The business of a skilful education is, so to ar range the circumstances by which the child is or rounded,, that the impressions made upon him shall be in the order most conducive to this happy result. The impressions, too, which are made originally upon the child are but one of the causes of the trains which are rendered, habitual to him, and which there fore obtain a leading influence on his mind. When he is often made to conceive the trains of other men, by the words, or other signs by which their feelings are betokened, those borrowed trains be come also habitual, and exert a similar influence on the mind. This, then, is another of the instruments of education. When ihe trains signified to the child of the ideas in the minds of those about him are trains of pleasure at the thought of the happiness of other human beings, trains of the opposite kind at the conception of their misery ; and when the trains are still more pleasurable or 'painful at the thought of the happiness or misery produced by themselves, the association becomes in time sufficiently powerful to govern the life.
The grand object of human desire is a command over the wills of other men. This may be attained, either by qualities and acts which excite their love and admiration, or by those which excite their ter. ror. When the education is so Wisely conducted as to make the train run habitually from the conception of the good end to the conception of the good means ; and as often, too, as the good means are conceived, viz. the useful and beneficial qualities, to make it run on to the conception of the great reward, the command over the wills of men; an association is formed which impels the man through life to pursue the great ob ject of desire, by fitting himself to be, and by ac tually becoming the instrument of the greatest pos sible quantity. of benefit to his fellow men.
But, unhappily, a command over the wills of men may be obtained by other means than by doing them good; and these, when a man can command them, are the shortest, the easiest, and the most effectual. These other means are all summed up in a command over the pains of other men. When a command over the wills of other men is pursued by the instru mentality of pain, it leads to all the several degrees of vexation, injustice, cruelty, oppression, and ty ranny. It is, in truth, the grand source of all wick edness, of all the evil which man brings upon man. When the education is so deplorably bad as to al low an association to be formed in the mind of the child between the grand object of desire, the com mand over the wills of other men, and the fears and pains of other men, as the means; the foundation is laid of bad character,—the bad son, the bad bro ther, the bad husband, the bad father, the bad neigh bour, the bad magistrate, the bad citizen,—to sum up all in one word, the bad man. Yet, true it is, a great part of education is still so conducted as to form that association. The child, while it yet hangs
at the breast, is often allowed to find out by expe-.
rienee, that crying, and the annoyance which it gives, is that by which chiefly it can command the services of its nurse, and obtain the it de sires. There is not one in fifty who has not learned td make its cries and wailings an instrument of power, and very often an instrument of absolute tyranny. When the evil grows to excess, the vul gar say the child is spoiled Not only is the child allowed to exert an influence over the wills of others by means of their pains, it finds, that frequently, sometimes most frequently, its own will is needless ly and unduly commanded by the same means, pain, and the fear of pain: All these sensations concur in • ' a firm association between the idea of the object of desire, command over the acts of other men, and those of pain and terror, as the means of acquiring it. That those who have been subject to tyranny are almost always desirous of being tyrants in their turn ; that is to say, that a strong association has been formed in their minds between the ideas of pleasure and dignity, on the one hand, and those of the exercise of tyranny, on the other, is a matter of old and invariable observation. An anecdote has just been mentioned to us, so much in point, that we will repeat it, as resting on its own probability, though it is by hearsay testi mony (very pod, however, of its kind) by which it has mched us. At Eton, in consequence, it is probable, of the criticisms which the press has usefully made upon the system of fagging (as it is called) at the public schools, a proposition was lately made, among the boys themselves, for abolish ing it. The idea originated with the elder boys, who were in possession of the power,--a power of a very unlimited and formidable description,—and was by them warmly supported; but it was opposed with still greater vehemence by the junior boys, the boys who were then the victims of it, so much did the expected pleasure of t nsing in their turn out weigh the pain of • present slavery.—In this case, too, as in most others, the sources of those trains which govern our lives are two,—.the impres sions made upon ourselves, and the trains which we copy from others. Besides the impressions just re counted, if the trains which pass in the minds of those by whom the child is surrounded, and which he is made to conceive by means of their words, and other signs, lead constantly from the idea of com mand over the wills of other men, as the grand ob ject of desire, to the ideas of pain and terror as the means, the repetition of the copied trains increases the effect of the native and establishes and confirms the maleficent character. These are the few things we can afford to adduce upon the subject of Domestic Education.