perseverance which so important an object demands, we may feel assured that time will realize our warmest anticipations for the moral and intellectual redemption of even our darkest-skinned brethren.

In seeking to promote the improvement of our fellowcreatures, we ought to take nature for our guide, and make our plans of education conformable to her laws. One of those laws is, that the bodily and mental faculties are gradually developed; another, that they require to be exercised, as a condition for their health and activity. The former is an obvious truism; and every discerning observer may deduce a negative verification of the latter law from the equally obvious fact, that, whenever either individuals or nations neglect their intellectual and moral culture, they rapidly degenerate,—a fact, of which the sad truth is too frequently apparent in private life, and which has received some melancholy illustrations, in both ancient and modern times, in the history of the whole species, and, especially, in that of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. The reason is obvious; for, the brain, which is the seat of all the mental faculties,-the feelings, and sentiments, as well as the intellectual powers, both percipient and reflective,-is subject to the same laws as the other parts of the nervous system; and we all know that the external senses, for example, acquire a more intense sensibility in proportion as they are exercised: thus, in the savage, they are more acute than in the civilized being, because the dangers by which the former is surrounded, and the difficulty he experiences in procuring a precarious supply of food, tend to excite the various senses, and especially those of seeing and of hearing, from a very early period. On the contrary, contrast these same faculties in the savage with those of persons that work in mines, and it will be found that the sight, for instance, is in the latter very imperfectly manifested. In like manner, on the other hand, the moral and intellectual faculties being more exercised in civilized man, they become more active and vigorous than

in the barbarian, in whom these faculties are almost entirely neglected. We shall, therefore, at the outset, enter into a description of the general and particular functions of the brain, and in this way bring forward the data on which we have founded our practical views of Moral and Intellectual Education.

CHAPTER I.

THE STRUCTURE AND USES OF THE BRAIN.

WE venture to assert, that as soon as men shall comprehend the laws of mind, and the means by which the organic instruments may be improved, it will become evident to them that their mental faculties are susceptible of much greater cultivation than is now generally supposed. This knowledge is only to be obtained by a physiological investigation of the functions of the brain, through which compound organ the mind manifests its various powers. The brain is proved to be a compound of many parts, as may be shown by its anatomy, and as might be inferred from its numerous functions, animal, moral, and intellectual. In man, its structure is rather complex, but gradually becomes less so as we descend the scale of intelligence through the several orders of mammalia and amphibia. This progressive increase of

* We call the whole mass that fills the skull, the brain. But anatomists have divided it into three parts, besides the nerves which originate at its base. First, the medulla oblongata, which joins the spinal marrow at the part where the vertebral column enters the skull. Second, the cerebellum, or little brain, situated at the back part and base of the skull, and which is united to the medulla oblongata. Third, the cerebrum, or brain proper, extending from above the cerebellum to the roots of the nose and eyebrows.

parts in the brains of different animals, according to the number and kind of their instincts, affords presumptive evidence that this organ cannot be regarded as an unit; and so accurate is the result to be obtained by the application of this evidence, that it would not be difficult to form a scale of the comparative intelligence of various animals from an attentive inspection of their brains, marking the different degrees from the simplest rudiment in worms up to the complicated and beautiful machine which constitutes the brain of man, who manifests faculties moral, religious, percipient, and reflective, which are peculiar to himself. Nor can this constant correspondence between the simplicity or complexity of an organ and the more or less compound nature of its uses be deemed adventitious or merely coincident, it being an established law of animal life that neither man nor animals can exercise a function without an organic instrument.

With this truth for our guide, we may proceed to discuss other phenomena of a general nature, as we can in this manner make a necessary distinction between the organ and its uses, and the principle which is essential to give the vital action.

The brain at birth is soft and pulpy, but it gradually improves in structure, and becomes quite matured in middle life. In old age it again undergoes a change; the fulness of its parts is considerably less, and there is a less susceptibility to excitement. Observation also enables us to state, that there are corresponding changes of the mental phenomena, coincident with these periodical alterations in the organ. In infancy there is scarcely exhibited either moral or intellectual perception; in childhood the faculties manifest more activity, and still more vivacity in youth; in manhood all the mental powers acquire their greatest vigour; but in old age the mellowed faculties of our autumnal period begin to feel the effect of declining energy, and as the chilling days of mortal winter approach, our perceptions become more and

more enfeebled, until we finally sink into the grave! In taking such a view of mortal existence, (confirmed by experience,) will any one be guilty of the flagrant folly of charging us with advocating materialism? We observe in this arrangement the goodness of the Creator, and see in it, as in all his other works, both harmony and wisdom. For, did man, at the time of his birth, enjoy his faculties in all the perfection of manhood, the innocence of infancy, and the sympathies and affections which grow up between the child and parent during the period of moral and intellectual tuition, would have been denied us; and, if no change occurred in our latter days, grey hairs would come upon us in the midst of the follies and vanities of life, and we should drop into the grave without being prepared for the summons to be hourly expected in declining age.

But every thing, both as regards the external world and the economy of man, bears indelible evidence of infinite wisdom. As the greatest exertion is required during the meridian of life, the faculties are then most vivid and active; had this state however been prolonged to old age, man would have forgotten the higher and nobler destiny of his nature. In the present order of our mental seasons all is harmony: when the body becomes weak and decrepid, the passions and feelings have lost much of their wonted energy, the percipient faculties are intractable, whilst the moral and religious sentiments are unclouded by sensual desires; and the old man is thus permitted to view "eternity” as a bright and cheering prospect, or calmly to resign himself to rest, like the traveller who after a long summer-day's walk forgets both the pleasures and the fatigues of his past journey, and only wishes to compose his weary limbs and to close his eyes in sleep.

If we reject this physiological solution, we must inevita bly be driven to the absurd supposition, that the brain is the source of mental phenomena, rather than the instrument by which mind operates. In this case, there would be an utter

impossibility to account for the marked changes that occur between infancy and old age, and, there being no alternative, we should be obliged to contend that the mind itself is subject to these changes, and in the strictest sense of the word should become materialists. But, to the philosopher who traces effects to causes by the inductive process, the facts on which a contrary opinion is tenable, amount almost to positive demonstration. The mind, as a distinct principle, appears to him the same at the time when it first animated the embryo as it does in every subsequent stage of existence it does not undergo changes corresponding to the periods of infancy, youth, manhood, and old age; but the organic instrument (the brain) is subject to these mutations, in the same manner as the sight becomes dim, and the limbs lose their mobility and become sluggish, under the operation of the same physical law. The change in the latter instances produces no essential alteration in the sentient principle: it is only the nerves and muscles themselves that have undergone some organic modification.

The importance of the brain, as the focus of all sensation, might be inferred from the phenomena before cited, and further from the manner in which it is secured from either internal or external injury.

The brain is enclosed in three soft coverings (membranes), the outermost one, (dura mater) being very dense, and considerably thicker than the other two membranes, it being so contrived as to have a canal (longitudinal sinus) formed of its substance, which canal is for the purpose of carrying off the waste blood into the jugular veins, and, through the latter organs, to the heart, to be again vitalized. Besides this careful provision, the brain is inclosed in a strong ivorylike box (skull), a cabinet of the most curious workmanship, and of the very best form for combining strength with lightness and security. Nor are these all the proofs it exhibits of divine care and wisdom: the skull is admirably adapted to the changes which the brain is liable to undergo from