Dr. Ray forcibly exhibits the radical faults of our common systems of education. He exposes the vulgar fallacy, that the growth and discipline of the mind are tested by the amount of task-work it can be made to accomplish. The efficiency of a given course of training is indicated by the power and endurance which it imparts,—not by such pyrotechny as may be let off before an examining committee. The amount of labor in the shape of school-exercises habitually imposed on the young strains the mind far beyond the highest degree of healthy endurance. This is shown by illustrations which our limits compel us to omit: they are worthy to be pondered by every conscientious parent and teacher in the land. Our national neglect of a right home-education brings Dr. Ray to a train of remarks which sustains what we were led to say in noticing Jean Paul's "Levana" a few months ago. "How many of this generation," writes our author, "complete their childhood, scarcely feeling the dominion of any will but their own, and obeying no higher law than the caprice of the moment! Instead of the firm, but gentle sway that quietly represses or moderates every outbreak of temper, that checks the impatience of desire, that requires and encourages self-denial, and turns the performance of duty into pleasure,—they experience only the feeble and fitful rule that yields to the slightest opposition, and rather stimulates than represses the selfish manifestations of our nature." The criticism is just. It is to parents, rather than to children, that our educational energies should now address themselves. For what school-polish can imitate the lustre of a youth home-reared under the authority of a wise and commanding love? But our adult-instruction must go deeper than a recommendation of the best scheme of household discipline the wit of man can devise. Be the government as rigid as it may, the children will imitate the worst portions of the characters disclosed in the family. The selfish and worldly at heart will find it wellnigh impossible to endow their children with high motives of action.
We cordially indorse what is said of those harpy-defilers of knowledge known as juvenile books. A limited use of the works of Abbott, Edgeworth, Sedgwick, and a very few others may certainly be permitted. But the common practice of removing every occasion for effort from the path of the young—of boning and spicing the mental aliment of our fathers for the palates of our sons—would be a ridiculous folly, if it were not a grievous one. Suitable reading for an average boy of ten years may be found in the best authors. For it is well observed by Dr. Ray, that, if the lad does not perceive the full significance of Shakspeare's thoughts or the deepest harmony of Spenser's verse, if he does not wholly appreciate the keen sagacity of Gibbon or the quiet charm of Prescott, he will, nevertheless, catch glimpses of the higher upper sphere in which a poet moves, and fix in his mind lasting images of purity and loveliness, or he will learn on good authority the facts of history, and feel somewhat of its grandeur and dignity. To the sort of reading which naturally succeeds the Peter-Parley dilutions of wisdom we can only allude to thank Dr. Ray for speaking so clearly and to the point.
But it becomes necessary to pass over many pages which we had marked for approving comment. In conclusion it may be said that this treatise on Mental Hygiene is full of wholesome rebukes and valuable suggestions. Yet the impression of New-England, or even of American life, which a stranger might receive from it, would be lamentably false. In a special department, Dr. Ray is an able scientist. To a wide-embracing philosophy he does not always show claims. There has been heart-sickening corruption in all prosperous societies,—especially in such as have been debauched by complicity with Slavery. It is the duty of some men of science and benevolence to be ever probing among the defilements of our fallen nature, to breathe the tainted air of the lazar-house, to consort with madness and crime. Few men deserve our respect and gratitude like these. But let them be cheered by remembering that in the great world outside the hospital there are still elements of worthiness and nobility. Wealth was never more wisely liberal, talents were never held to stricter accountability, genius has never been more united with pure and high aims, than in the Loyal States to-day. The descendants of "those much-enduring men and women of colonial times" have not shown themselves altogether "incapable of toil and exposure." From offices and counting-rooms, from libraries and laboratories, our young men have gone forth to service as arduous as that which tried their fore-fathers. How many of them have borne every hardship and privation of war, every cruelty of filthy prisons and carrion-food, yet have breasted the slave-masters' treason till its bullet struck the pulse of life! Let us remember that the most divergent tendencies of character, even such as we cannot associate with an ideal poise of mind, may work to worthiest ends in this ill-balanced world of humanity. The saying of Novalis, that health is interesting only in a scientific point of view, disease being necessary to individualization, shows one side of the shield of which Dr. Ray presents the other.
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