such circumstances, the glory of Christianity, is all that is worthy of being sought after; even the confession of unworthiness; the striving after obedience to the law of God, and conformity to the image of his Son; the anxiety after our future happiness; the desire to make our calling and election sure; the constant pursuit of those secrets of futurity, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive; the anxious wish to obtain a foretaste of immortality, of that tranquil, peaceful state, in which the competition of intellect, the jarring of passions, the jostling of interests, the collision of feeling, the errors of opinion, the fallacies of judgment, the injustice of man, shall all be exchanged for the one delightful employment of vying with each other to praise Him most, who has saved us from evil, washed us in his blood, and presented us without spot, before the throne of God.

463

CHAP. XVII.

ON THE PROCESS OF MENTAL INSTRUCTION.

THE process of mental instruction has been already so fully considered in the preceding chapters, that to return to it in the present, must appear like marching over the same ground, and must be in fact, a recapitulation of similar truths. And be it so we can seldom travel through the same country, without descrying beauties, which had before escaped our notice; and identical truths need to be repeated again and again, in order to revive their slumbering impression, and to place them perhaps in a novel point of view, or at all events, to recall their pristine form, and strength, and depth of colouring. Thus, for instance, here, as well as in moulding the temper, and educating habits, it is necessary to consult the original bias of the mental manifestations. Want of attention to this principle, is a frequent source of failure in the process of instruction; because its cares have been lavished upon a perverse and bizarre pursuit, even that of training the productions of mind, and forcing the young idea into a direction uncongenial to that bias, and

frequently incompatible with it. Hence the formation of distorted characters; of those whose fruits are immature, or which bear no fruit at all; of those whose attention is distracted by every new object, without being commanded into a steady train of thought; whose perceptions are quick, but often prejudiced and erroneous; whose memory is so treacherous, that the perception of their impressions not being sufficiently attended to, they are almost immediately forgotten, or recollected only as the frusta of thought, broken and disjointed images of disconnected ruins: hence also, the origin of those who reason little or incorrectly; who associate wildly; who reflect not at all; whose imagination is too fantastic to admit of controul; whose judgment is fallacious; whose acts, and whose opinions of those acts, and whose conscience of good and evil are perpetually at variance; whose will is acted upon by a thousand caprices; and whose faculty of imitation resembles rather the mimicry of the monkey, than the rational acquisition of good from the study of good models.

It is impossible to educate by a charm, or a nostrum, or by an undeviating system; the individual mind must be studied, and a system for each must be evolved. That indeed is the worst kind of empiricism, which would apply the same remedies to support health, and to cure disease, under every possible variety of circumstance and situation, in every change of climate, and in every

constitution, however dissimilar. A mode of treatment, beneficial in a few instances, would, if universally applied, become injurious to the majority, and absolutely destructive to very many. There is no such thing in education as that which is indifferent; that which is not useful must be mischievous; that which does not minister to the increase of strength, must impair it; that which does not contribute to the mental growth, takes away from its vigour; that which does not act as a medicine, will prove a poison; and even the former, however well intended, may be converted into the latter by injudicious, or ill-timed administration.

Education is not omnipotent; it cannot supersede the conformation which nature has impressed; and its powers extend no farther than to educe, modify, regulate and apply the faculties she may have conferred. If nature have cast the character into a certain mould, of which it may have received the impression; and if education, with the idle expectation of finding it still soft and plastic, and susceptible of any other formation, according to the will of the instructor, should seek to produce this change, and to divert the mental shoots into another direction, it will assuredly find that the former will be perpetually endeavouring to assert its power, and to regain its original character; and that that which might have been well-defined, and strongly marked, and vigorously pronounced, and prominent, energetic and valuable, if suffered to develop itself accord

VOL II.

H H

ing to nature's formula, will become distorted, confused, jumbled together without order or arrangement, and will be rendered an object of pity, for its manifold inconsistencies and weaknesses. So may the tree to which nature has given the law of its growth in an upward direction, be bent according to the will of the gardener but to no purpose; nature will constantly display her resources, and exhibit her power of contravening art, by throwing out fresh shoots, which invariably continue to seek their original destination, and to maintain inviolate the character first impressed upon it; the beauty and usefulness of the plant may be destroyed, but not the immediate agency, and ultimate tendency of its growth. So also the attempt to alter the primitive form of the character will be useless and mischievous: it cannot be accomplished; much time will be lost in the trial, and the temper will be irrecoverably injured, while a degree of irritability will be called forth, which will form a serious hindrance to the only rational means of counteracting that which is injurious, viz. to give prominence, and activity, and importance to other faculties best calculated to supersede and keep under the restlessness of morbid idiosyncracy.

This observation only shews that the primitive form of the character must be consulted, in order to determine advantageously on the means necessary to successful instruction: but although education and cultivation cannot set aside the designs of nature, yet it is equally demonstrable that the