I have said "to bring out, and strengthen, and exercise all the powers." Some would add, "and balance them." But if all were faithfully exercised, I am of opinion that a better balance would ensue than we could secure, so partial as are our views, and so imperfect as has been the training of the best of us.
I shall gladly proceed, in my next chapter, to declare what I think we have learned as to what the powers of the human being are. At present, I can only just point out that the aim proposed is superior to every other mentioned, and I believe to any other that can be mentioned for this reason; that it applies universally—meets every case that can be conceived of. In the patriarch's scheme of education, the women—half the race—were slighted. In the Spartan system, the slaves and all work-people were left out. Among the modern republicans, citizens have the preference over women and slaves: and under the savage training—the Indian, Arab, and Mongolian—no individual whatever is done justice to. And there is not a country in Christendom where equal justice is done to all those whom we see entering the world so endowed as that we ought to look on every one of them with religious awe as a being too noble for our estimate. The aim proposed—of doing justice to all the powers of every human being under training—includes all alike, and must therefore be just. It includes women, the poor, the infirm—all who were rejected or slighted under former systems—while it does more for the privileged than any lower principle ever proposed to do. It appears that under it none will be the worse, but all the better, in comparison of this with any lower aim.
To obtain a clearer and firmer notion of what this object really comprehends, we must next make out, as well as our present knowledge allows, what the powers of the human being are. I mean as to their kind; for I do not think any one will venture to say what is the extent of endowments so vast; and in their vastness so obscure.
CHAPTER III.
THE NATURAL POSSESSIONS OF MAN.
What are the powers of the human being?
I speak of those powers only which are the object of education. There are some which work of themselves for the preservation of life, and with which we have nothing to do but to let them work freely. The heart beats, the stomach digests, the lungs play, the skin transpires, without any care of ours, and we have only to avoid hindering any of these actions.
Next, man has four limbs. Of these, two have to be trained to move him from place to place in a great variety of ways. There are many degrees of agility between the bow-legged cripple, set too early upon his feet, and the chamois hunter of the Alps, who leaps the icy chasms of the glacier, and springs from point to point of the rock. The two seem hardly to be of the same race; yet education has made each of them what he is.
The two other limbs depend upon training for much of their strength and use. Look at the pale student, who lives shut up in his study, never having been trained to use his arms and hands but for dressing and feeding himself, turning over books, and guiding the pen. Look at his spindles of arms and his thin fingers, and compare them with the brawny limbs of the blacksmith, or the hands of the quay porter, whose grasp is like that of a piece of strong machinery. Compare the feeble and awkward touch of the book-worm who can hardly button his waistcoat, or carry his cup of tea to his mouth, with the power that the modeller, the ivory carver, and the watchmaker have over their fingers. It is education which has made the difference between these.
Man has five senses. Though much is done by the incidents of daily life to exercise all the five, still a vast difference ensues upon varieties of training. A fireman in London, and an Indian in the prairie, can smell smoke when nobody else is aware of it. An epicure can taste a cork in wine, or a spice in a stew, to the dismay of the butler, and the delight of the cook, when every one else is insensible. One person can feel by the skin whether the wind is east or west before he gets out of bed in the morning; while another has to hold up a handkerchief in the open air, or look at the weathercock, before he can answer the question—"How's the wind?"