s
at present more common) confound _education_ with _tuition_.

Education, I need not remark to you, is everything that _draws out_ the
human being, of which _tuition_, the teaching of schools especially,
however important, is comparatively an insignificant part. Yet the
present bent of the public mind is to sacrifice the greater power to the
less--all that life and nature teach, to the little that can be learned
from books and a master. In the eyes of an enlightened statesman this is
absurd; in the eyes of a pure lowly-minded Christian it is monstrous.

The Spartan and other ancient communities might disregard domestic ties,
because they had the substitution of country, which we cannot have. With
us, country is a mere name compared with what it was to the Greeks;
first, as contrasted with barbarians; and next, and above all, as that
_passion_ only was strong enough to preserve the individual, his family,
and the whole State, from ever-impending destruction. Our course is to
supplant domestic attachments without the possibility of substituting
others more capacious. What can grow out of it but selfishness?

Let it then be universally admitted that infant-schools are an evil,
only tolerated to qualify a greater, viz., the inability of mothers to
attend to their children, and the like inability of the elder to take
care of the younger, from their labour being wanted in factories, or
elsewhere, for their common support. But surely this is a sad state of
society; and if these expedients of tuition or education (if that word
is not to be parted with) divert our attention from the fact that the
remedy for so mighty an evil must be sought elsewhere, they are most
pernicious things, and the sooner they are done away with the better.

But even as a course of tuition, I have strong objections to
infant-schools; and in no small degree to the Madras system also. We
must not be deceived by premature adroitness. The _intellect_ must not
be trained with a view to what the infant or child may perform, without
constant reference to what that performance promises for the man. It is
with the mind as with the body. I recollect seeing a German babe stuffed
with beer and beef, who had the appearance of an infant Hercules. _He_
might have enough in him of the old Teutonic blood to grow up to a
strong man; but tens of thousands would dwindle and perish after such
unreasonable cramming. Now I cannot but think, that the like would
happen with