SIR,

ARTICLE VIII.

PHRENOLOGY APPLIED TO EDUCATION.

(TO THE EDITOR.)

SOME time ago I heard from a friend, who lives near Cheltenham, and has a small school there, in which he has found Phrenology very useful. Part of his letter may perhaps be interesting to you, and I shall therefore extract what he says on that subject: I had the good fortune to be introduced to Dr Spurzheim by a common friend. He was a most amiable, modest, well-informed man. It was a weight of most conclusive evidence falling under my own observation, which led me to apply myself actively to the study of his discoveries. Upon first seeing my boys, he remarked that I had some difficult dispositions to manage, and that there was little talent in the whole number. This only created a smile; but upon his proceeding to look at them one by one, he astonished me by giving a most correct outline of the character of each, and pointed out their propensities most exactly. In fact, Mrs would scarcely be persuaded that I had not been prompting him, and giving him all the boys' histories previously. Following the hints he gave me, I have adopted a different mode of treating one boy, and have had the pleasure of seeing its good effects. I consider his discoveries of wonderful benefit to education, and am sure of their truth. Upon the sight of one boy he said, Don't torture him here,'pointing to the corner of his eye. He afterwards told me he alluded to the organ of Number. The boy's dulness at cyphering had perplexed us all, and even carried with it the appearance of obstinacy. I have not, since my acquaintance with Dr Spurzheim, allowed his days with the writing-master to be clouded with tears. The faculty must be exercised constantly in a playful manner." I am, &c.

6

T.

ARTICLE IX.

ON NATIONAL EDUCATION.

THE Lord Chancellor, at a public meeting held at York on 10th October 1833, is reported to have said, that "the efforts of the people are still wanting for the purpose of promoting education, and Parliament will render no substantial assistance until the people themselves take the matter in hand with energy and spirit, and the determination to do something.'

We have frequently adverted to the great difficulties that lie in the way of a national system of education, and concur with the Lord Chancellor, that only the people themselves can remove them. But the question by what means they ought to proceed in accomplishing this great work, is one of preliminary, yet paramount, importance, and concerning which we wish that his Lordship had entered a little into detail in his speech. There are two great obstacles which require to be dealt with. First, the ignorance and apathy of the great mass of the people themselves, which render too many of them still indifferent to education; and secondly, religious prejudices, which prevent the adoption of any general system of instruction, acceptable to all

sects.

There is greater apathy among the people on the subject of education than many will believe. The grossly ignorant are not aware of its value, and the purely selfish are so exclusively engrossed with the love of gain, or the pursuits of ambition, that they value no knowledge except that which ministers directly to the gratification of these propensities. Various means may be used to awaken a better spirit among the people. Government ought to require a certain extent of education as a qualification for employment in the national service, even in the humblest rank. The effect of this would be to put a public brand of incapacity and of exclusion on gross ignorance; and to present the prospect of contingent advantage as a consequence of instruction. The higher classes might require certain attainments in education in all persons employed by them. The clergy should be enjoined to expound to their flocks the importance of education, and the kind of instruction which is best calculated to benefit the people; as also to urge on them the obligation of obtaining that instruction as a Christian duty. Christianity requires its disciples to act habitually from the highest and purest motives, and to shew forth practical wisdom in all its departments; yet it is morally impossible to do so while the mind is enveloped in intellectual darkness, is labouring un

der an eclipse of the moral sentiments, and is animated chiefly by the lower feelings of our nature; all which are the inevitable results of active intercourse with the world, without the guidance of intellectual, moral, and religious instruction.

It appears to us that part of the Sunday might be legitimately applied to teaching secular knowledge to the people. There are no specific rules laid down in the New Testament regarding the observance of the Sabbath. Every thing is left open to human regulation; and we are expressly told that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The public religious exercises in which the Sabbath is at present spent were instituted upwards of two centuries ago, when there was almost no science or useful knowledge in existence. If the leaders of the Reformation had wished to teach the people on Sundays all that they themselves knew, they would have been limited to Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Logic, Mathematics, and religious knowledge. It is clear that none of these branches of information except the last would have been edifying to the industrious population; and we may presume that on this account alone Sunday's instruction was limited to religious truths. Matters have greatly changed since that time; and there now exists a vast fund of information, calculated to cultivate the moral and intellectual faculties of man; and the question presents itself, Is there any valid objection to part of Sunday being dedicated to teaching it to the people?

