and must continue to be savages,--it
being the only effectual instrument of civilization. It is the chief, if
not the only means for improving the condition of the human family, and
for restoring man to the dignity of an intelligent and virtuous being.

As "Science" is the investigation and knowledge of principles, so an
"art" may be defined as a system of means, in accordance with these
principles, for attaining some special end. Teaching is one of the arts;
and it depends as entirely for its success upon a right application of
the principles of the science of education, as the art of dying does
upon the principles of chemistry. As an art, therefore, teaching must be
subjected to all those laws which regulate the improvement of the other
arts, and without which it can never be successfully carried on, far
less perfected. These laws are now very generally understood; and we
shall briefly advert to a few of them, which are necessary for our
present purpose, and endeavour to point out their relation to the art of
teaching.

1. One of the first rules connected with the improvement of the arts is,
that the artist have _a specific object in view, for the attainment of
which all his successive operations are to be combined_.--The
manufacturer has his _cloth_ in prospect, before he has even purchased
the wool of which it is to be composed; and it is the desire of
procuring cloth of the most suitable quality, and by the easiest means,
that compels him to draw liberally and constantly from the facts
ascertained, and the principles developed, by the several sciences. From
the science of mechanics he derives the various kinds of machinery used
in the progressive stages of its production; and from the science of
chemistry he obtains the processes of dying, and printing, and dressing.
But he never troubles himself about the science of mechanics or of
chemistry in the abstract; he thinks only of his cloth, and of these
sciences as means to assist him in procuring it. He is careful of his
machinery, and is constantly alive to the mode of its working, and is
thus prompted to adopt such improvements as observation or experience
may suggest; but it is not the machinery of itself that he either cares
for, or thinks about. No; it is still the cloth that he keeps in view;
and his machinery is esteemed or slighted, adopted or abandoned, exactly
in proportion as it forwards his object. The processes necessary in the
different departments of