Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1874-11-30
EDUCATION OF THE HEART.

It is the vice of the age to substitute ltarn-
ing for wisdom; to educate the head and forget
that there is a more important education neces-
sary for the heart The reason is cultivated at
an age when nature does not furnish the ele-
ments necessary to successful cultivation OF 1t,
and the child is solicited to reflection when it
is only capable of sensation and emotion. ln In
fancy, the attention and the memory are only
excited strongly by the senses, and not the
heart The fat her may inslll more solid and
available instruction in an hour spent 10 the
fields where wisdom and goodness are exem-
plihed, seen and felt, than month spent IN the
study, where they are expressed in stereotyped
aphorisms.
No physician doubts that precocious children,
fifty cases for one, are much the worse for the
discipline they have undergone. The mind
seems to have been strained, and the tOunda-
ton for insanity is laid.
When the study of mature years Is stuffed
into the head of the child. people do not reflect
on the anatomical fact that the brain OF an ln-
fant is not the brain of map; that the one is
confirmed aud can bear exertions, and the other
is growing and requires repose;tha to force the
attention of abstract facts; to load the memory
with chronological and historical or scientific
detail; in short, to expect child s brain to bear
with impupitv the exertions of a mans, IS as
irrational as it would be to hazard the same
sort ofexperiments Oh Its muscles
The first eight or ten years of lite should be
devoted to the education of the heart-to the
formation of principles, rather thao to the ac-
ouirement of what is usually termed knowledge.
Nature herself points out this course, for the
emotions are the liveliest and most easily
moulded, being as yet uualloyed by passion. 1t
is from this source the mass of men are here.
after to show their sum OF happiness or misery.
The action of the immense majority are, under
all circumstances, determined much more by
feeling than r. Election; 10 TRUTH life prasents a
happiness that we should feel rightly; very few
instances occur where it is necessary that We
should think profoundly.
Up to the seventh year OF lite very great
changes are going on In the structure OF the
brain, and demand, therefore, the utmost al
tention, 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, exempiied 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
evereise are indispe osable; and wherever they
are withheld the const tqueDces Will be certain
to extend themselves over the whole future
life.
The seeds of protracted and hopeless suffer-
ings have, in iuuumerable Instances been sown
10 the constitution OF the child, simply through
ignorance of that great fundamental physical
law; aud the time has come when the united
voices OF these innocent victims should ascend
"trum pet -,ongued," to the ears of every par
ent and teacher in the land. Give US fresh air
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 bounding impulses of our young blood
Quarterly RerieU.