I. AXIOMS.

APHORISMS representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire farther; whereas methods carrying the show of a total, do secure men, as if they were at farthest.

BACON.

Exclusively of the abstract science, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of Aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an Aphorism.

There is one way of giving freshness and importance to the most common-place maxims-that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Mature and sedate wisdom has been fond of summing up the results of its experience in weighty sentences. Solomon did so: the wise men of India and Greece did so: Bacon did so: Goethe in his old age took delight in doing so. . . . They who can not weave an uniform web, may at least produce a piece of patchwork; which may be useful, and not without a charm of its own. The very sharpness and abruptness with which truths must be asserted, when they are to stand singly, is not ill-fitted to startle and rouse sluggish and drowsy minds.

Guesses at Truth.

A collection of good sentences resembles a string of pearls.

Chinese saying.

Nor do Apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use: as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.-BACON.

How often one finds in life, that an idea, which one may have met in youth, made visible in words, but also veiled in them, and which in this shape has haunted one with a vague sense of something divine, but dim and inscrutable, becomes, at the call of conscience, or when real events and beings give it its fit body, the open aspect of a messenger from Heaven, and the familiar friend of all one's after days. STERLING.

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, &c., have the same use with burning glasses, to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination. SWIFT.

Harmony, the ultimate object of all things, should exist as in the universe, so in man also, who is a little world in himself. e

It is to this end especially that education should be directed; which requires:

1. That youth should not hear of any thing which may awaken unchaste desires, until they are acquainted with the dignity and loftiness of human nature.

2. That youth should endeavor to attain a ripe development, by means of effort

3. That parents are the proper educators; and that it is therefore the greatest injustice to separate parents and children.

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4. That education should extend over the whole period of youth. PYTHAGORAS.

*Man becomes what he is, principally by education; which pertains to the whole of life.

Education must begin even before birth, with the parents themselves; must constitute a rule of action during the entire life, and in a certain sense must exist during the whole of it.

**A good education consists in giving to the body and the soul all the perfection of which they are susceptible. `·

Man becomes what he is, by nature, habit, instruction.

PLATO.

The last two, together, constitute education, and must always accompany each other; the former, however, preceding.

It can improve nature, but not completely change it.

The intellect is perfected, not by knowledge but by activity.

The arts and sciences are powers, but every power exists only for the sake of action; the end of philosophy is not knowledge, but the energy conversant about knowledge. ARISTOTLE.

The regimen that will insure

A healthful body and a vigorous mind,
A countenance serene, expanded chest,
Heroic stature and a temperate tongue.

So were trained the heroes, who imbued
The field of Marathon with hostile blood.
This discipline it was that braced their nerves,
And fitted them for conquest.

ARISTOPHANES, The Clouds.

There is no living being whose nature is so obstinate and cross-grained as that of man; who has a natural tendency towards what is forbidden and dangerous, and does not willingly allow himself to be influenced,

But these sinful natural tendencies can be improved by wise laws, by a mild and just administration of them, and by an education which unites firmness and love. SENECA

Education awakes the innate power of the mind, and high cultivation confirms it.

HORACE.

The specific signification of Education has often been defined by means of the distinction between educere and educare. But this is not a sufficient basis for a precise definition. E. M. Arndt, in his "Fragments on Human Culture," considers educare to signify the artistic process or art of education, and thinks that educere is more correctly translated by "to bring up," or "raise up;" rpéqev. Schmidt in one place considers educeré to be the business of the mother, because she brings forth the child.† In another place, he says it means "to bring out of the family, into a larger sphere of life—into the world ;" and in a third, that it means "to awaken, set in activity and develop the inner higher faculties." Educare

is in the latter place taken to mean, on the contrary, "to bring the boy out of his animalized state of existence; to change the animal man into the spiritual."

Let us now consider whether German etymology may not furnish a more definite answer. Ziehen means to remove any thing from one place to another, in such a way that the thing moved follows the power, and does it, also, in a steady manner, in contradistinction to throwing, striking, or carrying; and the thing moved is in a certain sense forced to go itself, even though it struggles not to do so. This radical word has gained a metaphorical meaning in the department discussed by this work, by its relation in meaning to the sense in which it is used to signify the gardener's production of flowers from a bulb. Thus ziehen describes the management of his assistants by a teacher; of his orchestra by a leader, (though the compound heranziehen is more precisely proper); and in these cases the meaning is still very nearly the same with that of the original word, for there is a drawing after himself by the leader, without however any reference to the means by which the influence is exerted. But when ziehen is used to denote the sort of training that is acquired by a wild young man who is sent to be a soldier, the most prominent idea is that of the means used; the strenuous discipline; and the design is not that he shall follow after his discipliner in any sense, but that by means of his receiving the action here denoted by ziehen, that is by means of the passivity into which the constraint of his discipline brings him, he shall learn a right passivity, which is the negation of his previous wrong activity; namely, by means of an obedience to persons, authorities, orders; which obedience is the negation of his own undisciplined self-will. Aufziehen has a definite pedagogical meaning. It is the continuation of that careful protection from dangers to life, which is given to young infants; and therefore the physical care of the child, up to the period when it can take care of itself; a duty which can after the death of the mother be performed, for instance, by a maid. Here

"Fragmente über Menschenbildung,"

Outline," &c., p. 40. "The child is brought forth into the light of day; educitur; as the proverb says, educit obstetriz, educat nutrix, instituit paedagogus, docet magister." p. 221

4 lb., p. 223.

