uity, in order to gratify their curiosity and satisfy their
little appetites. What they desire is only to be obtained at the cost
of labour, patience, and many disappointments. By the exercise of the
body and mind necessary for satisfying their desires, they acquire
agility, strength, and dexterity in their motions, as well as
constitutional health and vigour; they learn to bear pain without
dejection, and disappointment without despondency. The education of
nature is most perfect in savages, who have no other tutor; and we see
that in the quickness of all their senses, in the agility of their
motions, in the hardiness of their constitutions, and in their ability
to bear hunger, thirst, pain, and disappointment, they commonly far
exceed civilized nations. On this account, a most ingenious writer
seems to prefer savage to social life. But it is the intention of
nature, that human education should assist to form the man, and she
has fitted us for it, by the natural principles of imitation and
belief, which discover themselves almost in infancy, as well as by
others which are of later growth.

When the education which we receive from men does not give scope to
that of nature, it is erroneous in its means and its tendency, and
enervates both the body and the mind. Nature has her way of rearing
men, as she has of healing their maladies. The art of education is to
follow her dictates, and the art of education is equally to obey her
laws. The ancient inhabitants of the Baleares followed nature in their
manner of teaching their children to be good archers, when they hung
their dinner aloft by a thread, and left them to bring it down: by
their skill in the use of the bow.

The education of nature, without any more human care than is necessary
to preserve life, makes a savage. Human education joined to that of
nature, may make a good citizen, a skilful artizan, or a well-bred
man; but a higher power is wanting in order to produce a Bacon or a
Newton.

The error of the _past_ system (for such I hope I may venture to call
it) as to _mental development_ was, that the inferior powers of the
mind were called into activity, in preference to its higher faculties.
The effort was to exercise the memory, and store it with information,
which, owing to the inactivity of the understanding and the judgment,
was seldom or never of use. To adopt the opinions of others was
thought quite enough, without the child being troubled to think for
it