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process is not precipitate all knowledge that is intermediate must be first attained.

The hour of exercise in the fields expired, the health invigorated, prepares the appetite for breakfast, where order, silence, and decorum prevail; the breakfast is soon despatched; and a half hour's recreation in the open air, prepares for the exercises of the class in school. Instead of books, each pupil is furnished with a large slate, and a pencil in a crayon carriage. If the exercises are the drawing of any kinds of figures, writing, or algebraic operations; if simply arithmetical operations, or fractions, the eye, the voice, and ear, alone are exercised. But these lessons do not follow a fixed routine, though there is method in their succession, which no teacher can fail to understand. The exercises in school rarely exceed an hour and a half; the prolongation is usually the consequence of any ap pearance of inattention; a recreation is proposed in the open air for this interval, which may exceed a half hour or an hour, but which a well known signal certainly terminates, when a new branch of exercise is prepared. The teachers of the several classes having taken their stations in any part of the room, the pupils are seated on benches; before each is a desk; and the eyes of all are directed to one point. The recreation of the morning, or some cheerful sallies from the teacher preface the exercise, when he commences questions on some object of their walk, to ascertain the correctness of their observation.

As truth is the object of Pestalozzi's system, true and correct ideas are sought; the particular modes of speech are not so much attended to, as clear, and appropriate terms; yet purity of speech is never disregarded; and whenever occasions present themselves of accidental errors of speech, or of inappropriate or erroneous terms, opportunity is taken to inculcate a lesson on orthography, or syntax, or on grammar, according to the degree of prior attainments in the pupils of the class. This course is desultory, and may appear irregular; but it imitates the diversity of real and natural life. It assumes new forms, arising out of the nature of circumstances, and the state of feeling in the pupil. Thus if the ideas of things, or the senses, become heavy, the mind is led to the ideas of elevation, extension, or magnitude; to the height of a wall, or the length and breadth of a field.

The ideas of forms are first presented, as discriminated by outlines; regular figures, space, extension, magnitude, induce inquiries, which all result in the necessity of referring to first

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principles; and the properties of lines are sought and developed. This exercise is, without being so announced, the first element of several branches of education-it leads to writing, to geometry, to drawing, and to description.

It is easy to imagine, by a little reflection, how unbounded is the use of the knowledge of lines, and how easy it is therefore to start an inquiry. The teacher asks how long such a fence is; and there are various guesses. The rule which he carries in his pocket, enables the pupils at once to measure a foot, or to cut a stick to a yard or fathom, and ascertain the truth.

It is a very remarkable fact, that the system developed by Pestalozzi bears, in its principles and its methods, as close and particular a resemblance as any two objects can, to the earliest modes and forms of education, of which history gives any account. In the school of Pythagoras, mathematics preceded every other study; and the knowledge of things, was the preparatory exercise to the knowledge of words. Thus the fact, that all sensible objects are defined by an outline, which we express by the words shape, form, or figure, distinguishes every object from every other. The properties of magnitudes, or forms, as to length, or elevation, or bulk, are indefinite and unascertainable, without the use of numbers to express degrees of quantity, and a standard to which numbers are to be applied, in the expression of different qualities. In the common modes of education, the knowledge of these facts is confined to general, not to exact expressions; the height of one object is referred, not to a common standard of quantity, but by comparison, to some other objects of which the resemblance, and not exact quantity, is understood. If, then, all our ideas of sensible objects which have relation to forms, or magnitudes, are loose and general-mere guess work-it must be obvious, that the studies which are conducted without first acquiring accurate ideas of the quantity of magnitude, or the standard of measure, must be embarrassed and equivocal; because it will frequently happen, that the defects of guess work will be detected, when any incident requires reference to exact measure. In the school of Pythagoras, the mathematical classes preceded those of natural philosophy; and the reason is obvious. Plato, in a subsequent age, excluded from his lectures on philosophy, those who were ignorant of geometry; and there is a memorable saying of the philosopher Xenocrates to a person, who being ignorant of geometry and arithmetic, appeared at

his lectures; 'Retire,' said the philosopher; you have not found the key of philosophy-or the cup of philosophy has no handle for you.'

Whether Pestalozzi caught the ancient modes from the study of these great men's principles, or invented them anew, is not of so much moment as the truths by which his principles are governed.

