"ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 398, 16 August 1861, Page 3

"ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

In a world of mere phenomena, where all events are bound to one another by a rigid law of cause and effect, it is possible to imagine the course of a long period bringing all things at the end of it into exactly the same relations as they occupied at the beginning. We should, then, obviously have a succession of cycles rigidly similar to one another, both in events and in the sequence of them. The universe would eternally repeat the same changes in a fixed order of recurrence, though each cycle might be many millions of years of length. Moreover, the precise similarity in these cycles would render the very existence of each one of them entirely unnecessary.

We can suppose, without any logical inconsequence, any one of them struck out, and the two which had been destined to precede and follow it brought into immediate contiguity. This supposition transforms the universe into a dead machine. The lives and the souls of men become so indifferent, that the annihilation ot a whole human race, or of many such races, is absolutely nothing. Every event passes away asithappens, filling its place in the sequence, but purposeless for the future. The order of, all things becomes, not merely an iron rule, from which nothing can ever swerve, but an iron rule which guides to nothing and ends in nothing. Such a snpposition is possible to the logical understanding; it is not possible to the spirit. The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without a ] urpose. To the spirit, all things that exist must have a purpose, and nothing can pass away till that purpose be fulfilled. The lapse of time is no exception to this demand. Each moment of time, as it passes, is taken up in the shape of permanent results into the

time that follows, and only perishes by being converted into something more substantial than itself.

A series of recumng cycles, however conceivable to the logical understanding, is inconceivable to the spirit; for every later cycle must be made different from every earlier by the mere fact of coming after it and embodying its results.

The material world may be subject to such a rule, and may, in successive epochs, be the cradle of successive races of spiritual beings. But the world of spirits cannot be a mere machine.

In accordance with this difference between the material and the spiritual worlds, we ought to be prepared to find progress in the latter, however much fixity there may be in the former. The earth may still be describing precisely the same orbit as that which was assigned to her at the creation. The seasons may be precisely the same. The planets, the moon, and the stars may be unchanged both in appearance and in. realitf. Eut man is a spiritual as well as a material creature, must be subject to the laws of the spiritual as vyell as to those of the material world, and cannot stand still because things around him co. ' ; Now that the individual man is capable of perpetual, or almost perpetual, development from the day of his birth to that of his death, is obvious of course. But we may well expect to find something more than this in a spiritual creature who does not stand-alone, but forms a part, of a whole world of creatures like himself. Man cannot be considered as an individual. He is, in reality, only man by virtue of bis being a member of the human race. Any other animal that we know would probably not be very different in its nature if brought up from its very birth apart from all its kind. A child so brought up becomes, as instances could be adduced to prove, not a man in the full sense at all, but rather a beast in human shape, with human faculties, no doubt, hidden underneath, but with no hope in this life of developing those faculties into true humanity. If, then, the whole in this case, as in so many others, is prior to tha parts, we may conclude that we are to look to that progress which is essential to a spiritual being subject to the lapse of time, not only in the individual, but also quite as much in the race taken as a whole. We may expect to find, in the history of man, each successive age incorporating into itself the substance of the preceding. This power,' whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the pact, transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life reaches from the creation to the day of judgment. The successive generations of men are days in this man's life. The discoveries and inventions which characterise the different epochs of the world's history are his works. The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages, are his thoughts. The state of society at different times are his manners. He grows in knowledge, in self-control, in visible size, just as we do. And his education is in the same way, and for the same reason, precisely similar to ours.

All this is no figure, but only a compendious statement of a very comprehensive fact. The child that is born to -day may possibly have the same faculties as if he had been born in the days of Noah; if it be otherwise, we possess no means of determining the difference. But the equality of the natural faculties at starting will not prevent a vast difference in their ultimate development. That development is entirely under the control of the influences exerted by the society in which the child may chance to live. If such society be altogether denied, the faculties perish, and the child (as remarked above) grows up a beast, and not a man; if the society be uneducated and coarse, the growth of the faculties is early so stunted as never afterwards to be capable of recovery; if the society be highly cultivated, the child will be cultivated.also, and will s!iow, more or less, through life the fruits of that cultivation.

Hence each generation receives the benefit of the cultivation of that which', preceded it. Not in knowledge only, but in development of powers, the child of twelve now stands at the level where once stood the child of fourteen, where ages ago stood the full-grown man. The discipline of manners, of temper, of thought, of feeling, is transmitted from generation to generation, and at each transmission there is an imperceptible but unfailing increase. , The perpetual accumulation of the stores of knowledge is so much more visible than the change in the other ingredients of human progress, that we are apt to fancy that knowledge grows, and knowledge only. I shall not stop to examine whether it be true (as is sometimes maintained) that all progress in human society is but the effect of the progress of knowledge. For the present, it is enough to point out that knowledge is not the only possession of the human spirit in which progress can be traced.

