Part 16 (1/2)
This brought many to their feet, with a shouted ”Yes.”
”Any happiness?”
”Yes.”
”Goodness?”
”Yes.”
”Naughtiness?”
”Yes.”
”Is truth in the mind, or outside of it where we can see it?”
”In the mind.”
I then took Mrs. Barbauld's hymns, in the first of which occur the words _reason_, _kindness_, _heart_, _life_, beside the names of many objects of the senses, and made two columns on the black-board, in which I put down respectively, as they were mentioned, all the names of objects, both of the senses and of the mind. To the latter list I added the words _G.o.d_ and _soul_, by the direction of the children, upon asking them if they could think of any more such words.
I then made the same discrimination between actions of the body and actions of the mind, which they followed very well, sometimes confounding the two, as older philosophers do.
I endeavored to give them the idea that things which they see, hear, &c., exist both in the mind and out of it. This I could do by asking them if the person who made the first chair did not think of it first.
Was it not in his mind before he could make it? So everything in the world existed in G.o.d's mind before he made it.
I then asked, ”Which column of words gives the names of real things?”
They all said the objects of the senses were the real things.
”Can they not be broken up, or burnt, or worn out?”
”Yes.”
”Can the soul, or love, or goodness, or happiness, be broken, or burnt up, or worn out?”
”No.”
”Which are the things that last forever, then,--these objects of your senses, or these objects of your mind?”
”The objects of the mind.”
”Does your goodness always last?”
”No.”
”Where does it go to when you are not good?”
n.o.body knew.
”Can you have it again when you wish to?”