1816.] Remarks on the Tendency of the New System of Education.

woman, in those lower walks of life where such a corrective is most wanted, that ground of eminence whence the influence of its virtues might be most widely diffused-those virtues whose pure and tranquil lustre can spread a tone of softness on the harshest features of our nature.

If, how ver, it should be objected, that this argument would go to the exclusion of males from all instruction, I am desirous that it should be considered rather as a defence of the old system than an attack on the new one; and conceding the utility of the end, I shall proceed to examine the adequacy of

114 On the Tweddell Collections and the Rev. Mr. Carlyle. [March 1,

on the contrary, though powerful beyond I should have expressed less at length, other men in the speculations of abstract But what, alas! can any insulated opiscience, was perhaps from this very nion effect, when we daily see the ancause unfitted for the consideration of nouncements of this national institution subjects so mixed and fluctuating as the with all its array of patrons and presidents, characters and passions of men. Little, of princes, dukes, senators, and bishops, therefore, is the practical use of his sys--who are specified with a pompous mitems of education or government; and this, which we might have conjectured from reason, has been fully established by fact, in the failure of his constitution for the state of Carolina. And from Cowper's known aversion to public schools, it would require some hardihood to produce his authority in support of the general system, whatever might be his sentiments on one particular point.

I will maintain, however, against any declamation, that there was more true kindness and leniency in the old method of coercion than in the present one; for, to omit that speculation so beautifully touched on by Burke,* of the identity or equivalence of all our feelings of pain, whether mental or bodily,-how bitter, I ask, must be the punishment of shame and ridicule to a child of generous sentiments? and where such sentiments never existed, or have been blunted by repetition, the punishment itself is nu gatory. Instead of the little culprit finding comfort from the chastisement of his master in the affection of his schoolmates, they are converted, by a very refinement of cruelty, into the executors of his sentence; it is their scoffs and taunts that form the measure of his suffering. What trespass in the power of an infant to commit, can merit that loneliness and dejection of spirit which such unkindness must produce? what can compensate for those feelings of hatred, resentment, and alienation, that must take place of the gladness and cordiality of childhood?

Severity in education should, I think, be always declined, and rewards, where it is practicable, should be more largely used than punishments; not, however, the selfish rewards of modern invention, -orders of merit, tin medals, and painted ribbons, but those unphilosophical ones. of ancient use, by which the happy child, when sharing with his friends, enhanced his own pleasure in gaining their esteem-the only distinction which in after-life he will be able to acquire, and the only one worth acquiring.

Such, Sir, are the grounds of my objection to the present system of education, which, if I had not felt so strongly,

Sublime and Beautiful, part iv, 3.

nuteness, like a host of witnesses brought up for some suspicious character. To ascertain, however, how much this princely superintendence surpasses the obsolete one of the landlord or clergyman of the parish, I would recommend the reader to consult the account given by an ingenious foreigner of a recent visit to the very shrine and sanctuary of this benevolent system,-to the Central Borough School,-and let him contrast its tumult and confusion with what he himself has witnessed of the peacefulness, good order, and useful discipline, of that dark age when the rights of chil dren were not fully understood.

MR. EDITOR,

PHILARCHEUS.

HAVING in common I presume with most of your readers, taken a deep interest in the discussions in your magazine relative to the Tweddell MSS., I could not help feeling highly gratified by collecting from a recent letter,† that a valuable portfolio of costumes entrusted (as is there stated) several years ago by Lord Elgin to his father-in-law, Mr. Nesbit, and the late Chancellor Carlyle, in order to be forwarded to the representatives of Mr. T., which, for some reason hitherto unexplained, was never done, is now deposited in such safe custody as to promise the reasonable hope of its restoration at length to his surviving family. Yet at the same time I cannot help remarking one implication contained in the letter to which I have alluded as rather extraordinary, which is, that these drawings, if so consigned to the joint care of Mr. Carlyle, should not have long since reached their destination, as that gentleman, from residing as vicar at Newcastle, so within the reach of the nearest relatives and friends of Mr. T. must of course be supposed to have had frequent and excellent opportunities of communicating the circumstance to the family. From a personal acquaintance with this elegant and accomplished scholar, and a thorough knowledge of his

Journal of a Residence in England, &c. vol. ii. p. 130.

