THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 424, 15 November 1861, Page 2

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

2o the Editor of the Colonist. ' The youth that has settled down to his life's work makes a great mistake if he fancies that because he is no more under teachers and governors his education is therefore at an end. It has only changed its form. He has much to •learn—aye, and unless he be something more than the generality of his fellows, much to unlearn; and his new teacher will not give it to him all at once. The lesson of life is in this respect like the lessons whereby we learn any ordinary business. In every profession, after the principles are apparently mastered, there yet remains much to be learnt from the application of those principles to practice, the only means by which we ever understand principles to the bottom ; so, too, with the lesson which includes all others,' the lesson of life.' •In this last stage of his progress man learns in Various ways. First he learns by the steady accumulation of experience; secondly, by reflection. He learns to distinguish between momentary impulses and permanent determinations of character. He learns to know the limits of his own powers, moral and intellectual; and by slow degrees, and with much reluctance, he learns to suspend his judgment and to be content with ignorance where knowledge is beyond hit reach. He learns to know himself and other men, and to distinguish in some measure his own peculiarities from the leading features of humanity, which.he shares with all men. - He learns to know both the worth and worthlessnets of the world's judgment, and of his own. 4 Thirdly, he learns much by mistakes, both by his own and by those of others. His errors often force him to go back as it were to school, not with the happy docility of a child, but with the chastened submission of a penitent. ' Lastly, he learns much by contradiction. The collision of society compels him to state his opinions clearly, to defend them, to modify them ; when indefensible, perhaps to surrender them altogether, consciously or unconscientiously; still more often to absorb them into larger and fuller thoughts, less forcible, but more comprehensive. * But throughout all this it must not be supposed that he has no more to do with that law which guided his childhood, or with any other law of any kind. He is free: but freedom is not the opposite of obedience, but of restraint; and if lie has not acquired the habit of obedience, he is not fit to be free. The law, in fact, which makes the standard of our conduct, may have one or two forms. It may be an external form : a la*v which is in the hands of others in the making, in the applying, in the enforcing, of which we have no shave; a law which governs from the outside, compelling our will to bow, even though our understanding be unconvinced and unenlightened; saying you must, and makes no effort to make you feel that you ought; appealing not to your conscience, but to force and feav, and caring little whether you willing agree or reluctantly Bubmit. Or, again, the law may bean internal law; a voice which speaks within, the conscience, and carries the understanding along with it; a law which bids us yield, not to blind fear or awe, but to the majesty of truth and justice; a law which is not imposed upon us by a foreign power, but by our own enlightened, will. Now, tht first of these is

the law which governs and educates the child ; the second, the law which governs and educates the man. The second is in reality the spirit of the first. It commands in a different way, but with a tone not one whit less peremptorily j and he only who can control all appetites and passions in obedience to it, can reap the full harvest of the last and highest education. ' / 'This need of law in the full maturity of life is so imperative, that if the requisite self-control be lost or impaired, or has never been acquired, the man has instinctively recourse to a self-imposed discipline, if he desires to keep himself from falling. When he has fallen into intemperate or sinful habits, he finds he has no other-recourse but to abstain from much that is harmless in itself, because he has associated it with evil. ' He takes monastic vows, because the world ihas been top much for him; he takes temperance pledges, because he cannot resist the temptations of appetite. The world and its enjoyments have been to them a source of perpetual temptation. They denounce what they cannot share, without danger, as dangerous not only for themselves but for all mankind, and as evil in itself. They set up a conventional code of duty, founded on their own experience, which they extend to all men. For the same reason a strict and severe discipline is needed for the cure of reprobates. 'It is true that the teaching of mere discipline, if there be no other teaching, is useless. If you have only killed one selfish principle by substituting another, you have done nothing. This return to the teaching of discipline in mature lite is needed for the intellect even more than for the conduct. There are many who, though they pass from the teaching of the outer law to that of the inner in regard to their practical life, neveremerge from the former, in regard to t\\eiv^pehdatsve. They do not think; they are content to let others think for them, and to accept the results. How far the average of men are from having attained the power of free independent thought, is shown by the staggering and stumbling of their intellects when a completely new subject of investigation tempts them to form a judgment of their own oh a matter they have not studied. In such cases, the really educated intellect sees at once that no judgment is yet within its reach,, and acquiesces in suspense. But the uneducated intellect hastens to account for the phenomenon—to discover or proclaim new laws of nature and new relations of truth; not only this, but to decide and predict, and perhaps to demand, a remodelling of all previous knowledge. The discussions on tableturning, a few years ago, illustrated the want of intellects able to govern themselves. The whole analogy of physical science was not sufficient to induce that suspension of judgment which was effected in a week by the dictum of a celebrated philosopher. . ' There are, however, some men who really think for themselves. But even they sometimes put a temporary restraint upon their intellect. They refuse to speculate at all in directions where they cannot feel sure of preserving their own balance of mind, and sometimes even go farther: they refuse to thiak any more. on. the particular question, and were they to rest there all would be well. But, as is always the case with those who are under the law, such men are sometimes tempted to prescribe for others what they need for themselves, and so require that no others should speculate, because they dare not. They not only refuse to think and accept other men's thoughts, which is often quite right, but they elevate those into canons of faith for all men, which is not right. Some men, on the other hand, show their want of intellectual self-control by going back, not to the dominion of the law, but to the still lower level of intellectual anarchy. They speculate without any. foundation at all; they confound the internal consistency of some dream of their brains with, the reality of independent truth; they set up theories of their own, which have no other evidence than compatibility with the few facts that happen to be known, and forget that many other theories of equal claims might readily be invented; they are as little able to be content with having no judgment at all as those who accept judgments at secondhand; they never practically realise that where there is not enough evidence to justify a conclusion it is wisdom to draw no conclusion; .they are so eager for light, that they will rub their eyes in the dark, and take the resulting optical delusions for real.flashes. 'There is yet a further relation between the inner law of mature life and the outer law of childhood which should be noticed, and that is that the outer law is often the best vehicle in which the inner law can be contained for the various purposes of life. Tho man remembers with affection, and keeps up with delight, the customs of the home of his childhood, tempted perhaps to over-estimate their value, but, even when perfectly eware that they are but one form out of many which a well-ordered household might adopt, preferring them because of his long familiarity, and because of the memories with which they are associated. So, too, truth often seems to him more comprehensible when expressed in some favorite phrase of his mother's, or some maxims of his father's. He can give no better reason very often for much that he does every day of his life, than that his father did it before him; and, provided the custom is not a bad one, the reason if not valid is justifiable. There are, however, limits to all this; but no man is quite free from the influence, and it is in many cases, perhaps in most, an influence; of the highest moral character. There is great value in the removal of many indifferent matters out of the region of discussion into that of precedent. There is greater value still in the link of sympathy which binds the present with the past, and fills old age with the freshness of childhood. If truth sometimes suffers in form, it unquestionably gains much in power; and if its onward progress is retarded, it gains immeasurably in solidity and in its hold on men's hearts. ' Such is the last stage in education of the human being, and similar, as far as it has gone, has been the last stage of the human race. Of course so full a comparison cannot be made in this instance as was possible in he two that preceded it; for we are still witlri the boundaries of this third period, and wecvu ot yet judge it as a whole.' Yours, &c; SENEXALBUS. . [Some parts of the former letter were iuscrted without the invetted commas to show where the original matter * ppeared in that portion of the digest of Dr. Temple's Essay, one of the celebrated ' Reviews and Essays.] . :