Part 4 (1/2)

The rectification of the intellectand the Book,' ih the rectification of the spiritual, absolutesubject, the vocal interpretation of literature (that is, spiritualized thought), I would indicate some of the means and conditions of a more spiritual education than is contemplated in the most advanced educational schemes of the day

What may be said to be the predominant idea of the present day, entertained especially by scientists and exercising its influence, ard to the e and truth? I answer, and I think not unjustifiably, the idea that the analytic, discursive, generalizing intellect, is adequate to solve all solvable proble at a positive knowledge; that, accordingly, education, the _highest_ education, consists al trained to discover and apply, the laws, so called, of nature, to trace facts to their (scientific) causes and to advance logically froeneralizing intellect cannot be exercised, being set down as unknowable Of an _intuition_ inaccessible to analysis, they take little or no account

This soe, with a ard as the cardinal defect in the education and philosophy of the present age--a defect that tends to deaden, if not to destroy, in many minds, all faith in those spiritual instincts and spiritual susceptibilities and apprehensions, which constitute the basis of a living hope and faith in ih which alone, hest truths, truths which are beyond the reach of the discourse of reason While the reasoning faculties of a or, the ties which unite the soul _syh assimilation, with universal spirituality, may be sundered, and a spiritual world for hiher and subtler organs of discerns to be discerned than can be discerned by the senses, the lowliest of men and woenius, have, throughout the whole recorded history of the race, borne an incontrovertible testimony 'The natural condition of humanity,' says William Howitt, 'is alliance with the spiritual; the anti-spiritual is but an epidemic--a disease'

Great have been the conquests of Science, the last fifty years, and great has been their influence on the te of mankind

But it must be admitted, perhaps, that these conquests, the product mainly of the insulated intellect, have been somewhat at the expense of 'the interior divinity'

Wordsworth, addressing his friend Coleridge, in the second book of 'The Prelude,' says:

to thee Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneu of ns of the tiive promise that humanity, far as it has drifted in one direction, will assert its _wholeness_, and will 'render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's,' and that the awakening of 'the interior divinity,' of the spiritual instincts and intuitions, will be as much the aim of the education of the future as the exercise of the in in infancy, when the child first 'rounds to a separate mind,' and can respond to itscare, and the rosy warard her child as al, and will see especially to its surroundings and its associations whether they are suitable to be starows, she will aim to quicken and purify it sentiment, and to cultivate a love of the beautiful in form, in color, in sound, especially as these are exhibited in the works of Nature; will endeavor to bring it into the fullest sympathy with all for that feels' It is a good sign when a boy loves anis, it can be quite safely inferred that he has not received at home lessons in love and had his sympathies and affections duly awakened

Ho, such as to bring the best affections into a healthy play There is too ht of the morrow, too erness to get rich Some fathers never sufficiently dismiss their business and cares from their minds, to play with their children and to show the hearts crave; and mothers expend their souls in the cares and vexations of housekeeping, or, if, by reason of their position and wealth, they are free from these, in social or other matters which shut them off, more or less, from those hest duty to exercise Filial affection certainly does not increase in this country, as the years go on Is it too much to say, perhaps it is, that it is rather the exception than the rule, for children, after, and often before, theirattachment either for their parents or for each other? And there is a word in our language that has quite survived its usefulness; and if things continue to go on as they are now going, it will soon be a fit subject for an Archaic Dictionary--I mean the word REVERENCE It stillvocables, but the thing it represents is a _rara avis in terris nigroque siious sentinificance of the words, as it utters them, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' in whouished These sentier a child's earliest years the foundation should be laid for that spiritual relationshi+p with Nature which Wordsworth has presented in his great autobiographic poem, 'The Prelude' Such relationshi+p but very few could realize in theh priest of Nature realized it; but all could be brought into a more intimate spiritual relationshi+p with Nature than is favored and promoted, at present, by home influences and by school studies The latter, when pre, tend rather to shut off such relationshi+p

