Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/20

 pediency, or by a perfunctory regard to what is the most facile or practicable, and is therefore neither very comprehensive, nor well proportioned—neither inclusive of all flint should be taught, nor regardful of the several faculties of the human mind that ought to be trained; on the contrary, home education, inasmuch as it is free, or may be so, from every sort of despotism, and side influence, is easily rendered (by whoever has skill to do so) in the fullest sense complete, as well in relation to the studies it is made to embrace, as to the faculties it endeavours to cherish. On this ground, if on no other, the practice to the principles and details of which this volume is devoted, possesses signal advantages; and the consciousness of them may well animate the exertions of parents who intend to adopt it.

And yet, desirous as I am neither to be, nor to seem the zealot of the domestic system, which I adopt and recommend, I am forward to allow, first, that a school education which, on an abstract view of it, might be condemned as extremely partial and defective, may nevertheless, if vigorously conducted, subserve well enough the purposes of common, or even of professional life; and further, that the usual course of school education, is, in fact, as comprehensive as can fairly be expected, under the circumstances by which it is limited: nor must it be denied that, as a preparation for the labours and conflicts—the competitions and the crosses of real life, the rough treatment of school may be really preferable to the more refined and better digested but milder training which may be carried on at home.

This concession being made, I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that a private education, well devised, and carried into effect with energy and constancy, is the only sort that, altogether, deserves the name in a philosophic sense: nor do I despair of being able, in the end, to convince intelligent parents and teachers that, on some such plans as those hereafter to be explained, and with the aid