Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/79

 "nature," so called in the restricted meaning of the term; next, language, as the vehicle of the mind, and that product of choice thought and language which is literature; third, man as mind, with his ethical, religious, aesthetical, social, and political being all included; and fourth, human history, as the complex resultant of all the interacting forces involved in the first three classes of subjects. Now the secondary education should impart a goodly amount of clear knowledge of each of these four great subjects; and, of course, also of the peculiar mental discipline derived from the pursuit of each.

It should be at once admitted, however, that the aptitudes and tastes of human beings differ, and that some of their differences are very persistent, radical, and sure perpetually to recur among great multitudes of individuals. It can perhaps scarcely be claimed that men are born with an aptitude and a taste for geology, for astronomy, or for psychology and ethics. But it seems likely, if not certain, that some men do more naturally incline to those pursuits which require objective observation, to the studies of external nature, and others to the studies of the mind as known in self-consciousness or as expressing itself in language. This fact suggests, at least, the necessity for a bifurcation of the prescribed studies of the secondary stage of education. Not far from the beginning of this