1. Three things are desirable with regard to the physical circumstances, which operate in the way of education favourably or unfavourably; to collect them fully ; to appreciate them duly; and to place them in the order which is most favourable for drawing from them practical rules.
This is a service (common to the sciences of edu cation and mind) which has been very imperfectly rendered. It has been chiefly reserved to medical men to observe the physical circumstances which af fect the body and mind of man; but of medical men few have been much skilled in the observation of mental phenomena, or have thought themselves call ed upon to mark the share which physical circum stances had in producing them. There are indeed some, and those remarkable exceptions. There is Dr. Darwin in our own country, and M. Cabanis in France. They have both of them taken the mind as a part at least of their study ; and we are highly indebted to them for the number and value of their observations. They are both philosophers, in the most important sense of the word; they both obser ved nature for themselves, observed,her attentively, and with their view steadily directed to the proper end. But still it was not safe to rely upon them im plicitly as guides. They were in too great a haste to establish conclusions; and were apt to let their be lief run before their evidence. They were not suffi ciently careful to distinguish between the different degrees of evidence, and to mark what is required to constitute proof. To do this steadily seems, in deed, to be one of the rarest of all endowments ; and was much less the characteristic of the two phi losophers we have named, than a wide range of know ledge from which they collected the facts, and great ingenuity in combining and applying them. Dr. Dar win was the most remarkable, both for the strength and the weakness of which we speak. The work of Darwin, to which we chiefly allude, is the Zoononia; though important remarks to the same effect are scattered in his other publications. Cabanis entitled his great work, Rapport: du Physique et du Moral de lliomme. And there are some works recently an nounced by German physiologists, the titles of which • promise aids in the same endeavour. But though we expect from them new facts, and ingenious hints, we have less hbpe of any great number of sound con clusions.
There are certain general names, already in use, including the greater number of the physical cir cumstances which operate in the way of education upon the mind. It will be convenient, because of
their commonness, to make use of them on the pre sent occasion, though neither the enumeration which they make is complete, nor the distribution All the physical circumstances which operate upon the mind are either, 1. inherent in the body : or, 2. external to the body. Those which are external to the body operate upon the mind, by first opera ting upon the body.
Of the first kind, the more remarkable seem to be healthiness or sickliness, strength or weakness, beau ty or deformity, the temperament, the age, the sex.
Of the second sort, the more remarkable seem to be the aliment, the labour, the air, temperature, action, rest Previous to the inquiry respecting the power which physical circumstances exert in the formation of the mind, it may seem that we ought to determine the speculative question respecting the nature of the mind : that is, whether the phenomena of mind may possibly result from a certain organization of the powers of matter; or whether something of a differ.
ent kind, and which we call spiritual, must not be conceived, as the source and organ of thought. We do not mean to enter into this controversy, which would detain us too long. It is not, in the least de gree, necessary that we should, for the end which we have in view. Whether the one hypothesis, with re spect to the mind, be adopted, or the other, the dis tribution of the circumstances, which operate in the formation of human character, into those called Physical, and those commonly will be as convenient a distribution, as the present state of our knowledge enables us to make. And all that inquiry can do, in regard to those circumstan ces, is, to trace them accurately, and to observe their effects ; that is, to ascertain what they are, and what the order of the mental events by which they are followed. This is simply matter of experience ; and what we experience is what it is, whatever opinion we adopt with regard to the nature of that which thinks. It is in what we experience, all ascertained, and put into the best possible shape for ease of com prehension and ready application to practice, that all useful knowledge on this, as on all other subjects, consists.