in early life, are of very unequal growth in different minds. Education, according to the faculties, once almost entirely neglected, has, in some modern systems, been pushed to excess. That things should, to a certain extent, precede words; and the pronunciation precede the spelling; that learning by heart before the child understands is not so sensible a plan as helping it to understand first; that the knowing faculties precede the reflective; and that sentiment anticipates reason;-these are rough facts to be generally acted on. But the Pestalozzian system, with many advantages, appears to me to call for an order too rigorous and refined for general use. The great thing for the parent. or teacher to do is, to know distinctly the end he aims at in education; to lay down a plan for its attainment; and to be careful that his plan observes the order of nature; neither inverting nor forestalling her laws. Filial affection God, The order in which the love of the child rises to the love of graduates is from the stage of instinctive love to moral affection, and from this to the love of its heavenly Parent. Desirous as the parents may be to lead its affections up at once to the Creator, the previous stages of the path must first be passed through. For awhile, the maternal care is the only Providence it knows; and the father's experience a world of grand enterprise, and of power unlimited. In vain it strives to climb the height of his knowledge-his virtual omniscience; nor can it conceive of a Diviner guarantee than his promise. To see its parents bend in worship, and to hear them speak with holy awe of their Father in heaven, is itself solemn and suggestive as a ladder set up from earth to heaven. The wise discipline too which leads the parent kindly to repress its selfish desires, and constantly to aim at its moral welfare, invariably begets in return the highest order of filial love and confidence; evincing the power of the child to discriminate between instinctive and moral affection, and preparing it to embrace that Heavenly Parent of whom the earthly is but an imperfect representative. And let the parents remark that, from the moment they begin to point their child to God as an object of reverence and love, they are pursuing the certain course for augmenting its moral affection for themselves; while its intelligent love for them is a valuable means and a pledge for its ascending to the love of God. Means of educa The means of education are threefold; tion and their or- example, authority, and reason. der. The first begins to produce its appropriate effect before the second is understood, and the exercise of the second prepares the way for the third. Not that there is a definite point of time at which the first terminates, and at which the second makes way for the third; but there is an order observed for the commencement of each, though the first co-exists with the second and the second with the third. And this order of the means by which the parent influences the child only corresponds with the threefold capability of the child to be influenced. Thus, answering to the involuntary effect of parental example, is the instinctive power of infantine imitation. The authority of the parent is met on the part of the child by a disposition to believe and obey because it is the parent who testifies and commands. And the reasoning of the parent is responded to by the intelligence of the child, enabling it to appreciate the grounds which recommend and enforce the claims of truth and of virtue, independently of parental example and authority. Similarly, in the means of teaching, pictures precede les sons, and lessons, logic. And, on the part of the taught, the involuntary admiration of the first, is followed by voluntary attention to the second; and this again, by the comprehension and approval of the third. The process becomes, at each step, increasingly subjective. Order of social Regarding man as a social being, it will be development. found that his desires precede his dispositions; his inclination to appropriate, that is, exists before his readiness to distribute. Even when he comes to distribute that which he had previously appropriated, increasing his enjoyment by participation, present gratification precedes all regard for the future. Improvidence is one of the last evils which disappears as social man ascends the scale of improvement. The disposition to appropriate for the family precedes the readiness to distribute more generally; in other words, the proprietary or possessory feelings precede that sense of justice which prompts a man to treat others as he expects to be treated by them. Indeed, in every respect, the laws of relation between different families suppose the prior relations of each distinct family, just as those again presuppose the laws of relation in the individual constitution. From which it is to be inferred that any scheme designed to affect and improve the character of families must depend for success on its affecting each member of which the little community is composed; the change and improvement must begin with the individual. Importance of der itself is a law. Order, then, is itself a law. So that if the observing that or well-being of an individual, or of a family, depends on obedience to laws, this law of order must be obeyed also. Indeed, it will be found that when men have at length come to attempt something for the improvement of themselves or others, the failure which often ensues commonly arises from their disregard of the order in which it should be done. They seem to imagine, first, that provided something be done having a tendency to improve, it matters little what it is; or, secondly, that if it be important to select the right thing, the order and the manner of doing it are quite immaterial. A discussion on this point is, in their view, mere trifling, and argues a want of heartiness and earnestness in the object. When the derangement in a piece of machinery is to be remedied, they would deem the mechanist mad who did not feel that every thing depended on the proportion, the disposition of parts, the relative arrangement of the whole; but when man's disorders are to be remedied-man's, whose constitution includes all laws, physical, intellectual, social, and moral, they are ready to deem him mad who thinks any thing respecting the orderly application of the remedy. They wonder, indeed, afterward at the failure. In the case of the machinery they would deem failure, from a corresponding cause, inevitable; would patiently show that a single error in an early part of the process becomes ten by the close. And they forget that man is meant to be no exception to the law of order, but its grand exemplification. 14* CHAPTER XII. THE SUBORDINATION IMPLIED IN THE ORDER AND WELLBEING OF THE DOMESTIC CONSTITUTION. The law stated. "EVERY law subordinate in rank, though it may have been prior in its origin, is subject to each higher object or law of creation." This is only saying, in effect, that in no case are the means put in the place of the end. Of this law we found numerous illustrations in our consideration of individual man. We saw it, for example, in the subordination of the kingdoms of nature to man's authority; in the subjection of his appetites to self-love; of self-love to his affections; and of these three to his sense of duty while each of these were found to have its own class of objects ranking according to its importance. In the formation of the family, the relation The filial yields to the conjugal. of parent and child yields to the subsequent relation of husband and wife. Tender and absorbing as the connection of mother and daughter may have been, a period arrives in which it must hold a secondary place. Not that filial ties and duties cease in consequence of the new relation. They remain in some respects unchanged; nor should the marriage contract ever be so interpreted as to violate them.* But the new relation becomes para * Wayland's Moral Science, p. 308. |