! Ziehen corresponds very nearly to the Latin root word of "educate," viz., duco, to lead, draw, &c.

>the animal side of the human being is most prominent; so that the word may be used even of a calf; and when applied to persons, is usually spoken of orphaned or neglected children, who early come into the charge of strangers; and whose education is considered chiefly from the point 1 of view of a beneficent life-sustained love. Erziehen, (educate,) on the contrary, according to the signification of the prefix er in many words, denotes the action of ziehen perfected; carried out to its ultimate object; as including all sides of the subjects of its action; complete within its proper scope. Erziehen (to educate) is therefore ziehen (to draw forth), and aufziehen (to bring up) in their metaphorical sense, but with the additional definite shade of meaning, that its action is carried out to its completed purpose, and applies to all sides of the object to be acted on. But this does not however fully express the actual extent of the idea. The best and most condensed definition that we can give is-Education is that intentional and systematic course of operations by adult persons upon the young, which is designed to raise the latter to whatever degree of individual excellence they are capable of by nature; and in whose attainment that divine purpose will be accomplished, for which every individual man is destined by God for himself and for society; and for which society also is destined in like manner.

SCHMIDT'S "Pädagogische Encyklopädie."

Education is assistance directed to the fullest development of all the faculties of the man, and to an attainment the nearest possible of the end of his existence instituted by God. Thus education introduces nothing foreign into man, whereas instruction is concerned in the appropriation of a foreign material, of human knowledge generally, not the germs of which, but the capacity to make his own, lies in man,

9" Education is the act [i. e. the continuous and entire treatment and conduct and exertion of influence] which places a child in the condition to fulfill as nearly as possible his destiny as a mortal and immortal being. It has for its aim the development of his faculties as a man, physical, intellectual, moral, social, and religious, in such proportion that through their harmonious action he will escape the punishments which await the bad, and become worthy of the rewards reserved for virtue.

1.

THOMAS BRAUN, Cours de Pédagogie.

Maintaining the health of the body; training its powers; developing and sharpening the natural understanding; enlightening ideas relative to man and the world; instructing and elevating the imagination, the sense of the beautiful, the noble, the great, the affecting, the refined, the pleasing; harmony of the bodily desires, and subjection of them to the moral laws of the reason; moderation in the enjoyment of the good things of life, and equanimity in the want of them; reference of all earthly being and action to the other side of the grave.

THE AUTHOR OF The Impulses of Reason.

There is within every man a divine ideal, the type after which he was created, the germs of a perfect person, and it is the office of education to favor and direct these germs. D

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KANT

Man is the only creature that requires to be educated one generation educates another. The young, however, ought to be educated not in accordance with the present standard of the human race, but with a view to a future and much meliorated condition of humanity. In short, the object of education ought to be, to develop in the individual all the perfection of which he is capable. KANT:

The art of education ought to aim at a standard of elevation superior to what may happen to be the spirit of the time-for the child is to be educated not for the present merely. J. P. RICHTER,

I use this term (education) as embracing every means which can be made to act upon the vegetative, affective, and intellectual constitution of man, for the purpose of improving this his threefold nature.

Being asked what I mean by human nature? I reply, that it is not body alone, nor mind alone, nor animal propensities, affections, or passions; nor moral feelings, nor intellect; neither is it organization in general, nor any system of the body, nor any particularity whatever; but human nature, in the proper sense of the words, comprehends all the observable phenomena of life, from the moment of conception to that of death, both in the healthy and diseased state; or in short, all the manifestations both of the body and mind.

G. SPURZHEIM.

View of Education.

Education may, in a certain sense, be said to be threefold-the education of nature, of man, and of circumstances. The internal development of our faculties and organs is the education of nature: the use which we are taught to make of this development is the education of man: and the acquisitions of our own experience respecting the objects which operate upon us is the education of circumstances. ROUSSEAU

Education proposes to confer on man the highest improvement of which his body, his mind, and his soul, are capable, with a view to secure his well being, to fit him for society, and to prepare him for a better world. Hence, general education is divided into three branches, physical, intellectual, and moral, the latter including religious training. The first aims at health, strength and beauty; the second at mental power and the acquisition of knowledge; and the third at piety, justice, goodness, and wisdom. C. MARCEL. Language,

I call that education which embraces the culture of the whole man, with all his faculties-subjecting his senses, his understanding, and his passions to reason, to conscience, and to the evangelical laws of the Christian revelation. DE FELLENBURG.