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first, that the moral impulses and intellectual capacities of every human being are by nature co-equal, and co-ore dinate; that is to say, the sensibilities of the heart, and powers of the head, in every being, are naturally equal in strength; a dull man having by the very constitution of his nature slow and blunt feelings; and genius being by nature endowed with quick and ardent sensibilities; and so, proportionally, through all the gradations of intellect, from the highest to the lowest order of minds. In after life, the moral and mental co-equality is seldom preserved, owing to some persons cultivating their feelings more than their understandings; while others improve their minds to the neglect, or at the expense of their moral impulses and emotions; and, consequently, as all the human powers, whether physical, or intellec tual, or moral, grow in strength, or decay in weakness, as they are exercised or disused, the natural coequality of feeling and mind is deranged by the subsequent cultivation of the one, in an undue and disproportionate preference to the other.

Secondly. That the possession and display of great intellect does not necessarily imply the exercise or possession of moral virtue. For, if it did, individuals and nations would be just and upright, precisely in proportion to the quantity of their talent and information; and communities and persons would be vicious and profligate in the direct ratio of their dulness and ignorance; propositions which are contradicted by the uniform experience of fact and history.

Thirdly. An inquiry should be made into the comparative mind of the ancients and moderns. This question has been agitated by the learned in Europe ever since the revival of letters. One sect of scholars has contended that the ancients excel the moderns in all the attributes of genius, while another maintains the superiority of the moderns. In the last century a third heresy sprung up amidst the European philosophers and scho lars, who, at that time, as they supposed, discovered the secret of man's perfectibility; which doctrine, if true, decides the question; for if the human race be growing

wiser and wiser, every succeeding generation, in its progress towards perfection, of course the ancients were mere children, as to talents and acquisitions, in comparison with modern wise men; and the politicians, warriors, poets, historians, orators, and philosophers of Greece and Rome, are, by several centuries, inferior to the corresponding classes of men who protect, adorn, and guide the present era of illumination. By pushing the two first theories to their legitimate extremes, their inconclusiveness will appear: for, on the supposition that the ancients were superior in capacity to the moderns, the world has only to grow to a certain age, when all the human beings in it will be mere drills and changelings, if mind diminishes every succeeding generation; and on the supposition that the moderns excel the ancients in talent, the converse result will be produced, and the nearer we travel up to the commencement of the creation, the more certainly we approximate to a race of ideots and dunces.

It should therefore be shewn, both by reasoning, a priori, from certain undisputed elementary principles of metaphysics, and also by a general induction from particular facts, that neither of these three opinions is correct; but, that although individuals differ from each other in the amount of native talent, yet large masses of men, as whole communities, average an equality of natural capacity, in all ages and countries. How far that natural capacity shall be developed into active power and display, must, of course, depend upon the existing circumstances of the age and country in which it appears; as the form and spirit of government, systems of education, character of the people, and all those predominating influences which stamp the family features, and direct the destinies of nations. In examining this question, an inquiry should be made into the best means of securing for the public service a succession, regularly continued from age to age, of able men, in all the high departments of the state, political, military, and literary. And, in particular, should be explored the causes which accelerate or retard the growth of mind in these United

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States, so far as it is employed in the pursuit of politics, literature, art, and science.

Fourthly. An analysis of the political history of the world should be made, with a view to ascertain how far any nation, ancient or modern, has approximated in its social institutions towards the union of the three great requisites of a good government; namely, the personal liberty of the people, strong and permanent power in the hands of the executive, and an ample developement of the national mind, by a system of comprehensive, liberal education.

Fifthly. An inquiry should be made into the elementary principles and practical exhibition of eloquence, both oral and written; in the course of which, the best writers of Greece, Rome, Italy, France, and England, should be analyzed, and their happiest effusions pointed out, as illustrations of the general rules laid down. These few subjects, with some others which might be named, if properly discussed and exemplified, would very materially tend to lay the foundation of intellec tual excellence, broad and deep, in the student's mind.

