th and
improvement of the mind. Its great object is immediate and prospective
happiness. That, then, is the best education which secures to the
individual and to the world the greatest amount of permanent happiness,
and that the best system which most effectually accomplishes this grand
design. How far this is accomplished by the present systems of education
is not easily determined, but that it fails in many important
considerations can not admit of a doubt.

It is feared that, by a great majority, a wrong estimate is made of
education. Is it not generally considered as a _means_ which must be
employed to accomplish _some other purpose_, and consequently made
subservient and secondary to the employments of life? Is it not
considered as being contained in books, and a certain routine of
studies, which, when gone through with, is believed to be accomplished,
and consequently laid by, to be used as interest may suggest or
convenience demand? Education comprehends all the improvements of the
mind from the cradle to the grave. Every man is what education has made
him, whether he has drunk deep at the Pierian spring, or sipped at the
humblest fountain. The philosopher, whose comprehensive mind can scan
the universe, and read and interpret the phenomena of nature; whose
heaven-aspiring spirit can soar beyond the boundaries of time, indulge
in the anticipation of immortality, and discern in the past, the
present, and the future the all-pervading spirit of benevolence, is
equally the child of education with him whose soul proud science never
taught to feel its wants, and know how little may be known.

As we have already said, man possesses a material and an immaterial
part, mutually dependent on each other. These are so intimately
connected, and sustain such a reciprocal relation to each other, that
neither can be neglected without detriment to both. The body continually
modifies the state of the mind, and the mind ever varies the condition
of the body. Mental and physical training should, then, go together.
That system of instruction which relates exclusively to either, is a
partial system, and its fate must be that of a house divided against
itself. Education has reference to the _whole man_. It seeks to make him
a complete creature after his kind, giving to both mind and body all the
power, all the beauty, and all the perfection of which they are capable.

Our systems of education have hitherto fallen far short of this hig