Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1874-12-04
Education of the Heart.

learning for wisdom; to educate the
head and FORGET that there is more i'm
portant education necessary for the
heart The reason is cultivated at an
age when nature does not furnish the ell
ements necessary TO a successful cultiva-
ton of it, and the child is solicited to
reflection when II is only capable Of SEN
sation and emotion. In infancy, the at
tention and the memory are only excited
strongly by the senses, and not the heart.
The father may instil more solid and
available instructions in an hour spent
in the fields, where wisdom and goodness
are exemplifed, seen and felt, than q
month spent in the study, where they
are expressed in stereotyped aphorism.
No physician doubts that prococious
children, fifty cases to one, are much the
worse for the discipline they have under
gone. The mind seems to have been
strained, and the foundation for insanity
is laid.
When the study of mature years ID
stuffed into the head of the child, people
do not reflect on the anatomical fact that
the brain of an infant is not the brain
of man that the one is confirmed and
can bear exertions, and the other is
growing and requires repose that to
foroa tho otta,t;ar oc n ab.t,.c< c~cto 20
load the memory with chronological and
historical or scientific detail; in short, to
expect a child's brain to bear with inn
punity the exertions of a mans, is as ir-
rational as it would be to hazard the
same sort of experiment Oh the muscles
The first eight or ten years Of life
should be devoted to the education Of the
heart-to the formation of principles,
rather than to the requirement of what
is usually termed knowledge. Nature
herself points out this course, for the
emotions are the livehest and most easily
moulded, being as yet unalloyed by
passion. 1t is from this source the mass
of men are hereafter to show their sum
of happiness or misery. The action of
the immense majority is, under all cir
cumstances, determined much more by
feeling than reflection; in truth, lifepre-
sents happiness that we should feel
rightly; very few instances occur where
it is necessary thar we should think pro-
foundly.
Up to the seventh year Of life. very
great changes are going on in the struc-
ture of the brain, and demand, therefore,
the utmost attention, not to interrupt
them by improper or over-excitement.
just that degree of exercise should be
given to the brain at this period that is
necessary to its health, and the best is
moral instruction, exemplifed by the
| objects which strike the senses.
1t is, perhaps, necessary to add, that
at this period of life special attention
should be given, both by parents and
teachers, to the physical development of
the child. Pure air and exercise are in
dispensable; and wherever they are
withheld the consequences will be certain
to extend themselves over the whole fu-
ture life.
The seeds of protracted and hopeless
sufferings have, in innummerable instan-
ces, been sown in the constitution of the
child, simply through ignorance of this
great fundamental physical law; and
the time has come when the united voices
of these innocent victims should ascend
"trumpet-tongued," to the ears of every
parent and teacher in the land. Give
US fresh and wholesome exercise, leave
our expanding energies to be developed
in accordance to the laws of our being,
and full scope for the elastic and bound
ing impulses of our young blood.-Quar-
terty Revieao.