just where they are,-much more than will the common plan of pursuing the laws of nature, as exhibited in movements of the external world. But some say, that the philosophy of the Spirit is a disputed philosophy;-that the questions, what are its earliest manifestations upon earth? and what are the means and laws of its growth?-are unsettled; and therefore it is not a subject for dogmatic teaching. Mr. Alcott replies to this objection, that his teaching is not dogmatic; that nothing more is assumed by him, than that Spirit exists, bearing a relation to the body in which it is manifested, analogous to the relation, which God, bears to the external creation. And it is only those persons who are spiritualists, so far as to admit this, whom he expects to place children under his care. At this point, his dogmatic teaching ends; and here he takes up the Socratic mode. He begins with asking questions upon the meanings of the words, which the children use in speaking, and which they find in their spelling lessons, requiring illustrations of them, in sentences composed or remembered. This involves the study of Spirit. He one day began with the youngest of thirty scholars, to ask illustrations of the word brute; and there were but three literal answers. A brute, was a man who killed another; a drunken man; a man who beat his wife; a man without any love; but it was always a man. In one instance, it was a boy beating a dog. Which is the brute, said Mr. Alcott, the boy or the dog? The boy; said the little girl, with the gravest face. This case indicates a general tendency of childhood, and is an opening therefore, for speaking of the outward as the sign of the inward, and for making all the reading and spelling lessons, exercises for defining and illustrating words. The lessons on language, given in the Record, have generally been admitted to be most valuable. Most persons seem to be struck with the advantages, necessarily to be derived from the habit of inquiring into the history of words from their material origin, and throughout the spiritual applications of them, which the Imagination makes. It is true, that one person, in leading such an exercise, may sometimes give a cast to the whole inquiry, through the influence of his own idiosyncracies and favorite doctrines; and Mr. Alcott's definitions may not be defensible in every instance. I am not myself prepared to say, that I entirely trust his associations. But he is so successful, in arousing the activity of the children's own minds, and he gives such free scope to their associations, that his personal peculiarities are likely to have much less influence than those of most instructors. Not by any means, so much objection could be made to his school, on this account, as can be made to Johnson's Dictionary; for the manner in which the words are studied and talked about in school, is such, that the children must be perpetually reminded, that nothing connected with spiritual subjects can be finally settled into any irreversible formula of doctrine, by finite and unperfected minds;-excepting, perhaps the two moral laws, on which hang the law and the prophets. Some objections have been made, however, to the questionings upon consciousness, of which specimens are given in the lessons on Self-Analysis.-It is said, that their general tendency must be to produce egotism.-This might be, if, in self-analysis, a perfect standard was not always kept before the mind, by constant reference to Jesus Christ, as the "truth of our nature;" and by means of that generalizing tendency, which I have noticed before; which always makes children go from finite virtue, to the Idea of the Perfect. We have found the general influence of the lessons on Self-Analysis, to be humbling to the selfconceited and vain, though they have also encouraged and raised up the depressed and timid, in one or two instances. The objection seems to me, to have arisen from taking the word self in a too limited signification. The spirit within, is what is meant by self considered as an object of philosophical investigation. I think myself, that the lessons would more appropriately have been styled, analysis of human nature, than self-analysis; for excepting the first one, they were of a very general character, and constantly became more so, in their progress. Yet the impression of that first lesson is very probably the strongest on the mind of many readers. It consisted of a series of questions, calculated to bring out the strongest and most delicate sentiments of the individual soul. Testing questions were asked, which placed the child in the painful alternative of claiming the spirit of martyrdom, or denying her sincere affections for beloved friends. I believe there was no untruth told, and no selfexaltation felt, and consequently no harm done, in the particular instance; but I will admit that it was too much an analysis of the individual, and should certainly agree with those who think that the effect of such a course, might ultimately be to dwarf or dissipate, by forcing an expression of sentiments strictly personal, and perhaps to corrupt them. If there is one object more than another, to which may be applied Wordsworth's beautiful lines: -- "Our meddling intellect, Misshapes the beauteous forms of things, it is to the personalities of the soul. The instinctive delicacy with which children veil their deepest thoughts of love and tenderness for relatives, and their reasonable self gratulations, should not be violated I think, in order to gain knowledge, or for any imagined benefit to others. Indeed no knowledge can be gained, in this way. It