Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/310

 this concluding chapter, is to say something of that principle of transition which, in conformity with the constitution of the human mind, leads on, almost insensibly, from the culture of the Intuitive, to the exercise of the Operative faculties.

Lord Bacon (and Rochefoucauldin his peculiar and sinister style) has affirmed, what may well be granted, that men, individually, and collectively, might accomplish far more than they actually attempt, or even think of, did they but fully know, and steadily employ, the powers conferred upon the human mind. And moreover it may be said that far more might be achieved by each individual, whatever be his native endowments, if only, in the early training of the reason, the working of the active faculties were delayed until after the intuitive faculties had largely gathered in materials. The difference between working with a fund of ideas, and working for a fund, is a circumstance on which depends the healthy growth, or the early stunting of the mind. In the ordinary course of education, the minds of children are strained and stimulated upon inanition. Labour comes first; feasting afterwards (if ever). But in the intellectual world the rule does not holdHe that will not work, neither let him eat: but rather thisThe labourer must first be partaker of the fruits.

An expression frequently applied to the over anxious endeavours of some teachers to impart universal informationthat it is a cramming the mind, properly attaches, with its implied rebuke, to those methods which subvert what is I think, the natural order of mental culture:that is to say, which bring a great stress to bear upon the powers, before the perceptions have been furnished with their proper objects and aliment. No mind can fairly be said to have been crammed with that information which, how various soever or extensive it may be, has been all imbibed spontaneously, and unconsciously; or just as the