CHAPTER III.
THE USE OF A MIND.
It is the fashion of the present day to direct every means, and to force every effort, to some obvious and immediate result. Thus education has come to be regarded as a process by which the mind is filled, rather than one by which it is exercised in the use of its faculties.
Education is also too frequently considered as a thing which can be compressed into almost any given space of time, by dint of labor and industry; and thus parents who indulge a foolish ambition to see their children pushed on to be clever, make it a practice to stipulate, in sending them to school, that they shall learn everything within the compass of human attainment, except how to use their minds. They complain, too, sometimes, of the high terms of education; and various modes of bargaining, and bringing down those of the different schools to which they apply, are resorted to, with little compunction on the part of parents. Yet when we consider the situation of those who have to receive under their care children who have scarcely been prepared for the process of instruction by one useful habit, or one rational idea; when we consider, too, that in the course of a very few years, perhaps two or three, the habits they have acquired have to be uprooted, an entirely new foundation of moral and intellectual character laid, and upon this a superstructure erected, composed of every branch of learning, and adorned with every accomplishment, and all this with but slender capacity on the part of the child, and no desire whatever to be anything but well dressed, well fed, and exceedingly comfortable; I would ask, what money could repay the labor of converting a succession of such children, year after year, into what are called highly educated men and women? And even if by dint of indefatigable effort on the part of those who teach, there should now and then be one child sent home with a memory loaded to excess—nay, literally crammed with names and dates,
