Their chief Importance-Dancing-Decision-Picture of an un- decided Man-CESAR-MILTON-LEDYARD- Individuality -Self-respect and Self-reliance-Energy of Character-ALEX- ANDER SOMERVILLE-Gathering the Fragments of Science- DE WITT-The Sanctity of Duty-Duty and Love-The Education of the Conscience-Story of the Alarum-DR. CHALMERS on the Law of Habit-Solemn Lines, ... ... AN EPISODE FOR A LANDING PLACE-BACKBONE PEOPLE. Slavery of Man to Prejudices-Anecdotes-GALILEO-The Brah- ... ... Follow Nature-Art is a toiling after Nature-Taste gives ... ... Freedom Defined-John Milton-quoted-A noble illustration of a Free Life-Contrasted with Samuel Johnson-His slavery ... ... Sketch of the Literary Fop-The Intellectual Dandy-Archibald The Law for Life should be “a Sound Mind in a Sound Body”— - ... ... CHAPTER XIL Politics-Louis XIV.-"I am the State "-The Difficulties of ... 248-255 SELF-FORMATION. CHAPTER I. WHAT IS SELF-FORMATION? BEFORE all things let us clearly understand what we mean by words: what is Self-Education? While I write in my quiet village, I am almost within sound of the hammer on the anvil of my neighbour, the blacksmith. How rapidly the hammer descends, how swiftly fly the sparks! I feel that my arm would be very powerless there, that it would be very hard work indeed to make a horse-shoe, and that the horse-shoe would be very badly shaped when made: and yonder, from my study window I am looking at my old neighbour Watson, the gardener, and feel quite ashamed to confess the difference between his method of handling the spade and mine: but then I suspect that if my neighbours were set down with me on the road to walk for thirty or thirty-five miles, I should soon distance them, and while I should possibly be fresh at the thirtieth, the probability is that I should leave them exhausted at the twelfth. B What makes this difference between men this muscular difference? is it not education? the arm is better educated than the leg, or the leg is better educated than the arm; Education is the cultivation of power; upon this hint we may speak out upon the whole of life, the difference between men and men is, for the most part, a difference of education; the mind and the body are the residence of strong faculties, which exist in many uneducated and therefore undeveloped. The strength of the body and the powers of the mind depend as much upon pupilage and training for their success, as the curvetting of the steed or the command of the rider. Education may not be said to create Faculties ;—but without education those faculties slumber uselessly and become paralysed; or, if developed, they exist so untrained and uncurbed that they rather complete the confusion of their possessor than add at all to his benefit or to his well-being. Discipline, Trial, Endeavour, are all parts of Education and man, and the world in which he abides is constructed evidently upon the design of developement by these agents. Man is not created to be passive to the influences around him, he is trained by resistance. Altogether another world would have been needed for a passive character, or if not another world, how different the class of feelings and of powers which have fitted man for the present. How helplessly he lies upon the kind maternal bosom! Who, by the strongest flight of the imagination, could ever identify that poor little weakling with the mighty controller of armies and senates? who could fancy WHAT IS SELF-FORMATION? 11 in him the forest-render, the sea king, and the iron conqueror? how long is the period during which he demands the utmost extension of the parental guardianship? and in childhood, and in manhood, he is destitute of all those tools and instruments and arms for the purpose of supplying the necessities of life, or of depredation and attack or defence with which other animals are endowed. Yet, there is a difference, and in the difference resides the source of his power; but for the difference he would be of course the most helpless creature in the world; he would be the prey to every other; as it is, he is the undisputed monarch and lord of the creation, of this visible world; every king. dom of nature yields up to him its product as his lawful spoil; sea, air, land, the distant desert sand, the wild and all but impenetrable forest wild, the depth of the ocean, all are placed beneath the sceptre of his authority; and the animate and the inanimate are alike made to pay tribute to his lordship. Man, too, the inferior race, the inferior in skill and in education, is made to pay tribute to his superior. The lower type of humanity is the beast of burden to the higher; all the arrangements of society, all the apportionments of our planet prove that not only Mind is the supreme and reigning power, but that Mind skilled, trained, and educated, must ever have dominion over Mind unskilled and rude. Thus, then, we may say the great object of man's residence here is to be educated; "And, if as holiest men have deemed there be A land of souls beyond the sable shore, To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee," |