uniformly in harmony with the physical and organic laws; but it has been objected, that although the human faculties may perhaps be adequate to discover these laws, and to record them in books, yet they are totally incapable of retaining them in the memory, and of formally applying them in every act of life. If, it is said, we could not move a step without calculating and adjusting the body to the law of gravitation, and could never eat a meal without a formal rehearsal of the organic laws, life would become oppressed by the pedantry of knowledge, and rendered miserable by petty observances and trivial details. The answer to this is, that all our faculties are adapted by the Creator to the external world, and act instinctively when their objects are placed in the proper light before them. For example, in walking on a foot-path in the country during day, we are not conscious, in adjusting our steps to the inequalities of the surface, of being overburdened by mental calculation. In fact, we perform this adjustment with so little trouble, that we are not aware of having made any particular mental or muscular effort. But, on returning at night, when we cannot see, we stumble, and discover, for the first time, how important a duty our faculties had been performing during day, without our having adverted to their labors. Now, the simple medium of light is sufficient to bring clearly before our eyes the inequalities of ground; but to make the mind equally familiar with the nature of the countless objects, and their relations, which abound in external nature, an intellectual light is necessary, which can be struck out only by exercising and applying the knowing and reflecting faculties; but the moment that light is obtained, and the qualities and relationships in question are perceived by its means, the faculties, so long as the light lasts, will act instinctively in adapting our conduct to the nature of the objects, just as in accommodating our movements to the unequal surface of the ground. It is no more necessary for us to go through a course of physical, botanical, and chemical reasoning, before we are able to abstain from eating hemlock, after its properties are known, than it is to go through a course of mathematical demonstration, before lifting the one foot higher than the other, in ascending a stair. present, physical and political science, morals and religion, are not taught as parts of one connected system; nor are the relations between them and the constitution of man pointed out to the world. In consequence, theoretical knowledge and practice are often widely separated. Some of the advantages of the scientific education now recommended would be the following:

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In the first place, the physical and organic laws, when truly discovered, appear to the mind as institutions of the Creator, wise and salutary in themselves, unbending in their operation,

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and universal in their application. They interest our intellectual faculties, and strongly impress our sentiments. The necessity of obeying them, comes upon us with all the authority of a mandate of God. While we confine ourselves to a mere recommendation to beware of damp, to observe temperance, or to take exercise, without explaining the principle, the injunction carries only the weight due to the authority of the individual who gives it, and is addressed to only two or three faculties, Veneration and Cautiousness, for instance, or Self-love in him who receives it. But if we are made acquainted with the elements of the physical world, and with those of our organized system,-with the uses of the different parts of the latter, and the conditions necessary to their healthy action,-with the causes of their derangement, and the pains consequent thereon: and if the obligation to attend to these conditions be enforced on our moral sentiments and intellect, then the motives to observe the physical and organic laws, as well as the power of doing so, will be prodigiously increased. Before we can dance well, we must not only know the motions, but our muscles must be trained to execute them. In like manner, to enable us to act on precepts, we must not only comprehend their meaning, but our intellects and sentiments must be disciplined into actual performance. Now, the very act of acquiring connected scientific information concerning the natural world, its qualities, and their relations, is to the intellect and sentiments what practical dancing is to the muscles; it invigorates them; and, as obedience to the natural laws must spring from them, exercise renders it more easy and delightful.

2. It is only by being taught the principle on which consequences depend, that we see the invariableness of the results of the physical and organic laws; acquire confidence in, and respect for the laws themselves; and fairly endeavour to accommodate our conduct to their operation. Dr Johnson defines "principle" to be "fundamental truth; original postulate; first position from which others are deduced;" and in these senses I use the word. The human faculties are instinctively active, and desire gratification; but Intellect itself must have fixed data, on which to reason, otherwise it is in itself a mere impulse. The man in whom Constructiveness and Weight are powerful, will naturally betake himself to constructing machinery; but if he be ignorant of the principles of mechanical science, he will not direct his efforts to as important ends, and attain them as successfully, as if his intellect were stored with these. Principles are deduced from the laws of nature. A man may make music by the instinctive impulses of Time and Tune; but there are immutable laws of harmony; and, if ignorant of these, he will not perform so invariably, correctly, and in good

taste, as if he knew them. In every art and science, there are principles referable solely to the constitution of nature, but these admit of countless applications. A musician may produce gay, grave, solemn, or ludicrous tunes, all good of their kind, by following the laws of harmony; but he will never produce one While the inhabitants west of good piece by violating them. Edinburgh allowed the stagnant pools to deface their fields, some seasons would be more healthy than others; and, while the cause of the disease was unsuspected, this would confirm them in the notion that health and sickness were dispensed by an overruling Providence, on inscrutable principles, which they could not comprehend; but the moment the cause was known, it would be found that the most healthy seasons were those that were cold and dry, and the most sickly those that were warm and moist; and they would then perceive, that the superior salubrity of one year, and unwholesomeness of another, were clearly referable to one principle, and would be both more strongly prompted, and rendered morally and intellectually more capable of applying the remedy. If some intelligent friend had merely told them to drain their fields, and remove their dunghills, they would not probably have done it; but whenever their intellects were enlightened, and their sentiments roused, to appreciate the advantages of adopting, and disadvantages of neglecting, the improvement, it became easy.