In our colleges, the mathematics are generally well taught; but not so either the classics or metaphysics, or belles-lettres and rhetoric, or moral philosophy, including the three branches of ethics, political economy, and national law.

The study of metaphysics is eminently useful in sharpening, brightening, and strengthening the faculties of the mind, by accustoming it to the process of analysis, the exercise of abstraction, recollection, arrangement, careful inquiry into the springs and sources of human passions, character, and conduct. And, in addition to opening the best roads for the judicious direction and management of the understanding, the science of mind is kindred to, and prepares the way for the investigation of other important sciences. The only certain foundation of philology and criticism rests upon a knowlege of metaphysics, which enable us to examine and classify the ideas that words represent, to give precision and force to language, and to ascertain the

sources of the emotions raised within our bosoms by the contemplation of sublime or beautiful objects, whether belonging to the material world, or the offspring of moral magnificence and loveliness. Moral philosophy owes its existence to metaphysical investigation, which explores and analyzes those feelings, affections, passions, and sentiments of the heart, which it is the business of morals to regulate and guide. No moral writer can clear even the threshold of his science, without the aid of metaphysics. Even political economy derives light and direction in its pursuits, and endeavours to promote the well-being of states from the insight which metaphysics afford into the nature of individual man, seeing that the multiplication of these in dividuals constitutes the living materials of that state which the political economist labours to adorn and aggrandize.

Neither the mathematics nor the physical sciences are well adapted to develope the faculties of youth. In early life the study of mathematics exercises only the mechanism of the understanding; and children who are early doomed to the drudgery of casting calculations, and eternally working in figures and algebraic signs, bury in everlasting forgetfulness all the fine and fertile seeds of imagination, which in that vernal season of existence, under a more liberal culture, would spring up into a lofty stem, wave its luxuriant branches in the air, display the rich beauty of its blossoms, and ripen into an abundance of fragrant fruit. Nor are the destruction of all fancy and the prevention of all taste counterbalanced by any transcendent accuracy of mind: for arithmetic, algebra, and mathematics, only make us acquainted, in many different forms, with a few simple propositions always the same. Demonstrated truths do not show us the way to those that are probable and contingent, and which alone can direct our steps in the active business of practical life, in the prosecution of the arts, in the intercourse of society. This doubtless aplies only to the common labours in the mathematical trenches: for invention in this science, as in every other

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pursuit, is the felicitous result of excited genius. But of the thousands, who pore over the beaten track of mathematics, how many exhibit either sense or reason in the important transactions of life? To those who are not inventors, this study affords the means of unfolding only one faculty, that of reasoning closely and conclusively upon given premises; it confers no power of taking ground, and laying down premises on which to build up a system of prompt, various, inductive reasoning. A dull man may make a good mathematician, but by no possibility a good classical scholar.

It is the province of liberal education to develope and improve all the faculties of the mind, and to cultivate and improve the whole moral being; which desirable purpose is best accomplished by the study of language, as the chief object of instruction, attended, indeed, and aided by the cultivation of the arts and sciences, but itself the primary pursuit. The study of language is peculiarly fitted to render the faculty of associating similar and simple ideas, or of combining various and dissimilar images more facile and rapid. By attributing definite ideas to arbitrary signs and conventional sounds, and by forming abstract and general, when particular and definite notions cannot be obtained, the powers of association and imagination, like all the other faculties, must, by exercise and use, be greatly strengthened. Add to which, by increasing the rapidity and strength of the associative faculty, the study of language improves the capacity of reasoning, increases the brilliancy of wit, and brightens the blaze of imagination; whence all the mental powers are enabled to work with greater promptness and effect upon every subject of human inquiry submitted to their cognizance and consideration.

But, above all the dead languages, the Greek and Latin tongues should be more especially studied, as conducive to the great end of liberal education; not only because they contain some of the highest flights of genius, but also because they have a greater accuracy, a more philosophical precision than any living, floating,