صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[blocks in formation]

Recapitulation of Facts connected with the Study of the
Mind in Infancy

240

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

WHEN I first undertook to write a sort of moral history of life, in which the various means of improvement offered at different ages should be pointed out, I expected to pass rapidly over the period of childhood. Impressed with the important idea that our existence here is only the prelude to another, - that our passage through this world is only an education for a better, I wished to follow out this idea in all its bearings. My attention was attracted rather to the result of life, than to that preparation for life itself which occupies its commencement. I considered the education necessary during childhood to be a subject which, as a part of my plan, I was called upon to notice, but which had already been exhausted by the many distinguished writers who had devoted their thoughts to it.

But, on examining the subject more attentively, it appeared to me that it was still little understood; especially as regards the first years of infancy; to which even those who have reflected and written on education have paid little attention. Instructors by profession are not called upon to take charge of children at so early an age; and, when they do apply themselves to the task, they consider their future pupil as so much raw material, destined to receive its value from their hands. They look upon him as an ignorant being who is to be instructed; and it never enters their imagination that, in order to render him capable of being brought to that point at which he becomes susceptible of rational education, the endowments of the child must be very different from those of the man.

Women, on the other hand, however quick in discovering the most trifling marks of character, -in guessing at the most slightly indicated intentions, - content themselves for the most part with understanding everything by means of sympathy. Their feelings tend directly to practical utility; and when they have once been led, by their quick discernment, to form a decision, they take no interest in general results. I had myself been long and earnestly occupied with education; but I had studied my own children, without imagining that I was studying children in general; all my observations appeared to me individual. Not having found, amongst the various systems of education with which I made myself acquainted, any one which satisfied me, I took as my guides, good sense, - at least what appeared such to me, - and an experience which had been acquired by degrees.

Yet when this experience had been confirmed, and a greater degree of leisure had permitted me to weigh and examine my reflections, it seemed to me that, in the constancy of the phenomena presented to our view by infancy, the effect of general laws was perceptible. I may, perhaps, in describing these phenomena, have been too much led away by the charm attending the contemplation of this age; but owing either to the numerous facts I have brought forward, or to the conclusions I have deduced from them, the subject has insensibly grown under my hands.

The first volume begins with a short introduction which explains the plan of the whole work, and has afforded me an opportunity of entering into some details as to the different objects which have successively occupied my mind.

The preliminary chapter, immediately following this introduction, is devoted to the exposition of such general principles as may be applied to every period of education. Nothing can be of more essential importance to the instructor than that he should render to himself a strict account of his views; that he should clearly understand both the nature of his object, and the best means of attaining it. But how many considerations present themselves with regard to these two points! What an extensive field of reflection is opened to us at the mere contemplation of so great, and yet so common, an undertaking as that of educating a child! The final destiny of man, - the obligations imposed on him by Divine law, and by the constitution of the world - the qualities by which he may be rendered capable of fulfilling these obligations-all become the subject of anxious meditation. And when our attention is drawn to the means of education, when we consider that our aim should be to influence the will of the pupil, to bestow on his mind an impulse which may continue through the whole of life, we perceive that the instructor must not only enter on the infinite study of the human mind, but that he must also make himself

« السابقةمتابعة »