This letter will be found in a succeeding page of our present Number, under the head of LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.-Editor.

Mr. Taylor on the Philosophy of Plato;

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Mr. Taylor on the Philosophy of Plato.

lunary things, were fearful that they were not under the direction of Providence and a divine nature; for such events as are said to take place through fortune, the apparent inequality respecting lives, and the disordered notion of material natures, induced them greatly to suspect that they were not under the government of Providence. Besides, the persuasion that divinity is not busily einployed in the evolution of all-various reasons, and that he does not depart from his own blessedness, induced them to frame an hypothesis so lawless and dire. For they were of opinion, that the pas sion of our soul and the perturbation which it sustains by descending to the government of bodies, must happen to divinity, if he converted himself to the providential inspection of things. Farther still, from considering that different objects of knowledge are known by different gnostic powers; as for instance, sensibles by sense, objects of opinion by opinion, things scientific by science, and intelligibles by intellect, and at the same time neither placing sense, nor opinion, nor science in divinity, but only an intellect in material and pure; hence they asserted that divinity had no knowledge of any other things than the objects of intellect. (And this was the opinion of the more early Peripatetics.) For say they, if matter is external to him, it is necessary that he should be pure from apprehensions which are converted to matter; but being purified from these, it follows that he must have no knowledge of material natures. Hence the patrons of this doctrine deprived him of a knowledge of, and providential exertions about, sensibles; not through any imbecility of nature, but through a transcendency of gnostic energy, just as those whose eyes are filled with light, are said to be incapable of perceiving mundane objects, at the same time that this incapacity is nothing more than transcendency of vision. They likewise add, that there are many things which it is beautiful not to know. Thus to the enthiastic (or those who are divinely inspired) it is beautiful to be ignorant of whatever would destroy the deific energy; and to the scientific, not to know that which would defile the indubitable perception of science.

But others (as the Stoics) ascribe indeed to divinity a knowledge of sensibles, in order that they may not take away his providence, but at the same time convert his apprehension to that

[March 1,

which is external, represent him as pervading through the whole of a sensible nature, as passing into contact with the objects of his government, impelling every thing, and being locally present with all things; for say they, he would not otherwise be able to exert a providential energy in a becoming manner, and impart good to every thing according to its desert.

Others again affirm that divinity has a knowledge of himself, but that he has no occasion to understand sensibles in order to provide for them, since by his very essence he produced all things, and adorns whatever he has produced, without having any knowledge of his productions. They add, that this is by no means wonderful, since nature operates without knowledge, and unattended with phantasy; but that divinity dif fers from nature in this, that he has a knowledge of himself, though not of the things which are fabricated by him. And such are the assertions of those who were persuaded that divinity is not separated from mundane natures, and of those who deprived him of the knowledge of inferior concerns, and of a knowledge operating in union with providence.

With respect to these philosophers, we say, that they speak truly and yet not truly on this subject. For if providence has a subsistence, neither can there be any thing disordered, nor can divinity be busily employed, nor can he know sensibles through passive senses: but these philosophers, in consequence of not knowing the exempt power and uniform knowledge of divinity, appear to deviate from the truth. For thus we interrogate them; does not every thing energize in a becoming manner when i energizes according to its own power and nature? as for instance, does not nature, in conformity to the order of its essence, energize physically, intellect intellectually, and soul psychically, or according to the nature of soul? And when the same thing is generated by many and different causes, does not each of these produce according to its own power, and not according to the nature of the thing produced? or shall we say, that each produces after the same manner, and that, for example, the sun and man generate man, according to the same mode of operation, and not according to the natural ability of each, viz. the one partially, imperfectly, and with a busy energy, but the other without anxious attention, by its very essence, and totally?