What is understood as a scientific observation of nature, is not its highest form, so far, at least, as spiritual culture is concerned It is almost exclusively an analytic observation, in which the conscious intellect plays the chief part It is study, not spiritual cohest form of observation (if observation it can strictly be called, which is to so great an extent a rapture of necessity and spontaneity) is that which results fros the outer world and all its minutest features into relation with the inner world of reat allies It is this kind of observation rather than the other, which 'adds a precious seeing to the eye,' and gives to a man some measure of 'the vision and the faculty divine,' and enables hi of the fields that are his own; but fro before the blissful hour arrives,' writes Wordsworth,intellect of oodly universe in love and holy passion, and shall find the ideal forms of Poets, a si before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consu more than e are,

that is, e really or potentially are,

Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep Of death, and win the vacant and the vain To noble raptures; while my voice proclairessive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too-- The men-- The external world is fitted to the eneral spiritual education which is both explicitly and ireat autobiographical poelish Literature; and teachers capable of bringing its infor spirit home to their students (capable by virtue of their own assis in the way of a spiritual quickening of their students

And how ht derive from Wordsworth's poetry for the spiritual nurture of their children! Capable mothers are, alas!

comparatively few; but forces, to be noticed further on, are noork, which are increasing the number of such mothers, and will continue to increase it more and more, as the ideals of a true womanhood are eneration which the world, at present, ely induced by wohts, which are involved in her 'distinctive woenerous brother

Spiritual education is not a matter of abstract instruction It must be induced on the basis of the concrete and the personal The spiritual faculties have no affinities for the abstract Christianity was introduced into the world through the personal and concrete; rather, it _is_ the personal and the concrete, and its arch-enema declines with hi, and not a doctrine, not a body of opinions, not 'a matter of antiquarian pedantry or of historical perspective' In the great words of the 'De Imitatione Christi,' 'Cui aeternum verbum loquitur, ille a multis opinionibus expeditur' (he to whom the eternal word speaks, is freed from many opinions); and to fit the soul to be spoken to by the eternal word, is the true, the ultimate object of spiritual education

The permanent, the eternal, that which is alive for evermore, should, indeed, be the object of all education Pheno on them alone, if that were possible (man naturally, whatever his condition, seeks other pabulueneral atrophy of all the faculties, intellectual and spiritual To use the words of St Vincent de Lerins, which he applied to the Catholic Church,--would that the Church had always nopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est' (it must be especially seen to, that we hold to that which everywhere, which always, which by all, has been believed)

There is no exclusiveness in the eternal word; it speaks to every one whose ears are open to it; it enters wherever it is not shut out It speaks through Nature, through every form of Art (which to be art h Poetry, 'the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,' through Music, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, through all sacred books, and, above all, through sanctified men and wo and the noble Dead' In the words of Eht His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never fro Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations ca core below,-- The canticles of love and woe

The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told In groves of oak or fanes of gold Still floats upon theshould read, is, of course, an iht into useful facts' be regarded as the ies of Oviedo, the internal laws of the Burmese empire, by how able river joins itself to Lara, and what census of the year five was taken at Klagenfurt,' and othermuch to do with the advancement of the millennium, why the question is easily settled as to the kind of books a child should be provided with, and be required to learn, and recite; but if some vitality of soul, the indispensable condition of intellectual vitality, in after life, be the aim, then a different kind of books will be needed--such books as will serve to vitalize and guide the instincts, to bring the feelings into a healthful play, and awaken enthusiasm, and thus to prepare the way for the later exercise of the reasoning faculties, and for the coious principles There is a time to _feel_ the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, and a tiard all these, as far asthe philosophic mind' be anticipated in a child's education, it will be likely, by reason of the premature philosophy served out to it, to become a stupid man or woman, with a plentiful lack of both intellect and soul Upon the closed bud of reason, while it is not yet ready to be unfolded, enial warmth of sensibility, syood season, it will not be dwarfed nor canker-bitten

Sensibility, sympathy, enthusiasm, I repeat, are the elements of the atious nature of a child can alone gerrow, and in later years, bloorance

Stories written for the young must be _concrete_ representations of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; in other words, theyand the Book,'

Art ht,