de down in their imagination.
Young people who learn particular arts and sciences from masters who
have confined their view to the boundaries of each, without having
given an enlarged idea of the whole, are much in the same situation
with these unfortunate geographers.

The persisting to teach things separately, which ought to be taught as
a whole, must prevent the progress of mental cultivation.[37] The
division and subdivision of different parts of education, which are
monopolised as trades by the masters who profess to teach them, must
tend to increase and perpetuate errour. These intellectual _casts_ are
pernicious.

It is said, that the Persians had masters to teach their children each
separate virtue: one master to teach justice, another fortitude,
another temperance, and so on. How these masters could preserve the
boundaries of their several moral territories, it is not easy to
imagine, especially if they all insisted upon independent sovereignty.
There must have been some danger, surely, of their disputing with one
another concerning the importance of their respective professions,
like the poor bourgeois gentilhomme's dancing-master, music-master,
master of morality, and master of philosophy, who all fell to blows to
settle their pretensions, forgetful of the presence of their pupil.
Masters, who are only expected to teach one thing, may be sincerely
anxious for the improvement of their pupils in that particular,
without being in the least interested for their general character or
happiness. Thus the drawing-master has done his part, and is satisfied
if he teaches his pupil to draw well: it is no concern of his what her
temper may be, any more than what sort of hand she writes, or how she
dances. The dancing-master, in his turn, is wholly indifferent about
the young lady's progress in drawing; all he undertakes, is to teach
her to dance.

We mention these circumstances to show parents, that masters, even
when they do the utmost that they engage to do, cannot educate their
children; they can only partially instruct them in particular arts.
Parents must themselves preside over the education of their children,
or must entirely give them into the care of some person of an enlarged
and philosophic mind, who can supply all the deficiencies of common
masters, and who can take advantage of all the positive good that can
be obtained from existing institutions. Such a preceptor or governess
must possess extensive know