Knowledge of the world, of different characters, of manners and social intercourse, is an important point in education. It is easily acquired in public institutions. Children soon learn to distinguish between the different manners of feeling and thinking of their companions.

Greater uniformity in manners, more mutual attachment and general benevolence, more order and greater readiness to obey and to depend on their superiors, may result from public education. There the feelings, in general, may be more easily exercised and directed, because society is indispensable to that purpose, and private education can never afford the same opportunity. Finally, the great effect of emulation is entirely lost in private instruction; and emulation may be necessary to some children in order to push them on.

Thus, even in the actual state of things, public institutions are preferable, and they will be far superior, if once regulated according to sound principles and adapted to human nature.

Conclusion.

The great object of education is, not to create, but to prepare, to develope, or to impede, and to direct the natural dispositions: vegetative, affective and intellectual. The nature of the fundamental powers, and the conditions on which their

manifestations depend, must be known, to enable us to cultivate and direct them.

The difference between the feelings and intellectual faculties, is particularly to be attended to. Then, if the means of excitement and those of direction be employed, as I have detailed them, arts and sciences will improve, moral evil will diminish, and mankind will become more happy. I do not flatter myself, however, that in the present state of mankind, the most perfect education can abolish all disorders. Hence, institutions of another kind are necessary, which I shall speak of in the following pages.

APPENDIX.

ON THE CORRECTION OR REFORM OF MALEFATORS.

As individuals differ exceedingly from each other in the innate strength of their faculties, there can be no doubt that adults, as well as children, if entirely left to themselves, and to the motives which spring up in their own minds, would not all be influenced either by the same number, or by the same kind of motives, nor would each motive act with equal force in all. Besides, the faculties which produce the lower propensities, do not of themselves produce good actions; and as they are stronger than the faculties proper to man, legislation is necessary to direct mankind. In regard to many particular acts, the government must command what is to be done, and forbid what is not to be done; seeing few individuals. possess so favorable an endowment of dispositions as to be naturally prone to virtue, or to have the

law written in their hearts. Now, the general aim of all legislation ought to be the happiness of mankind, combined, as far as possible, with that of each individual; or, in the language of Phrenology, it ought to be to establish the natural morality of man, confirmed by true Christianity. The lower animals have no conceptions of morality, because they do not possess the faculties which produce the moral sentiments and reason. Hence, those faculties which are proper to man alone, conceive the necessity of legislation, and without them there would be none in mankind any more than in the animals.

Definition of Legislation.

I take this expression in its most extensive signification, and conceive it to comprehend the regulation of the manner in which all our faculties ought to be employed. Positive legislation has been, and still is, very different in different countries. The same actions have been and still are considered now as crimes, and then as virtues. The first great object is to distinguish natural from positive laws. It appears to me that both ought to be the same, and that the natural laws, in as far as they are known and admitted, ought to be declared positive, and to guide the actions of man. No one, therefore, should endeavor to make laws, but only to discover those made by the CREATOR, to submit to them, when discovered,

as to his will, and to dispose others to follow this example.

Positive laws are divided into Divine and Civil. The former are given by GoD, the latter by human legislators.

The question which naturally occurs is, whether there ought to be differences between the natural, Divine, and civil codes. Hitherto thinking people have not agreed, and the one makes war against the other; but I am of the decided opinion that mankind cannot become happy till the laws of the Creator are put into practice. To say that the revealed law is not the same as the natural, is to suppose that God is not the CREATOR of mankind, or that he has been in contradiction with himself at different times. Such notions seem to me absurd, and I cannot admit any interpretation of the revealed law, which is evidently in contradiction with the real nature of man. Moreover, since man cannot create, he ought not to set himself up as an inventor of laws; nor attempt to control the course of Providence, or counteract the nature of things. As already said, he should try to discover, and having discovered, to submit to the arrangements of the CREATOR with respect to his vegetative, affective, moral, and intellectual nature.