differences of character; and this difference is to be taken into account in discipline. The absence of general vigour, bodily and mental, is marked by timidity; and the state may also be the result of long bad usage, and of perverted views of the world. In the way of culture, or of high exertion in any form, little is to be expected from thoroughly timid natures; they can be easily governed, so far as concerns sins of commission, but their omissions are not equally remediable.

The conquest of superstitious fears is one of the grandest objects of education taken in its widest compass. It cannot be accomplished by any direct inculcation; it is one of the incidental and most beneficial results of the exact study of nature, in other words, science.

The Social Motives.

This is perhaps the most extensive and the least involved of all the emotional influences at work in Education.

The pleasures of Love, Affection, Mutual Regard, Sympathy, or Sociability, make up the foremost satisfaction of human life; and, as such, are a standing object of desire, pursuit, and fruition. Sociability is a wholly distinct fact from the prime supports of existence and from the pleasures of the five senses, and is not, in my opinion, resolvable into those, however deeply we may analyze it, or however far back we may trace the historical evolution of the mind. Nevertheless, as the supports of life and the pure sense agreeables and exemptions, come to us in great part through the medium of fellowbeings, the value of the social regards receives from this

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cause an enormous augmentation, and, in the total, counts for one paramount object of human solicitude. It would appear strange if this motive could ever be overlooked by the educator, or by anyone; yet there are theories and methods that treat it as of inferior account.

The vast aggregate of social feeling is made up of the intenser elements of sexual and parental love, and the select attachments in the way of friendship, together with the more diffused sentiments towards the masses of human beings. The motive power of the feelings in education may be well exemplified in the intense examples; we can see in these both the merits and the defects of the social stimulus. The Phædrus of Plato is a remarkable ideal picture of philosophy prompted by Eros, in the Grecian form of attachment. The ordinary love of the sexes, in our time, does not furnish many instances of the mutual striving after high culture; it may be left .out of account in the theory of early education. We frequently find mothers applying to studies that they feel no personal attraction for, in order to assist in the progress of their children. This is much better than nothing; a secondary end may be the initiation and discovery of a taste that at last is self-subsisting.

The intense emotions, from the very fact of their intensity, are unsuited to the promptings of severe culture. The hardest studious work, the laying of foundations, should be over before the flame of sexual and parental passion is kindled; when this is at its height the intellectual power is in abeyance, or else it is diverted from its regular course. The mutual influence of two lovers is not educative, for want of the proper conditions.

No doubt considerable efforts are inspired; but there is seldom sufficient elevation of view on the one side, or sufficient adaptability on the other, to make the mutual influence what Plato and the romancists conceive as possible. By very different and inferior compliances on both sides, the feeling may be kept alive; if more is wanted, it dies away.

The favourable conjunction for study and mental culture in general is friendship between two, or a small number, each naturally smitten with the love of knowledge for its own sake, and basing their attachment on that circumstance. A certain amount of mutual liking in other respects perfects the relationship; but the overpowering sensuous regards of the Platonic couple do not furnish the requisite soil for high culture. As a matter of fact, those attachments, as they existed in Greece, prompted to signal instances of self-devotion in the form of surrendering worldly goods and life itself; and this is the highest fruit that they have yielded in later times.

The remaining aspect of sociability-the influence of the general multitude-holds out the most powerful and permanent motive to conduct, and is largely felt in education. In the presence of an assembly the individual is roused, agitated, swayed; the thrill of numbers is electric; in whatever direction the influence tends, it is almost irresistible. Any effort made in the sight of a host is, by that circumstance, totally altered in character; and all impressions are very much deepened.

Having in view this ascendancy of numbers, we can make a step towards computing the efficacy of class teaching, public schools, and institutions where great multitudes are brought together. The power exercised

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is of a mixed character; and the several elements admit of being singled out. The social motive, in its pure form of gregarious attraction and mutual sympathy, does not stand alone. Supposing it did, the effect would be to supply a strong stimulus in favour of everything that was supported by common consent; the individual would be urged to attain the level of the mass. The drill of a regiment of soldiers corresponds very nearly to this situation; every man is under the eye of the whole, and aspires to be what the rest are, and not much, if anything, beyond: the sympathetic co-operation of the mass guides, stimulates, and rewards the exertion of the individual. Even if it were the distination of a soldier to act as an isolated individual, still his education would be most efficaciously conducted on the mass system; being finished off by a certain amount of separate exercise to prepare for the detached or independent position.

If

In all cases of teaching numbers together, the social feeling, in the pure form now assumed, is frequently operative; and the results are as stated. The tendency is to secure a certain approved level of attainment; those that are disinclined of themselves to work up to that level are pushed on by the influence of the mass. there were no other strong passions called out in society, the general result would be a kind of Communism or Socialism characterized by mediocrity and dead level; everything correct up to a certain point, but no individual superiority or distinction.

The influence of society as the dispenser of collective good and evil things, in addition to its operation in the affections and the sympathies, is necessarily all-powerful in

every direction. If this stimulus were always to coincide with high mental culture, the effect would be something that the imagination hardly dares to shadow forth. It is, however, a power that may be propitiated by many different means, including shams and evasions; and the bearing upon culture is only occasional. Nevertheless,

the social rewards have often served to foster the highest genius the oratory of Demosthenes, and the poetry of Horace and of Virgil-that form of genius that is notoriously allied with toil and perseverance of the most arduous kind. The same influence, working by disapprobation and approbation combined, is, as I contend, the principal generating source of the ordinary moral sentiments of mankind, and the inspiration of exceptional virtues.

The Anti-Social and Malign Emotions.

The emotions of Anger, Hatred, Antipathy, Rivalry, Contumely, have reference to other beings, no less than Love or Affection; but in an opposite way. In spite of the painful incidents in their manifestation-the offence in the first instance, and next the dangers of reprisal-they are a source of immediate pleasure, often not inferior, and sometimes superior, in amount to the pleasures of amity and gregarious co-operation. In numerous instances people are willing to forego social and sympathetic delights to indulge in the pleasures of malignity.

In the work of discipline the present class of emotions occasion much solicitude. They can in certain ways be turned to good account, but for the most part the