general topics, truth is, with equal justice, predicated of the correspondence of language to thought, of art to nature, of action to intention, of antitype to type,-in any relation whatever.

In the working of the mind, the term applies, with not less propriety, to the correspondence of perception to object, of conception to idea, of word to thing, of language to relation, of action to conscience, of habit to character, of aim to end, of opinion to sentiment or statement to fact, of expression or representation to reality or actuality. The word "truth," in brief, covers, properly, the whole ground of intellectual, æsthetic, or moral conformity of thought, expression, or action, to an exact and recognized standard, sanctioned by the canons of criticism or of conscience. It stands opposed, therefore, equally to falsity of conception, of expression, or of action. As a quality, it characterizes alike the habits of the correct thinker, of the exact artist, whether in the use of pencil, pen, or tongue, and those of the sincere and honest man. It secures the individual from the unintentional defects of error, and guards him against the voluntary deviations of design.

In relation, however, to the subject of human culture, and, in particular, to the discipline of the mental powers, truth is regarded as a result of voluntary and studious application,—as a product of the exercise of the reflective faculties, in the quest of ultimate principles in science, physical, intellectual, or moral. Examples in point are furnished in the process of tracing the great laws of physics, in the demonstrations of geometry, in the verification of history, in logical ratiocination, in the discussion of moral obligations, in the scrutiny of evidence. In such investigations, the quest of truth, conducted by well-disciplined reflective faculties, is steadily, skillfully, and successfully pushed onward to the grand crowning result of certainty and conviction. Unaided by the skill which culture and discipline insure, the mind has no security against the involuntary illusions of error, or the intentional misrepresentations of deceit; it discovers no stability in the outward universe, has no confidence in its own conclusions, no just reliance on itself, no firm conviction of duty, no enlightened faith in testimony; but blown about by every plausible assumption of theory, and every shifting phase of circumstance, a prey to every reigning delusion, unsettled on any sure foundation of moral principle,-skeptical as to every vital truth, plunging into every approaching fog-bank of error, and drifting, without chart or compass, on the great ocean of uncertainty,--suffers, at length, an intellectual and moral wreck.

Most justly, as well as beautifully, has Bacon said, "truth, which

only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing, of it,-the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it,is the sovereign good of human nature."

Guided by his own unassisted reflective reason, man does unquestionably attain to great results, both intellectual and moral. But, enlightened by the knowledge which science and education shed on every relation of his being, what a vast expansion, what a wondrous elevation is he capable of attaining;--all resulting from the faithful application and skillful exercise of the reason with which his Creator has crowned his intellectual faculties! How noble, in this view, becomes the office of the educator, whose daily endeavor it is to cherish, and strengthen, and vivify this master principle of all intelligence! V. EDUCATIONAL PROCESSES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND DISCIPLINE OF THE REFLECTIVE FACULTIES.

Defective Methods.-If we look at what is professedly and formally done, in our common modes of education, for the exercise and discipline of the reflective faculties; and if we found our estimate on the number of branches of knowledge or of science, and the number and variety of books nominally employed for the purpose, we might be inclined to suppose that, in this important part of culture, much is effected. But, on examining the actual state of things, errors and oversights, in this respect, are found to be numerous, and methods comparatively ineffectual.

Exclusive reliance on exactness of recollection.Memory, the appointed servant of the reflective faculties, whose office it is to collect and keep and furnish the materials for their action, is, indeed, amply laden with the semblance and show of matter;-but most of it in the form of Hamlet's book of "words, words, words." The too exclusive use of manuals, the mere records of knowledge, instead of the actual study of objects, facts and relations, the observation and the understanding of which constitute knowledge itself, leads to the cultivation of a verbal and mechanical memory, instead of a living and intelligent one. The fact is still too generally overlooked, that memory is not so much a separate faculty, which can be trained and disciplined by itself, as the mind,-in virtue of its spiritual nature and exemption from limits of time and space,―retaining or recalling what it has once observed or conceived; that the vigor of this retention, or the force of this recurrence, must always be as that of the original impression, and that the only rational reliance for the healthy and effective action of memory, must therefore be the freshness, the force, and the depth of attention. But, obviously, no impression made on the mind through

the medium of language,-no matter how exact may be the definition, or how true the description,--can ever be so complete or so effectual as that of direct observation through the senses, personal experience, or distinct conciousness. Here, again, we are referred to two great educational principles: that the study of things should precede the study of words, and should always be resorted to, in preference, whereever there is a choice of modes of instruction; and that, to awaken and develope the reflective faculties, the true course is, in obedience to the Creator's appointment, to use the objects of nature as the apparatus which His wisdom has provided, not only for the exercise and training of the mind's perceptive faculties, with a view to the acquisition of knowledge, but for the expanding and deepening of its capacities of discovering truth. Observation naturally prompts to thought and reflection. There is, in such circumstances, a conscious, living transition from one sphere of intelligence to another,—from one comparatively lower and more limited to one higher and more spacious. But in the mere contemplation or repetition of the words which describe an object, record a fact, or state a principle, the condition of mind is that of abstraction; and the mental associations, in such conditions, are always less vivid, forcible and distinct, than in the observation of concrete realities; and, when the former of these conditions is recalled, its impress is necessarily dim and obscure, compared to that of the latter, which, by the experience of actual perception, has become a comparatively inseparable part of the mental life and history of the agent.

