their first shallows: or if on a sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled, with their unballasted wits, in fathomless and unquiet deeps, they do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, or retire themselves, knowing no better, to enjoyments of ease and luxury, wasting their days in feast and jollity." And by Lord Bacon we are admonished that " desire to know is the very soul of education; without which she is only as a statue; lovely, indeed, to behold, but dead and motionless."

а

Query JU.

How is the Love of Knowledge generated?

1. M. VAUCAUSON's mother had a spiritual director, who lived in a cell, to which the hall, where a clock was placed, served as an anti-chamber. The mother paid frequent visits to this director: her son waited for her in the anti-chamber, and having nothing to do, he wept with weariness, while his mother wept with repentance: however, as we commonly weep and weary ourselves as little as possible, and as in a state of vacation there are no sensations indifferent, young Vaucauson was soon struck with the uniform motion of the pendulum and desirous of discovering the cause. His curiosity was roused: he approached the clock

case, and saw through the crevices, the wheels that turn each other; discovered a part of the mechanism and guessed at the rest. He projected a similar machine, which he executed in wood with a knife; and at last was able to make a clock more or less perfect. Encouraged by this first success, his taste for mechanics was determined. His talents displayed themselves, and the same genius that enabled him to make a clock in wood, showed him the possibility of forming a fluting automatona.

2. About the year 1666, in the 24th year of his age, Sir Isaac Newton retired from Cambridge into the country, in order to avoid the plague, which at that time raged with great fury; and sitting one day under a tree, in an orchard, an apple by chance falling upon his head, gave a new turn to his reflections. The phænomenon of falling bodies particularly engaged his attention; and pursuing the ideas which presented themselves to his mind, he carried his researches, from the earth to the heavens,

a Helvetius on Man.

and began to investigate the nature of motion in general.

3. It appears then that the impressions made by objects depend much upon the time at which they strike us. When the mind is in perfect repose; when its surface is not agitated by the least breath of passion; it may be awakened by judicious excitement. When it is troubled, impression may be made by a judicious diversion of thought: when in fusion, be thrown into form.

it

may

The time of making impressions depends on the state of the patient: this is not, however, the only or the most important consideration. The mode of making impressions, or the proper conduct of the agent, is not less deserving attention.

4. In planting a seed, care must be taken that it is not cast on a soil destructive of its existence : that it is so placed as to have its living powers properly excited: and, if it is intended to be healthy and durable, that it is not forced in its growth. So it seems to be in education.-The love of truth ought not to be checked in its infancy by painful

associations. It ought to be judiciously excited in youth by natural causes of excitement;-by the exhibition of good; or of the particular works of nature: or of the admirable and exquisite subtlety of nature or of the great effects which result from apparently trivial causes: or of the noble inventions in arts and sciences: or by so imparting knowledge as to generate an anxiety to know more: and, if it is intended not for show but for substance, not to run out in talk for the gratification of the youth or the vanity of the parent, but for perpetual progress, it ought not to be stimulated into unnatural action.

The considerations with respect to the mode of generating knowledge seem therefore to be:

1st. Not to associate pain with the acquisition of knowledge.

2dly. The application of proper mental stimulants.

3dly. Not to force the mind.