 

 unlimited improvement. In short, in the estima- 

 tion of those who adopt this doctrine, man is the 

 child of circumstances; and by meliorating these, 

 without the aid of religion, his true and highest 

 elevation is to be obtained ; and they even go so 

 far as to believe that, by means of the advance- 

 ment of light and knowledge, all vice, misery and 

 death may finally be banished from the earth. 

 This system, as was before observed, seems to have 

 been first distinctly taught by M. Helvetius, a 

 celebrated French author, who x wrote about the 

 middle of the age we are considering, and was 

 afterwards adopted and urged with great zeal by 

 many of his countrymen, particularly Mirabaud 

 and Condorcet; and also by Mr. Godwin, and 

 others, of Great-Britain, 



