But our present editorial musings must be confined mainly to education in connection with the common school. And here there is one application of our leading thought on which we would briefly dwell. There are those who might admit the general correctness of our principle, and yet contend for some deviation from it in these primary departments. Here, they would say, knowledge should be practical, predominantly physical, mainly connected with the outer world, and those partial pursuits that are afterward to occupy the active every-day life. The other view may belong, more or less, to the college and the university; but this brief period should not be wasted upon any thing except immediate practical utilities. We can not think so. The question still remains--What is the truest utility? and a proper settlement of this may lead to the conclusion that education in the common school should be even more catholic, in its idea, than that of the higher institutions. In some of the later periods of the college course, there may be some propriety in giving the studies a direction toward professional or partial pursuits. In the earlier stages this can only be done at the expense of that which is of far more value in itself, and which, if not then attained, can never afterward be secured. This thought is so practical that it is wonderful how it escapes the notice of those who claim to be pre-eminently our practical men. Professional knowledge, mechanical knowledge, almost any branch of natural history, almost any modern language, may be obtained in after life. One who has laid a good foundation may at any time stoop down and pick them up when he has need of them. But there are other branches (although we can not now stop to specify them) in respect to which this is not the case. There is the knowledge, or the culture through which all other knowledge is acquired. It is the knowledge which, to a greater or less extent, is for all men, as men, for all ages, yea, for all _worlds_ of rational beings. Each particular world in the universe may be supposed to have its own botany, its own geology, its own mineralogy, its own natural history; but a spiritual necessity, a behest of the reason compels us to say, that in all worlds there _must_ be the same logic, the same grammar or universal laws of language, whether by sounds or signs, the same laws of thinking, the same geometry, the same pure mathematics, the same ultimate rules of taste, the same principles of art, the same elements of the beautiful, the same æsthetic and moral philosophy. In other words, the good, the beautiful, the true in themselves must be essentially the same for all rational souls, and can not even be conceived of as having a diversity for different parts of the universe.