The difference in these two cases will be rendered yet more strikingly apparent, if we suppose,-what is commonly true in verbatim processes of committing to memory,-that the mind of the learner, in his anxiety to retain and repeat with exactness the phraseology of the book which he studies, often glances aside from the contemplation of the fact or the principle which he is enunciating, to the literal succession of the words in which it is expressed. The mind's power of abstraction becomes, in this way, the very means of its deterioration; and the memory, abused by this arbitrary and mechanical mode of exercise, loses its healthy power of retention and recollection; and unfortunately, most of all, in those reflective processes of earnest thought which demand its most vigorous exertion.

The prevalent methods of teaching, moreover, are still too exclusively directed to the exercise of memory, at the expense of neglecting the other faculties, an evil inseparable from the false views which still usurp the seats of instruction, and make education consist in processes of passive reception, on the part of the pupil; as if his mind were a

capacity to be filled, rather than a capability to be developed, or a life-power to be awakened.

Reading. The greater number of the subjects which are introduced in early education, as means of exercise and discipline for the mind, are still too commonly treated under the influence of these erroneous views of the character and objects of mental culture. Hence the wearisome experience of the child, when compelled to drudge through the task of committing to memory the names of all the alphabetic characters of the language, before, or perhaps without ever, acquiring a knowledge of the power, or actual sound, of any one of the whole group. Every day, he is giving two or three of these sounds in every one of the short and easy words which he uses in conversation. But he is not allowed the satisfaction of recognizing the fact, that these troublesome and perplexing marks before his eye, are little graphic characters to suggest, phonetically to eye and ear, the very words which he is constantly uttering. When the alphabetic task is accomplished, there follows, usually, in the child's experience, that of hewing his way through whole columns of words, to him unmeaning, because lying out of his sphere in the understanding and use of language; and to this useless toil too often succeeds that of reading multitudes of unintelligible sentences of a character corresponding to the words which baffled him. But we need not dwell on this topic now, having entered into it at length, in former connections of this part of our subject.

Arithmetic. In arithmetical instruction, which might be so effective an aid to the development of the mind's reflective power, the same evil still too generally prevails, as in the rudimental stages of spelling and reading. The very first step taken, in some instances, is to prescribe and enforce the committing to memory of elementary tables of numbers, by arbitrary repetition of the words in which these are expressed. Were the child allowed the fair opportunity of first seeing, in concrete form, the facts which he is made to assume and communicate in parrot-like form; and were he allowed to create them for himself, in visible or tangible shape, in copious instances, and thus to generalize the facts from his own observation, memory would have an intelligent, living office to perform, would work with freshness and strength, and long retain, or easily recall, what attention had proved. Were it required of the pupil thus to construct the given table, instead of merely repeating the words in which it is expressed, the exercise of memory would be as pleasing as it would be invigorating. It would thus be aided by the deepening and strengthening effect of the not less delightful processes of combining and constructing, in the actual

work of practical operations. The busy hand would thus help the thinking head to clearer views and deeper impressions; and the true and proper work of memory would be done in accordance with the law of mental action.-"As IS THE EARNESTNESS OF ATTENTION, SO IS THE DURATION OF REMEMBRANCE, OR THE DISTINCTNESS AND READINESS OF RECOLLECTION."

Geography. The subject of geography furnishes very frequently another example of memoriter lessons, exacted, perhaps, with a wellmeaning rigorous fidelity to the language of a text-book, but sacrificing the useful knowledge, the pleasing information, and the invaluable mental training and discipline, which this instructive branch of science might be made to furnish. Detached facts, comparative numerical tables, and assumed definitions, are yet too uniformly imposed as a burden on the memory; while the actual survey of even a limited portion of the earth's surface, within daily view, perhaps, of the learner, would furnish him with the best materials on which to build up the noble and majestic structure of geographical science.

Fortunately, through the labors of Professor Arnold Guyot, in his Juminous exposition of the philosophy of instruction in this department of science, a new and better era is begun in American schools; and this branch of education is now, in many seminaries, taught on methods strictly logical. The study of geography thus becomes an admirable intellectual discipline, in addition to the systematic forms in which it embodies the great facts and pervading laws of nature, which are its peculiar province as a science. The student, who is trained on this admirable method, has the great features of the globe, and all their relations of consequent fact, imprinted forever on his memory. The very inequalities of the earth's surface, become to him an intelligible language, by which he reads the laws of design, and traces effects to causes, with the certainty of distinct recognition. Taught in this manner, few sciences are more adapted to the development of the reflective faculties, in their first steps of advancement from the field of perceptive observation to that of contemplative survey and rational inquiry, or to that of profound scientific investigation. The methods which Professor Guyot has transferred from the lessons of his own distinguished instructor, Carl Ritter, and the views of the patriarch of geographical science, Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, will, it is to be hoped, soon find their way not only into our text-books, in which they are beginning to appear, but into all our seminaries in which the young mind is undergoing the formative processes of education.

History-Of all the sciences which are naturally fitted to invite the