Weekly national intelligencer., 1847-09-11

lOWll, Oh llmDS anu Oh
by dress, and especially the diversion of the atten-
tion perorce, to faculties which do not yet choose
unfold themselves and to ideal and abstract things
which as yet have no charm for the childish sens-
bility to absolute perceptions only, may certainly
delay Natures work, and in delaying, seriously in
ure for il is in this tenderness of the organs, this
extreme impressbiy of the senses which then ex-
ss and exists with the greater effect out OF the abb
sence of the maurer faculties not yet called into
activity, that the and the art OF using them,
the perceptve and picturesque powers, and the
chief part of the sensibilities which make up the
emotions and the Imagination, must find their best
moment for development.
Earlier than the age which we have last named,
we doubt ifit be safe to begin the artificial ed
ucaton, unless decided curiosity for books should
manifest ITSELF This usually indicates that the per-
ceptive faculties have satisfied themselves, have
mastered the exciting objects around the child. But
il happens earlier in children much confined than in
those enjoying every'physcal advantage of country
life that there, of course, it would be better to
transplant than to teach. Ii happens earlier, again,
under even favorable circumstances, to two oppo-
site sorts of organzations-thos in which the senses
are correct and quick, and those in which they are
imperfect and slow. Ii is, of course, safe to in
duge the inclination in the former sort; while, in
the latter, il should only be taken as warning TO
seek for them outward circumstances that may rouse
their inert organs.
When now, however, you begin to educate, re-
member that you are barely to mia with Natures
method, not to supersede it. For she is far from
having yet finished her own peculiar course of in
structlon, and Is only ceasiDg to be entirely exclu
sive in it. What, then, is her next step?
As, awhile since, to perfect the action and the
command of the senses and of the muscles, came
the childish mobility the childish delight in prac
tsing the limbs and the sensations; SO now, in the
economy of Nature, arrives that impulse of exer-
else which develops, by continual desire of fresh
images and combinations, the senstves but not vet
intellectual powers (as yet mere elements) which
are now shaping themselves in u.s. 1t is now the
period when the imagination begins to act with the
pleasure in setting before itself, varying, null
uplylng, and comparing the perceptions, the emo
tlons, and the ideas, as short time since the mere
body took in trying new motions For time, in
both alike, the young powers seem to rejoice in
themselves, to be gladdened as are birds Just edg-
ed, by even an aimless flight. The acquaintance
with things is now rising into that with thoughts J;
the ideal world is now dawning upon the sensitive ;
and the gay objects of this take new expansion
and new beauty from that. The real, not yet ex-
haused OF It's first charm for the senses, is not yet
too Definite too exact, too positive: we still look
il with a of vague transport like that with
which we survey, later in life, every thing in the
exuberant beauty OF some strangely bright region,
among the novel forms of which we have suddenly
landed. And as there our excited fancy, uncon-
strained by the known, sports almost at pleasure
with even what is seen or heard or felt, offers
itself to the smell or the taste; so this early state
of the perceptions at their liveest and yet un-
certain, coalesces wonderfully with the new infu-
ence OF the Imagination, and raises around us, for
the time, "a world of gayer tlnc and grace where
the known and the unknown, the tangible and the
unsubstantial, seem almost equally at the bidding Of
oar nexperience. The wild seems not mproba-
BILE, the preternatural not impossible and love of
the wonderful is special inclination of that part of
life. In a word, the infant imagination, the leader
and the first of those exclusive and independ-
en powers which are properly the Intellectual: the
imagination, which raises, reforms, re.combines,
animates the merely sensuous, perceptiye and pas
sonate towards the ideal and the abstract and thus
prepares the mind TO deal with higher elements
with moral perceptions and notions as well as bodi-
ly sensations, now naturally comes to occupy with
an extreme and pleased activity, the young being
Like the faculties which have preceded it, it is still
voluntary and instructive, self-acting self-uorng
but unlike them, il does not forbid assistance-it
permits you to aid il with books and other artificial
means and this because, in the midst of art and
cultivation, artificial objects and thoughts are, of
necessity, part of those of which it is to take
cognzance.
Now, the successive stages bv which the mind
arrives at its full natural powers are indispuably
those which we have thus pointed out and if,
therefore, the Imagination be nota faculty bestowed
on us by pure mistaken ethereal blunder in the
divinest part of our amazing mechanism-then is it
clear that the so-caed rational education, which
would overleap the development Of that faculty. in
order TO come at to the cultivation of the rea-
son, is an error the most total is any thing but
/ rational.
What the senses to the faculties these are TO
the judgment: the faculties, that is TO saw NAV be
justly called the senses TO the judgment" Omit
a sense, you ruin a corresponding faculty: check
the due exercise of sense and YOU impair the de.
, pendant faculty. In like manner Of the magma
ton: without 1.-THE active, suggestive inventive
power, which calls up each idea as il is wanted and
y sort Of handspring TO the whole movement of
the mind-the reason could scarcely act. And, in
deed there is large body Of subjects-rnoral ones
4 that IS, such deal with the passions motives,
opinions, and the lke-on which il is impossible to
reason well without powerful Imagination as well
as strong Judgment Nay, it is only the union of
these two that makes up the brightest most con
summaie shape of human vita genius like that Of
Homer Or of Milton, or Of Shakespeare.
But to what end go to work. five, six, seven, eight,
or nIne years in advance, on the place ,chere the
Judgmem d 10 be? What are you cultivating