'The truth of these views may be still further illustrated by examples. A young gentleman of Glasgow, whom I knew, went out, as a merchant, to North America. Businesss required him to sail from New York to St Domingo. The weather was hot, and he, being very sick, found the confinement below deck, in bed, as he said, intolerable; that is, this confinement was, for the moment, more painful than the course which he adopted, of laying himself down at full length on the deck, in the open air. He was warned by his fellow passengers, and the officers of the ship, that he would inevitably induce fever by this proceeding but he was utterly ignorant of the physical and organic laws; his intellect had been trained to regard only wealth and present pleasure as objects of real importance; it could perceive no necessary connexion between exposure to the mild and grateful sea breeze of a warm climate and fever, and he obstinately refused to quit his position. The consequence was, that he was rapidly taken ill, and lived just one day after arriving at St Domingo. Knowledge of chemistry and physiology would have enabled him, in an instant, to understand that the sea air, in warm climates, holds a prodigious quantity of water in solution, and that damp and heat, operating together on the human organs, tend to derange their healthy action, and ultimately to destroy them entirely and if his sentiments had been

deeply imbued with a feeling of the indispensable duty of yielding obedience to the institutions of the Creator, he would have actually enjoyed, not only a greater desire, but a greater power of supporting the temporary inconvenience of the heated cabin, and might, by possibility, have escaped death.'-pp. 117–134.

From the closing observations of the author we quote the following, in which the subject is considered in connexion with the general interests of society, and with particular reference to education.

"The professions, pursuits, amusements, and hours of exertion of individuals, ought also to bear reference to their physical and mental constitution; but hitherto no guiding principle has been possessed to regulate practice in these important particulars, another evidence that the science of man has been unknown.

'But we require only to attend to the scenes daily presenting themselves in society, to obtain irresistible demonstration of the consequences resulting from the want of a true theory of human nature, and its relations. Every preceptor in schools, every professor in colleges, every author, editor, and pamphleteer, every member of Parliament, counsellor and judge, has a set of notions of his own, which in his mind hold the place of a system of the philosophy of man; and although he may not have methodised his ideas, or even acknowledged them to himself as a theory, yet they constitute a standard to him by which he practically judges of all questions in morals, politics, and religion; he advocates whatever views coincide with them, and condemns all that differ from them, with as unhesitating dogmatism as the most pertinacious theorist on earth. Each also despises the notions of his fellows, in so far as they differ from his own. In short, the human faculties too generally operate simply as instincts, exhibiting all the confliction and uncertainty of mere feeling, unenlightened by perception of their own nature and objects. Hence public measures in general, whether relating to education, religion, trade, manufactures, the poor, criminal law, or to any other of the dearest interests of society, instead of being treated as branches of one general system of economy, and adjusted each on scientific principles in harmony with all the rest, are supported or opposed on narrow and empirical grounds, and often call forth displays of ignorance, prejudice, selfishness, intolerance, and bigotry, that greatly obstruct the progress of improvement. Indeed, unanimity, even among sensible and virtuous men, will be impossible, so long as no standard of mental philosophy is admitted to guide individual feelings and perceptions. But the state of things now

described could not exist if education embraced a true system of human nature and its relations.

'If then, phrenology be true, it will, when matured, supply the deficiencies now pointed out.

'But here another question naturally presents itself, How are the views now expounded, supposing them to contain some portion of truth, to be rendered practical? In answer I remark, that the institutions and manners of society indicate the state of mind of the influential classes at the time when they prevail. The trial and burning of old women as witches, point out clearly the predominance of Destructiveness and Wonder over Intellect and Benevolence, in those who were guilty of such cruel absurdities. The practices of wager of battle, and ordeal by fire and water, indicate Combativeness, Destructiveness, and Veneration, to have been in great activity in those who permitted them, combined with much intellectual ignorance of the natural constitution of the world. In like manner, the enormous sums willingly expended in war, and the small sums grudgingly paid for public improvements; the intense energy displayed in the pursuit of wealth; and the general apathy evinced in the search after knowledge and virtue, unequivocally proclaim activity of Combativeness, Destructiveness, Acquisitiveness, Self-esteem, and Love of Approbation; with comparatively moderate vivacity of Benevolence and Intellect, in the present generation. Before, therefore, the practices of mankind can be altered, the state of their minds must be changed. No practical error can be greater than that of establishing institutions greatly in advance of the mental condition of the people. The rational method is first to instruct the intellect, then to interest the sentiments, and, last of all, to form arrangements in harmony with, and resting on, these as

their basis.

'The views developed in the preceding chapters, if founded in nature, may be expected to lead, ultimately, to considerable changes in many of the customs and pursuits of society; but to accomplish this effect, the principles themselves must first be ascertained to be true; then they must be sedulously taught; and when the public mind has been thoroughly prepared, then only ought important practical alterations to be proposed. It appears to me that a long series of years will be necessary to bring even civilized nations into a condition systematically to obey the natural laws.

The preceding chapters may be regarded, in one sense, as an introduction to an Essay on Education. If the views unfolded in them be in general sound, it will follow that education has scarcely yet commenced. If the Creator has bestowed on the body, on the mind, and on external nature, determinate