ART. II.-Du Perfectionnement Moral, ou de l' Education de Soimême; par M. Degerando, Membre de l' Institut, de France. Seconde Edition, revue et corrigée. A Paris. 1826. *

THE true method of educating the young cannot be discovered, without a previous knowledge of what the human being may do for himself. The work of M. Degerando is therefore of great importance to teachers of youth; for the principles of self cultivation constitute the art of education-in other words, the method of assisting others to help themselves. And why is it, that self cultivation, founded on true principles, is so little thought of as a subject of study? Is it not that there are some false maxims prevalent on the subject, harmonizing but too well with that love of ease, which is one of the principles of the human constitution? Because moral perfection is represented, (and most justly,) by the voice of revelation, as a simple state of soul, has it not been too hastily assumed that moral progress is simple? May it not be, that in saying moral progress is the consequence of the directions of conscience, the word conscience deceives us, and because it is a single word we think it is a simple thing?

It is certainly true that moral progress is the consequence of the directions of conscience; but it is an obvious, as well as fatal misapprehension, to suppose that moral progress, considered relatively to the sophisticated mind, (as it should be in order to apply to the case even of the best and most enlightened,) is simple. Conscience is not an existence within us, independent, simple, absolute. On the contrary, how much is

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* To this work was awarded the honour of being crowned' by the French Academy, a distinction annually conferred on one or two works, deemed the most useful that have been published during the year.

included in that word conscience! how different are the ideas it conveys to different individuals! how different to the same individual, at different stages of character,—even supposing him at all times to have been most deeply penetrated with the love of goodness and virtue !

Were conscience really the voice of God,' independent, absolute, and pure, it would never lead to what is wrong; and yet, even in the popular view of conscience, it is not only the ' voice of God,' but it is, also, very frequently, mistaken, unenlightened. These vague notions are productive of much mischief as the voice of God,' conscience has been the weapon of the presumptuous; as only mistaken, the refuge of the convicted. Against the erroneous and pernicious associations attached to this word, and to a vast many more, employed on moral subjects, especially in common conversation, nothing will avail, but more precise views of moral science generally diffused. The subject of M. Degerando's work touches the case in hand.

Conscience, as the etymology of the word implies, means a consciousness of all that is within, of the relation of all the laws of the internal world to the accomplishment of destiny, with all the relations borne to other beings, and the duties resulting from these. When this consciousness is complete, intellectually and morally, then the conscience may be a safe guide, may stimulate a uniform and sure moral progress, and not till then. Then it will never lead but to right action, and then a mistake in practical morals will not be virtually charged on the deity. But the principles of conscience are all which we receive by inheritance from our Creator. It must grow enlightened, and it will do so only in proportion as we pursue general self cultivation, founded on an analysis of the intellectual and moral powers, the true philosophy of the mind.

It may be said, that if this is the case, then no man can keep the path of rectitude, for none know all that is to be known of the mind, all the relations of its faculties to each other, and all their bearings. And, absolutely speaking, even the best men have never kept the path of highest rectitude: it is true they have approached more or less near to keeping it; they have acquired more or less soundness of conscience; and, as to the failures, in the counsels of a Father's love, there is a counterbalance to all necessary deficiencies,-pardon—the grand, and characteristic feature of revealed religion.

It was, perhaps, because the parental character of God, and the doctrine of pardon, had not been revealed to the sublime sages of Greece, that, in their speculations, they aimed to find the 'summum bonum' of human destiny, even among the disturbing forces of this lower world. They reasoned justly from their data. They looked upon nature, and saw that every individual of material creation, carries within itself the law of its own being, and might attain the height of its nature; and consequently they supposed the directing power within man, to be something absolute. But although man was evidently superior in some points, still it was not possible for the consciously erring to dare the thought that human nature was too high to come under any of the analogies of things material; that man, alone, was in his Father's house; that material nature was his plaything and servant; that the Father has many mansions; and that what seems necessary evil, when the fragment of our being is looked on, which we call human life; may be found the condition of moral freedom, when the whole is taken into view. The ancient philosophers, therefore, could only save themselves from the evident contradiction of ascribing injustice to the supreme Being, by shutting their eyes on certain facts concerning human nature, and in some instances, calling evil, good. It is from them that has been derived the doctrine of an unerring guide in the mind, absolutely independent of all its other faculties, rather than the result of their united action, the 'slow product of laborious years.'

But this error, so natural—let me add, so sublime in them, has remained as a clog upon us, who have no reason to shrink from looking our infirmities in the face; since the 'spirit of truth' has come from our Father, to free us from 'the bondage of fear.'. Why should children not examine their patrimony? Why not look upon all its fearful dangers? Why not acknowledge all its most perplexing facts? It is only thus that we can be enlightened; and could we but attain a truly enlightened conscience, which must be the result of self cultivation on right principles, we should not find it, like the popular conscience, degrading the beings whom it professes to guide, supplying excuses to the erring, and arrogance to the bigoted. There would still be left enough in the doctrines which lead to a Father, and the consciousness of pardon, to give sweet confidence to virtue; while the beauty of contrition, that fears to have offended,' would spring out of this view of conscience,

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