I cannot close this brief address without raising my voice in commendation of Sabbath schools. I believe them to be among the most efficient means which the age is employing for the diffusion of Christianity. In many cases they have strengthened previous impressions, and have nourished the seed sown in good soil till it brought forth a rich harvest of piety. They have reclaimed the abandoned, and restored the profligate youth to respectability and usefulness. Children taught in them have inverted the order of nature, and taught their parents to embrace the religion of the gospel. Parents visiting them have realized their value, and have thus been induced to instruct their children, or to send thm to the Sabbath school. How much of vice, and crime, and misery, would be spared our country, were all its youth regularly engaged in giving or receiving instruction in the Sabbath school! - Teachers of common schools, has not the Sabbath also a claim on your services? Six days of the week you have employed in teaching the knowledge of this world; should not the seventh be devoted to the knowledge of the world which is to come? It is beautiful, by lessons of human science, to prepare the mind for usefulness on earth: it is sublime and godlike, by lessons of divine truth, to prepare the enfranchised soul for the enjoyment of eternal happiness in "the bosom of its Father and its God."

LECTURE VI.

ON THE

IMPORTANCE OF AN ACQUAINTANCE

WITH THE

PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIND TO AN INSTRUCTOR.

BY J. GREGG.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIND.

"Scientiis idem quod plantis. Si planta aliqua uti in animo habeas, de radice quid fiat, nil refert; si vero transferre cupias în aliud solum, tutius est radicibus uti quam surculis. Sic traditio, quæ nunc in use est, exhibet plane tanquam truncos (pulchros illos quidem) scientiarum; sed tamen absque radicibus fabro lignario certe commodos, at plantatori inutiles.

"Quod si, disciplinae ut crescant, tibi cordi sit, de truncis minus sis solicitus ; ad id curam adhibe, ut radices illæsæ etiam cum aliqnantulo terræ adhærentis, extrahantur; dummodo hoc pacto et scientiam propriam revisere, vestigiaque cognitionis tuæ remetiri possis; et eam sic transplantare in animum alienum, sicut crevit in tuo."-Baco de Augmen. Scient. 1. vi. c. 2.

TRANSLATION." It is with science as with trees. If you purpose to make some particular use of the tree, you need not concern yourself about the roots. But if you wish to transfer it into another soil, it is then safer to employ the roots than the scions. Thus the mode of teaching most common at present, exhibits clearly enough the trunks, as it were, of the sciences, and those too of handsome growth; but nevertheless, without the roots, valuable and convenient as they undoubtedly are to the carpenter, they are useless to the planter.

"But if you have at heart the advancement of education, as that which proposes to itself the general discipline of the mind for its end and aim, be less anxious concerning the trunks, and let it be your care, that the roots should be extracted entire, even though a small portion of the soil should adhere to them: so that at all events you may be able, by this means, both to review your own scientific acquirements, remeasuring as it were, the steps of your knowledge for your own satisfaction, and at the same time to transplant it into the minds of others, just as it grew in your own."

In

THE Science of Education is the most profound and important of all sciences. This is true, whether we contemplate it in its own intrinsic character, as being emphatically the scientia scientiarum, or in its relative importance, as the "appointed Protoplast of our true humanity.' the former aspect, it comprehends as its objects whatever can be known; in the latter, it embraces as its subjects whoever can be taught. It is the sun of the intellectual and moral systems. It both draws all things to its centre, and pours light and vital influence through all. It were therefore desirable, if it were feasible, that an instructer should know everything-should be both a master of

universal science, and perfectly acquainted with the nature and capabilities of the human mind. But perfection among finite creatures, is out of the question; and the problem now is, to approximate as near to it, as limited powers and adverse circumstances will permit. No teacher can know everything; he must therefore be content to know a few things well, and be guided in his selection of sciences by their relative importance.

What place, then, in the regards of an instructer, should be assigned to the Philosophy of the Mind? This question can be better answered, if a preliminary question be first disposed of, viz: What is the Philosophy of the Mind?

The answer to this latter question may be stated both negatively and positively.

esteem.

The Philosophy of the Mind is not the system of Plato or Aristotle, of Leibnitz or Locke, of Reid or Brown, of Kant or Cousin. The labors of these men are not indeed to be neglected or despised. Their contributions to the stock of human knowledge have not been small. Each of them (as well as other great names, which might be mentioned) has thrown out into the general currency, coins of unadulterated purity and sterling value, stamped with his own image and superscription, which will continue to be received while the commerce of mind shall endure. For these "productive ideas," they claim our reverence and But they were not infallible; they had not sounded all the depths of the human mind, explored all its recesses, or discovered all its hidden stores. Their systems are not perfect. The very circumstance that most of them endeavored to make them complete, prevented their perfection. In the infancy of the science, observation had not been sufficiently accurate or extensive to enable them to construct an entire and perfect system. The materials which they had collected, were too scanty; and they were obliged to complete them by analogical reasoning, as comparative anatomists are wont to make out the description of an unknown and extinct species of animal, from a single bone. To a head, it may be, of fine gold, and a breast and arms of silver, they joined a belly and thighs of brass, with legs of iron, and pieced out the feet with clay. The consequence has been, that every professedly complete system of mental philosophy is imperfect and defective.