To answer this question, a few preliminary considerations require to be discussed. A labourer, merchant, or professional person, who has been engaged for six days of the week in arduous bodily exertion, in the pursuit of gain, or in the career of ambition, has maintained in activity during that time his muscular system or his propensities and inferior sentiments, with such of the intellectual faculties as are conversant with the details of actual business; but he has had very little exercise for his moral sentiments and reflecting powers. Sunday, therefore, finds the labourer exhausted with bodily fatigue, and with his brain obtuse and dull through physical depression and mental inactivity; while it overtakes the merchant and professional man full of a sustained activity of faculties allied chiefly to this world, and having very little reference to religion and the next. All come to listen to the precepts of Christianity in a state of very imperfect preparation either of body or of mind. Besides, the views delivered from the pulpit are in general representations of the system of belief which the preacher has adopted, with extremely little of practical information regarding the duties of life. We have sometimes put this question to serious and reflecting individuals: How much of the line of conduct which you pursue in the management of your children,

and of your business, during six days in the week, beyond the religious instruction of your family, has been adopted in consequence of what you have heard from the pulpit? And they have been puzzled to give a satisfactory answer. Before an individual can become a practical Christian, he must possess an instructed and disciplined intellect, and moral sentiments duly trained and exercised. By the constitution which the Creator has bestowed on the human mind, the study of the various works of creation and their mutual relations and adaptations, is the best exercise for the intellect; while the exposition of His power, wisdom, and goodness, displayed in them, presents a powerful stimulus to the moral and religious sentiments. It is reckoned lawful to feed, clothe, and clean the body on Sunday, in order to prepare the individual for religious exercises. We would go a step farther we would feed and clothe the mind also, by communicating useful, instructive, and elevating knowledge of the Creator and his works, as the first branch of the Sabbath exercises; and after the intellect had been excited, and the moral and religious sentiments had been roused into vivid action by the contemplation of his wisdom and boundless goodness, we would proceed to the proper exercises of religious worship and adoration. It appears to us, that in doing so, we would act in accordance with the great design of Christianity, which is, to render man truly an intellectual, moral, and religious being. If we survey dispassionately the present condition of Christian Europe, and our own country in particular, we shall be forced to acknowledge, that, notwithstanding all the teaching and preaching of many centuries, the spirit of practical Christianity does not yet pervade the mass of the people. One cause of this barrenness of result appears to us to be, the nonfulfilment of the natural conditions which are required to fit men to become real Christians,-in other words, the nonenlightenment of their intellects, and the nonexercise of their moral sentiments on the works of Creation. Religion has hitherto partaken too much of an abstract, contemplative, and sentimental character. The opposition in spirit, principle, and practice between it and the world, have been constant themes of declamation with divines. The views, the hopes, and the fears of the religious have shot past this world and centred too exclusively in the next. We think that this is not doing justice to Christianity. This world appears to us to be constituted on the principle of the supremacy of the moral and religious sentiments, and we perceive no unsurmountable obstacle to a complete reconciliation between pure religion, and the best interests and highest enjoyments of mankind in this world. To accom

*

See this doctrine expounded in Combe on the Constitution of Man.

plish this end, however, we must demonstrate to the understandings of the people, the nature and objects of their faculties, the relative importance and authority of each, and the sphere of activity in which it will find its completest gratification, and then reconcile all this knowledge with religion. We must place them in circumstances calculated to bring into activity their highest powers, and we must modify the arrangements of daily life, and the allotment of time to different employments, so as to leave opportunity and leisure for attaining this end. We conceive that

the clergy could not more effectually serve the cause of Christianity, than by teaching the people on part of each Sunday, how to fulfil these indispensable preliminaries to the practical develop

ment of the Christian character.

These views are presenting themselves to various minds, and are appearing occasionally in different publications. It is gratifying to observe that, in the last report of the committee of the General Assembly, appointed to inquire into the state of the National Schools of Scotland, the connection between secular instruction and religious improvement is distinctly recognised. It contains a declaration, that if they were to specify such schools as have been found the most distinguished for religious character, they could not hesitate to name those schools in which the greatest variety of secular instruction has been im. parted."

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In a pamphlet which we have recently seen, entitled "Daily Bread; a Prayer for Knowledge, Gratitude, and Principle *,” the following observations occur:

"I would address these few pages to Christians more desirous of uncompromised sincerity in their ministers, and useful knowledge in their schools, than of very definite professions and rigidly set forms. Their Catholic Religion would remove many temptations to insincerity, and get rid of many obstacles to truth, and allow an effectual advance to be made towards a discipline in closer and closer agreement with God's system. However long the establishment of the principle may be resisted, there can be no doubt that whatever is true ought to be attained, and that whatever is false ought to be removed; and that, till this is effected, evidence and conviction, principle and conduct, are resting on unsafe foundations. No principle can be plainer than that God's truth ought to be made man's discipline; and no fact is more evident than that thousands of the higher orders have been, and that millions of the people are, in danger of being alienated from pious feelings and religious obligations by that insincere delay which refuses to advance, as it might, into plain evidence and strong conviction, and insists to linger among scep

* London: R. Hunter, St Paul's Church-yard. 1833.