Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Now, we contend that that is the most truly practical view of education
which makes this the pervading idea even for the common school. Any
youth of good ordinary intelligence may be made to understand its
practical application to what we have called the spirit's health;
and when once truly seen, this single idea may be of more practical
value in guiding and elevating all his after thinking, than all the
smattering of mineralogy, and zoology, and French, and agricultural
chemistry, and civil engineering, and phrenology, too, which are now
so much the rage. There are branches of natural science exceedingly
valuable, even in connection with that idea of education which we are
maintaining. We would underrate none of them when they can be pursued
as they ought to be. But this can only be in one of two ways. It must
be either _philosophically_, that is, in their seen connections with
every other department of thought--and here we have the ground on which
they would come into the general college course--or _scientifically_,
that is, as they are studied by those whose minds have been peculiarly
drawn to them, and from whom they exact the enthusiastic devotion of
a life. If neither can be done, it is the most really practical and
useful way to be content with giving, as empirical knowledge, those
_results_ which have been elaborated by the truly scientific, rather
than foolishly attempt to render each boy in our schools his own
chemist, his own botanist, and his own engineer, anymore than his own
clergyman, his own lawyer, or his own physician.
And here comes up a distinction proceeding directly from that wise
providential analogy of soul and body to which we first alluded. Our
bodily food maybe divided into two classes. One kind, besides pleasing
the palate, may be useful in giving a temporary refreshment, or a
temporary stimulus, which may be employed for various practical ends.
But this is all of it. It passes off, leaving the system as it was,
if not sometimes in a worse condition than it found it. Again, there
is other food which not only imparts vigor for a time, and for a
particular purpose, but actually enters into the physical system, and
becomes a part of it, constituting the elements of its growth, yea, of
its very life. So it is with knowledge. Some kinds lodge only in the
memory; they have their abode on the surface of the soul; they have
no inward hold. Hence they are easily effaced, and when their outward
scientific details are lost from the memory, they are lost entirely.
There are other kinds that not only become assimilated to, but enter
into the soul itself, into its very spiritual constitution. When the
outward facts are forgotten, they still remain. The soul has grown by
them, and out of them. In one sense it may be said to be made of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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