Modern physical science is as regardful of single instances as law itself can be; but it tends always upward to the universal and the abstract; and hence it affords so good a discipline to the higher reason.
With a different immediate object, and yet coming under the same general principle of providing against professional distortions of the mind, it is very desirable to cherish the imaginative tastes in those who are to addict themselves to studies utterly devoid, for the most part, of intrinsic charms, and likely therefore to parch the intellect. For it must be remembered that it is through the medium of these tastes that access is had to some of the noblest emotions; and by these often that such emotions are kept in vitality.
It would lead us too far to pursue the illustration of the point in hand, as related to the other professions: indeed the subject is in itself so important, and has been so little adverted to, that it may claim hereafter a separate consideration. How incalculable, for instance, and beneficial, might be the consequences of an early training of youth, destined to the exercise of the Christian ministry, were it conducted on the principle of furnishing the mind with habits counteractive of certain tendencies of the clerical temper which diminish in fact the beneficent influence of the most momentous of all offices, when brought to bear upon human nature as it is.
Whatever relates, in a specific manner, to the acquirements which should be made, and to the training which should be passed through, during the latter period of Home Education, will find its place in the following chapters, or in another volume. One preliminary topic only now remains to engage our attention, and that it is a consideration of some of those original diversities of mental conformation which demand to be regarded in adapting courses of study to individual tastes and talents.
