S. The moral circumstances which determine the mental trains of the human being, and hence the cha racter of his actions, are of so much importance, that to them the term education has been generally con fined : Or rather, the term education has been gene rally used in so narrow a sense, that it embraces only one of the four classes into which we have thought it convenient to distribute the moral circumstances which operate to the formation of the human mind.
The first of these classes we have comprehended under the term Dontestk Education. To this the groundwork of the character of most individuals is almost wholly to be traced. The original features are fabricated here ; not, indeed, in such a manner as to be =susceptible of alteration, but in such a man ner, decidedly, as to present a good or bad subject for all future means of cultivation. The importance therefore, of domestic education, needs no additional words to explain it ; though it is difficult to restrain a sigh, when we reflect, that it has but now begun to be regarded as within the pale of education ; and a few scattered remarks, rather than a full exposition of the subject, is alh the information upon it, with which the world has been favoured.
By Domestic Education, we denote all that the and hears and sees, more especially all that it is made to suffer or enjoy at the hands of others, and all that it is allowed or constrained to do, in the house in which it is born and bred, which we shall consider generally as the parental.
If we consider that the mental trains, as explain ed above, are that upon which every thing depends, and that the mental trains depend essentially upon thoseseq uences among our sensations which have frequently been so uently experienced as to create a habit of passing from the idea of the one to that of the other,—we shall perceive immediately the reasons of what we have advanced.
It seems to be a law of human nature, that the first sensations experienced produce the greatest effects ; more especially, that the earliest repetitions of one sensation after another produce the deepest habit; the strongest propensity to pass immediately from the idea of the one to the idea of the other. Common language confirms this law, when it speaks of the susceptibility of the tender mind. On this depends the power of those associations which form some of the most interesting phenomena of human life. From what other cause. does it arise, that the hearing of a musical air, which, after a life of ab sence, recalls the parental mansion, produces as it were a revolution in the whole being ? That the sympathies between brothers and sisters are what they are? On what other cause originally is the love of country founded ?—that passionate attachment to the soil, the the manners, the woods, the rivers, the hills, with with which our infant eyes were fa miliar, which fed our youthful imaginations, and with the presence of which the pleasures of our early years were habitually conjoined ! It is, then, a fact, that the early sequences to which we are accustomed form the primary habits; and that the primary habits are the fundamental cha racter of the man. The consequence is most import ant; for it follows, that, as soon as the infant, or ra ther the embryo, begins to feel, the character begins to be formed; and that the habits which are then contracted, are the most pervading and operative of all. Education, then, or the care of forming the habits, ought to commence, as much as possible, with the period of sensation itself ; and, at no period, is its utmost vigilance of greater importance, than the first.
Very unconnected, or very general instructions, are all that can be 4iven upon this subject, till the pro per decompositions and recompositions are perform• ed ; in other terms, till the subject is first analyzed, and then systematized; or, in one word, philosophiz ed, if we may use that verb in a passive signification. We can, therefore, do little more than exhort to the prosecution of the inquiry.
The steady conception of the End must guide us to the Means. Happiness is the end; and we have circumscribed the inquiry, by naming Intelligence, Temperance, and Benevolence, of which last the two are Generosity and Justice, as the grand qua lities of mind through which this end is to be at tained. The question, then, is, how can those early sequences be made to take place cm which the ha bits, conducive to intelligence, temperance, and be nevolence, are founded ; and how can those sequences, on which are founded the vices opposite to those virtues, be prevented? Clearness is attained, by disentangling complexi ty : we ought, therefore, to trace the sequences conducive to each of those qualities in their turn. A part, however, must suffice, when we cannot ac complish the whole. Intelligent trains of ideas con stitute intelligence. Now trains of ideas are intelli gent, when the sequences in the ideas correspond to the sequences in nature. A man, for example, knows the order of certain words, when his idea of the one follows that of the other, in the same order in which the events themselves took place. A man is sagacious in devising means for the production of events when his ideas run easily in trains which are at once agreeable to knowledge, that is, to the trains of events, and, at the same time, new in the combina tion. They must be agreeable to knowledge; that is, one of the ideas must follow another in the order in which the objects of which they are the ideas fol low one another in nature, otherwise the train would consist of mere chimeras, and, having no connection with things, would be utterly useless. As•the event, however, is not in the ordinary course, otherwise sa gacity would not be required to give it existence, the ordinary train of antecedents will not suffice ; it must be a peculiar train, at once correspondent with nature, and adapted to the end. The earliest trains, produced in the minds of children, should be made to partake as much as possible of those characters. The impressions made upon them should correspond to the great and commanding sequences established among the events on which human happiness prin cipally depends. More explicitly, children ought to be made to see, and hear, and feel, and taste, in the order of the most invariable and comprehensive sequences ; in order that the ideas which correspond to their impressions, and follow the same order of suc cession, may be an exact transcript of nature, and al ways lead to just anticipations of events. Especially, the pains and pleasures of the infant, the deepest impressions which he receives, ought, from the first moment of sensation, to be made as much as possible to correspond to the real order of nature. The moral procedure of parents is directly the reverse; who strive to defeat the order of nature, in accumulating pleasures to their children, and in preventing the arrival of pains, when the children's own conduct would have had very different effects.