It forms, perhaps, one of the most important problems or questions of our day, whether the entire sphere of science, the whole republic of letters--not only the mere elementary instruction of the schools, but the whole domain of education in general, embracing under the latter description literature and the fine arts--might not, in obedience to the requisitions of the age, be brought into a more organized and well-regulated form. For if this were possible, it might be made to approximate more closely to the other great spheres of public life in religion and the state, and confined within its proper limits, according to some greater and more comprehensive ideas than those current among us, or than those which have come down to us from antiquity, which are either defective in themselves, or else are no longer adapted to existing circumstances. Those which the present age has advanced, are, for the most part, crude and ill-digested, and scarcely ever consistently carried out. But, after having reflected for many a long year on this question, so deeply interesting to myself, I have arrived at the conviction that, for the present at least, a radical change in this department would be premature and scarcely desirable, as promising to afford no very advantageous results. Every thing in this sphere is too isolated; whatever is good, and especially what is best, is too individual and too formless to allow of its being as yet, without great difficulty, reduced in all parts and in every point to a firm rule and definite shape. In all probability, by attempting unseasonably to introduce organic order and law, we should cramp rather than assist and develop the good. In the present chaotic state of science, it is only the vicious and profane that possesses a systematic coherence. All detrimental and dangerous, as well as futile and indifferent ideas, mixed with a few good and useful ones, are atomistically diffused and spread in every possible shape and quarter. And if against this boundless dissemination of evil thoughts--this elementary decomposition and chemical analysis of the human mind, and the whole body of human thoughts, a negative barrier be set up as a preventive measure of defense, and as a temporary substitute for a better and higher state of things, murmurs and reproaches immediately rise from all sides. But, taken on the whole, and in so far as principle is involved, these remonstrances are neither just nor well founded. For in almost every state where, owing to peculiar circumstances, such precautionary measures have not been taken, the most dangerous disorders and jarring discords have affected the whole of public life, as the inevitable consequences of its absence.