Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/166

, and of excluding frivolous or sensual tastes. If there be any manipulative or operative tact, let the laboratory be resorted tonot to philosophize, but to transmute, to smelt, to crystalize, to sublimate, to inflate balloons, and to ply electric batteries. Or if there be any faculty of observation, and any industry of collection, we may set a-going the museum of natural historythe hortus siccus, and the collection of geological specimens. If there be a constructive and mechanical turn, we have at our command the various branches of the applicate sciences; and one of the best pursuits in the case supposedland-surveying, mensuration, and the art of the civil engineer. I venture to say that it is hardly an instance in a hundred in which, if a boy is not absolutely mindless, he may not, properly dealt with, be brought to display a degree of zest in pursuing some one or more of these tangible and intelligible sciences. In most cases, if we will but condescend to try the proper means, the sluggish faculties may be at length brought, one by one, into play, until not merely a fair amount of general information has been imparted, but the individual has been, if one might use the expression, put into amicable communication with the world of mind, and for ever rescued from the ignominy of ignorance. A kindly, animated, condescending treatmentversatile in its measures, and quick to catch any indications of natural taste, may work wonders with common minds. Home education might perhaps win its brightest honours on this very ground.

The actual want of mind is to be carefully discriminated from the less usual case of mind dormant;the early appearances being sometimes nearly the same. It may be thought that little danger is incurred on this ground, inasmuch as it may be supposed that a latent faculty will not fail to evolve itself in due season. But it is not quite certain that it will always do so; and on the contrary, continue