last book of the "Politics" of Aristotle. Among modern
nations, also, music holds a high place, and makes its appearance as a
constant element of education. Piano-playing has become general, and
singing is also taught. But the ethical significance of music is too
little considered. Instruction in music often aims only to train pupils
for display in society, and the tendency of the melodies which are
played is restricted more and more to orchestral pieces of an exciting
or bacchanalian character. The railroad-gallop-style only makes the
nerves of youth vibrate with stimulating excitement. Oral speech, the
highest form of the personal manifestation of mind, was also treated
with great reverence by the ancients. Among us, communication is so
generally carried on by writing and reading, that the art of speaking
distinctly, correctly, and agreeably, has become very much neglected.
Practice in declamation accomplishes, as a general thing, very little in
this direction. But we may expect that the increase of public speaking
occasioned by our political and religious assemblies may have a
favorable influence in this particular.--

II. _The Imaginative Epoch._

Sec. 91. The activity of Perception results in the formation of an internal
picture or image of its ideas which intelligence can call up at any time
without the sensuous, immediate presence of its object, and thus,
through abstraction and generalization, arises the conception. The
mental image may (1) be compared with the perception from which it
sprang, or (2) it may be arbitrarily altered and combined with other
images, or (3) it may be held fast in the form of abstract signs or
symbols which intelligence invents for it. Thus originate the functions
(1) of the verification of conceptions, (2) of the creative imagination,
and (3) of memory; but for their full development we must refer to
Psychology.

Sec. 92. (1) The mental image which we form of an object may be correct;
again, it may be partly or wholly defective, if we have neglected some
of the predicates of the perception which presented themselves, or in so
far as we have added to it other predicates which only seemingly
belonged to it, and which were attached to it only by its accidental
empirical connection with other existences. Education must, therefore,
foster the habit of comparing our conceptions with the perceptions from
which they arose; and these perceptions, since they are liable to change
by reason