Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/172

 a combination of many excellencies, for it includes that ready apprehension of the bearings of things which belongs to the mere man of business, and without which no one can succeed in the management of any affairs, along with so much, at least, of the philosophic faculty as serves to elevate the subject of it above the level of vulgar motives, expanding the views, bringing the mind into correspondence with abstract and universal principles, and enabling it to adapt general principles to those sudden and unusual occasions when inferior minds are soon bewildered, or go wrong. Again: this species of superiority implies more than a spice of the imaginative element, without which there can be no genius, no greatness, no richness or freedom, no soul, no appliancy of talents, no harmony of purposes, no energetic hold of generous sentiments. A mind thus distinguished (and perhaps the prevalence of a better system of education would make it appear that such are not so rare as we have been used to think) such a mind is clearly destined for public life, and the care of it is no light responsibility for the teacher or parent.

The facts on record whence an opinion must be drawn, lead us to believe that, while the genius of the poet or the philosopher may long he unsuspected, and the subject of it actually occupy a place below the line of mediocrity, it is otherwise with the class of minds we are now speaking of, which, in all instances now occurring to my recollection, have displayed their superiority at an early age. Whatever wilfulness or irregularity may have belonged, in such cases, to the youththe boy and the child has predicted, in an unquestionable tone, his future greatness. A clear and happy comprehension of whatever is offered in the ordinary course of studya steady spontaneous perseverance in achieving whatever has once presented itself to the mind as desirable, a solidity of judgment, ten years in advance of the actual age, a disposition to generalize, in relation to