We may, then, rightly speak of childl*)od, a youth, and a manhood of the world. The men of the earliest ages were, in many respects, still children as compared with ourselves, with all the blessings and with all the disadvantages that belong to childhood. We reap the fruits of their toil, and bear in our characters the impress of their cultivation. Our characters have grown out of their history, as the character of the man grows out of the hiitory of the child. There are matters in which the simplicity of childhood is wiser than the maturity of manhood; and in these they were wiser than we. There are matters in which the child is nothing, and the man everything; and in these we are the gainers. And the process by which we have either lost or gained corresponds, stage by stage, with the process by which the infant is trained, for youth, and youth for manhood,

This training has three stages. In childhood we are subject to positive rules which we cannot understand, but are bound implicitly to obey. In youth we are subject to the influence of example, and soon break loose from all rules unless illustrated and enforced by the higher teaching which example imparts. In manhood we are comparatively free from external restraints, and if we are to learn, must be our own. instructors.

First come rules, then examples, then principles. First comes the law, then the Son of Man, then the gift of the Spirit. The world was once a child under tutors and governors, until the time appointed by the Father. Then, when the fit season had arrived, the example, to which all ages should turn, was sent to teach men what they ought to be. Then the human race was left to itself to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within. Tha education of the world, like that of the child, begins with law. It is impossible to explain the reasons of all the commands that you give to the child, and you do not endeavor to do so. When he is to go to bed, when he is to get up, how he is to sit, stand, eat, drink, what answers he is to make when spoken to, what he may touch and what he may not, what prayers he shall say and when, what lessons he is to learn, every detail of manners and of conduct the careful mother teaches her child, and requires implicit obedience. Mingled together in her teaching are commands of the most trivial character, and commands of the gravest importance; their relative value marked by a difference of manner rather than by anything else, since to explain it is impossible. Meanwhile to the child obedience is the highest duty, affection the highest stimulus, the mother's ivord the highest sanction. The conscience is alive, but it is, like the other faculties of that age, irregular, undeveloped, easily deceived. The mother does not leave it uncultivated, nor refuse sometimes to explain her motives for commanding or forbidding; but she never thinks of putting the judgment of the child against het own, nor of considering the child's conscience as having a right to free action.

As the child grows older the education changes its character, not so much in regard to the sanction of its precepts as in regard to their tenor. More stress is laid upon matters of real duty, less upon matters of mere manner. Falsehood, quarrelling, bad temper, greediness, indolence, are more attended to than times of going to bed, or fashions of eating, or postures in sitting. The boy is allowed to feel, and to show that he feels, the difference between different commands. But he is still not left to himself; and though points of manner are not put on a level with points of conduct, they are by no means neglected. Moreover, while much stress is laid upon his deeds, little is laid upon his opinions; he is rightly supposed not to have any, and will not be allowed to plead them as a reason for disobedience.

a time, however, the intellect begins to assert a right to enter into all questions of duty, and the intellect accordingly is cultivated. The reason is appealed to in all questions of conduct; the consequences of folly or sin are pointed out, and the punishment which, without any miracle, God invariably brings upon those who disobey His natural laws—how, for instance, falsehood destroys confidence and incurs, contempt ; how indulgence in appetite tends to brutal and degrading habits; how ill-temper may end in crime, and must end in mischief. Thus the conscience is reached through the understanding.

Now, precisely analogous to all this is the history of the education of the early world. The earliest commands almost entirely refer to bodily appetites and animal passions. The earliest wide-spread sin was brutal violence. That wilfulness of temper —those germs of wanton cruelty, which the mother corrects so easily in her infant, were developed in the earliest form of human society into a prevailing plague of wickedness. The few notices which are given of that state of mankind do not present a picture of mete lawlessness, such as we find among the medieval nations of Europe, but of blind, gross ignorance of themselves and all around them.

Atheism is possible now* but Lamech's ptesumptuous comparison of himself with God is impossible, and the thought of bidding a tower high enough to escape God's wrath could enter no man's dreams. We sometimes see in very little .children a violence of temper, which seems hardly human: add to such a temper the strength of a full-grown man, and we shall perhaps understand wlut is meant by the expression, that the earth was filled with violence. Violence was followed by sensuality. Such was the sin of Noah, Ham, Sodom, Lot's daughters, and the guilty Canaanites. Animal appetites—the appetites which must be subdued in childhood if they are subdued at all—were still the temptation of mankind.

Such sins are, it is true, prevalent now. But the peculiarity of these early forms of licentiousness is their utter disregard of every kind of restraint, and this: constitutes their childish character.

The education of this early race may strictly be said to begin when it was formed into the various masses out of which the nations of the earth have sprung. The world, as it were, went to school, and was broken up into classes. Before that time it can hardly be said that any great precepts had been given. The only commands which claim an earlier date are the prohibitions of murder and eating blood. And these may be considered as given to all alike. But the whole lesson of humanity was too much to be learned by all at once. Different parts of it fell to the task of the different parts of the human race, and for a long time, though the education of the world flowed in parallel channels, it did not form ft single stream.