1816.]

Mr. Taylor on the Philosophy of Plato.

But to assert this would be absurd; for a divine operates in a manner very different from a mortal nature.

117

these, and to apprehend in what they differ from each other, unless we contained a certain indivisible nature, which has a subsistence above the com mon sense, and which prior to opinion, desire and will, knows all that these know and desire, according to an indivisible mode of apprehension.

If, therefore, every thing which ener gizes, energizes according to its own nature and order, some things divinely and supernaturally, others naturally, and others in a different manner, it is evident that every gnostic being knows according If this be the case, it is by no means to its own nature, and that it does not proper to disbelieve in the indivisible follow that because the thing known is knowledge of divinity, which knows senone and the same, on this account, the sibles without possessing sense, and dinatures which know, energize in convisible natures without possessing a diviformity to the essence of the things sible energy, and which without being known. Thus sense, opinion, and our present to things in place, knows them intellect, know that which is white, but prior to all local presence, and imparts not in the same manner; for sense can- to every thing that which every thing is not know what the essence is of a thing capable of receiving. The unstable white, nor can opinion obtain a know- essence, therefore, of apparent natures is ledge of its proper objects in the same not known by him in an unstable, but in manner as intellect; since opinion knows a definite manner; nor does he know only that a thing is, but intellect knows that which is subject to all-various muthe cause of its existence. Knowledge tations dubiously, but in a manner pertherefore subsists according to the na-petually the same; for by knowing himture of that which knows, and not according to the nature of that which is known. What wonder is it then that divinity should know all things in such a manner as is accommodated to his nature, viz. divisible things, indivisibly things multiplied, uniformly, things gen rated, according to an eternal intelligence, such things as are partial, totally; and that with a knowledge of this kind, he should possess a power productive of all things, or in other words, that by knowing all things with simple and united intellections, he should impart to every thing being, and a progression into being? For the auditory sense knows audibles in a manner different from the common sense; and prior to, and different from, these, reason knows audibles, together with other particulars which sense is not able to apprehend. And again, of desire which tends to one thing, of anger which aspires after another thing, and of proairesis, or deliberate choice, there is one particular life moving the soul towards all these, which are mutually motive of each other. It is through this life that we say, I desire, I am angry, and I deliberately choose this thing or that; for this life verges to all these powers, and lives in conjunction with them, as being a power which is impelled to every object of desire. But prior both to reason and this one life, is the one of the soul, which often says, I perceive, I reason, I desire, and I deliberate, which follows all these energies and energizes together with them. For we should not be able to know all

self, he knows every thing of which he is the cause, possessing a knowledge transcendantly more accurate than that which is co-ordinate to the objects of knowledge; since a causal knowledge of every thing is superior to every other kind of knowledge. Divinity therefore knows without busily attending to the objects of his intellection, because he abides in himself, and by alone knowing himself knows all things. Nor is he indigent of sense, or opinion, or science, in order to know sensible natures; for it is himself that produces all these, and that in the unfathomable depths of the intellection of himself, comprehends an united knowledge of them, according to cause, and in one simplicity of perception. Just as if some one having built a ship should place in it men of his own formation, and in consequence of possessing a various art should add a sea to the ship, produce certain winds, and afterwards launch the ship into the new created main. Let us suppose too, that he causes these to have an existence by merely conceiving them to exist, so that by imaging all this to take place, he gives an external subsistence to his inward phantasms, it is evi dent that in this case he will contain the cause of every thing which happens to the ship through the winds on the sea, and that by contemplating his own conceptions, without being inds, ent of outward conversion, he will at the same time both fabricate and know these external particulars. Thus, and in a far greater degree, that divine intellect, the artificer of the universe, possessing the