rigour,) there are teachers, who obtain a credit by overstraining
the discipline, after having obtained a fair reputation, by carrying it
only to a proper length.
-=-

[end of page #96]

youth would be taught to know what it is that renders a man happy in
himself, and respected and valued by society.

But the consideration of the system to be followed is not the least
important part of the business. The useful should be preferred to the
useless, and in this the example of the ancients might be followed with
advantage. They had no dead languages to study, and the mind
appears to have been in many cases expanded, far beyond its present
compass.

Nothing, indeed, can equal the ignorance of the most part of boys,
when they leave school; those who are considered as bad scholars,
have lost the good opinion of themselves, that ought to be maintained
throughout life; they think every thing difficult or impossible. Those,
again, who have excelled, are something less ignorant, but become
vain and conceited, owing perhaps to their having learnt some useless
and superfluous pieces of knowledge.

Education, on the general principle, consists in learning what makes a
man useful, respectable, and happy, in the line for which he is
destined, whether for manual labour, or for study; for a high or a low
occupation.

What is useful becomes a question, in some sort depending upon
place, and still more on circumstances, it will therefore be better to
discuss it at length in the Third Book, where England is the place, and
particular circumstances are taken into consideration.

There are, however, some general rules that apply to all places and to
all situations.

Good principles, honour, honesty, and integrity, are equally necessary
in every rank of society; with those qualities, even a beggar is
respectable, and will be respected; without them, no man ever was or
ever will be so. In every mode of education, the importance of those
should be inculcated; and that they may be adhered to, every man,
either by inheritance, or by talents, or by habits of industry, should
have it put in his power to command the means of living in the way
that he has been brought up.

Were this attended to, many scenes of misery and vice would be
prevented. Admitting that there are propensities in some minds, [end
of page #97] that lead to evil, independent of every possible check or
control, it must be allowed that the far greater proportion of those