n the future state will be permanently affected by, and
enjoy the full benefit of, the preparatory training it has received in
this life; that then, as now, it will be progressive in its attainments;
and that the rapidity with which it will then acquire knowledge, and the
nature of its pursuits, will depend upon the degree of cultivation, and
the habits and character formed in this life.

[20] From an Essay upon the Physical and Intellectual Education of
Children, written by request of the Managers of the Pennsylvania Lyceum.

From what we know of the beneficent and all-wise Creator, as manifested
in his word and works, we have abundant reason for believing that our
highest and enduring good will be best promoted by becoming acquainted
with, and yielding a cheerful obedience to, the laws of organic mind.
Whatever the effect of education upon independent mind may be, we may
rest well assured that man's everlasting well-being in the future state
will be most directly and certainly reached by a strict conformity to
those laws which regulate mind in its present mode of being. It should
be borne in mind, also, that just in proportion as man remains ignorant
of those laws, or, knowing them, disregards them, will he fail to secure
his best good in this life not only, but in that which is to come, to an
extent corresponding with the influence which education may exert upon
independent mind. In order, then, most successfully to carry forward the
great work of intellectual and moral culture, and to secure to man the
fullest benefits of education in the present life, and in that higher
mode of being which awaits him in the future, we have only to acquaint
him with the laws by which embodied mind is governed, and to induce him
to yield a ready, cheerful, and uniform obedience to those laws. We
shall therefore devote the following pages to an inquiry into the laws
which must be observed by embodied mind in order to render it the
fittest possible instrument for discovering, applying, and obeying the
laws under which God has placed the universe, which constitutes the one
great object of education, when considered in its widest and true sense.

All physiologists and philosophers regard the brain as the organ of the
mind. Although it is not befitting here to give a particular description
of this complicated organ, still it may be well further to premise that,
by nearly universal consent, it is regarded as the immediate seat of t