Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/24

 of information more comprehensive and substantial, than is usually communicated at school.

The principle of delayed development supposes a vigilant regard to be had to the spontaneous germination of the". several faculties; and a due care also that the vitality of each should be preserved throughout the period during which its expansion and exercise are deferred. The rule we have to recommend enjoins that excitement should be postponed, while nutriment is supplied; and in a word, that the mental force should be husbanded, much rather than used.

It is nowhere but at home that the experiment can be fairly tried, which shall prove whether, along with a full measure of mere learning, a far more vigorous expansion of the higher faculties at eighteen, than is often witnessed, may not be effected, by a thorough-going adherence to this rule of postponed excitement. It must be at home, if at all, that the force and fruitfulness of the mind may be kept in the bud, until the natural summer-time of action comes on.

But it is manifest that we must not venture thus to delay the expansion of the faculties, unless we are able to calculate, pretty surely, upon commanding the future opportunity to carry forward the process of culture beyond the usual term of school education. If children are to be removed from our care, and are to abandon the means of improvement as they enter their teens, no choice is left us, but to develop the mind as quickly as we can. A somewhat different case is however supposed throughout the present work.

Little perhaps now remains to be hoped for, in relation to public education, beyond the gradual extension of the existing system, until it shall have embraced all classes of the community. But home education unquestionably is in itself susceptible of indefinite advancements; and