would be as wise to tear the rosebud open, or invade the solitude of the chrysalis, with the hope of obtaining insight into the process of bloom or metamorphosis, as to expect to gain any knowledge of the soul, by drawing forth, by the personal power which an instructor may possess over the heart, conscience, or imagination, that confidence, which it is the precious prerogative of an individual to bestow spontaneously, when old enough to choose its depository. And Mr. Alcott, I believe, agrees with me in this, notwithstanding that he practically goes sometimes upon the very verge of the rights of reserve, as in the instance referred to. He doubted, immediately, whether that first lesson was wise, and materially changed the character of his questioning afterwards, and an attentive reader will observe, that questions of the same kind were not repeated after the first day. But I felt bound in conscience to put into the Record, every thing that transpired during that winter, and to present even the exercises that were afterwards modified; because I had called my book the Record of the actual School. I expected, however, that it would be read in the liberal spirit, a work on such a plan required; and that the general character of the exercises would be regarded, rather than the peculiarities of any one lesson, and especially of an introductory one, on entirely new ground. But what I have said of the rights of reserve, does not respect all that is in the soul. There are relations and sentiments which regard objects of common interest to all souls; such as God, Jesus Christ, the human race as such, and duties in the abstract. These are fair subjects of questioning, with the affections appertaining to them, and there is a great good, which may arise from the consciousness of these sentiments in each individual being analysed and discriminated, and the relations themselves being discussed in a large company, all of whom share them, and the duties which. spring from them. For so all narrowness and peculiar associations have a chance to be exchanged for something more enlarged, and the clearer Reason of some may aid the dimmer apprehension of others, less favored by nature or education. And, in this case, there is no fear, as has sometimes been suggested, of the mind's being dwarfed. It may and will take narrow views comparatively of Truth itself, but the danger is less, if this subject is first apprehended in childhood, than if it is approached for the first time at a later age; for in childhood the sense of Justice, and the sentiment of the Good and Beautiful, have not yet lost the holiness and divine balance of Innocence, or the glow and impulse first received from the Divine Being, who projected the individual soul into time and space, there to clothe itself with garments, by which it may see itself, and be seen by its fellow beings. This view of childhood's comprehension, is confirmed by all, who have had much to do with cultivating the minds of children. Madame Neckar de Saussure, in her work on Progressive Education, says,-that the younger children are, the more exclusively they are moral beings, a position which she defends with much fine remark, replete with her usual practical good sense. The phrenologists remark that conscientiousness is, generally speaking, larger in proportion in children, than in adults,-(what a satire is this fact, if it be a fact, on our modes of education!) and lastly, Jesus Christ always spoke of childhood as having peculiar moral sympathies ;-being of the kingdom of heaven, &c. There is however, one way, in which there is some danger of dwarfing the minds of children on these subjects. It is this. As it is sometimes necessary to imagine or refer to practical applications of principles, and to outward occasions of sentiments, in order to identify them, we are liable to present cases which are not entirely comprehensible by children who can perfectly realize the principle or sentiment, either in their own consciousness, or in application to a case whose terms they do understand. And Mr. Alcott may sometimes err in selecting his instances of application. But I think it is very rarely that he does. In the first edition of the Record, I noticed an instance, where I thought he had erred in this way. But after the book was printed, I found I had misrepresented his opinion. He told me he did not decidedly believe, as I there stated, that government had not the right of capital punishment. Still less did he mean to dogmatise on that point with his scholars. I thought at the time, it was a singular departure from the spirit of his method, to bring the children to a decision, on a disputed point of legislation,-that most extensive and complicated of all applications of principle to practice, and necessarily entirely out of the comprehension of children. And the only excuse I can give for making this misrepresentation, is, that on that day for the only time, I left the record in the hands of another, and left the room, and then made my inferences from it as it stood. Mr. Alcott says, that had I been there I should probably have heard nothing to which even I should have objected, notwithstanding my own opinion is, that society, in its collective capacity, has a right to inflict capital punishment.on individuals, in defence of its members. The contemplation of Spirit in God, is necessarily wrapt up in a study of language, leading to the study of the Soul, whose existence, sentiments, reason and strength of will, are God's gifts of spirit. But Mr. Alcott did not intend to confine himself to such allusions to Jesus Christ |