LECTURE IV.

THOROUGH INSTRUCTION.

BY JOSEPH HALE.

Every thing, and especially what is good, has its mock representative. Falsehood assumes the air of truth. Selfishness puts on the mask of philanthropy. Vice affects the purity, and wears the aspect of virtue.

"For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks

Invisible, except to God alone,

By his permissive will, through heaven and earth:
And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps

At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity

Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems."

And is it strange, then, that ignorance should sometimes take the form of knowledge? Indeed, every where we have the real and the apparent, the substance and the shadow; and their ratio is perhaps as often inverse as direct. Paradoxical as it may sound, the seeming presence of a thing is not unfrequently the best evidence we can have of its real absence. This truth is well illustrated by the opposite effects of thorough and

superficial teaching, the former accomplishing great results with but little show, the latter making great display with small results.

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Thought," says Goethe, "expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows." The soundness of Goethe's proposition is plain upon slight reflection. To illustrate it, suppose you present to the learner's mind a simple truth, easy to be seen, or a mere process to be followed, and require repeated and long-continued attention to it, till it becomes familiar. The mind being confined within a limited range, becomes expert there; but it is indebted for that expertness, in a great measure, to the very narrowness of its scope. On the other hand, present to the same mind a less obvious thought, one of so complex and comprehensive a nature, that it of necessity awakens a train of unwonted apprehensions and emotions, that absorb all the faculties, and demand time for consideration and reflection. You have led your pupil by an expansive grasp to seize upon a region of thought where all is strange and new; the scene for a while bewilders him; he is of course abstracted, past utterance; he is thinking and preparing to speak, awkward and not ready for action; like a cat in a strange garret, timid and cautious at first, but looking inquisitively about, and learning very fast; he is really working so hard that he cannot stop to tell you what he is doing, whilst to the superficial observer who looks continually for external results, he seems, for this very reason, to be doing nothing, stupid and devoid of sense. Give him time to explore the realms you have introduced him to, and he will expound to you their

wonders; remember, however, that the less he sees, the sooner he will return with his report; and the more cursorily he observes, the more easily will he describe. The pupil who can promptly tell all that he thinks, must necessarily think but little, and that quite near the surface. Close examination leads to intricacy of thought, and complex thoughts must, of necessity, be difficult of expression; for thought lames while it expands, and action narrows while it animates.

This sentiment contains a world of wisdom, and is worthy the serious consideration of every teacher. It is, however, a severe, but just and needed criticism upon school-room volubility, and condemns at once the method of displaying, before the public, imperfectly detailed statistics of the merits of the schools, the inevitable tendency of which must finally be, to encourage action for the sake of the animation that makes it available for show, even at the expense of the narrowness that attends it; and to banish thought, with all its expansive power, rather than risk the chance of appearing before the hurried, and therefore superficial, glance of the multitude, under that awkward attitude of lameness which it occasions, a lameness that all, even the most hasty observers, will see, whilst but few will stop to make due allowance for it.

Since, then, action and thought have such opposite effects upon the mind, it becomes an important question which of the two should be the leading object in education. Each, of course, includes, to some extent, the other; but which should predominate? And by the term education I mean general, elementary, universal,

and not particular, specific, technical, professional education.

It seems to me, then, to be emphatically the province of education to stimulate and develop thought; that of business, to quicken and facilitate action. Education, in the sense in which I use it, while considering no particular action, is to prepare for all action. Education is the deliberation which precedes; business is the action which follows. The former, governs; the latter, obeys. The former deals with principles; the latter, with facts. "Think before you speak," is as important a maxim in education, as "Look before you leap" is, in business.

Thorough instruction may be regarded as depending upon thorough teaching and thorough discipline; selecting, arranging and presenting subjects befitting the condition of the learner's mind and the occasion, and then demanding and securing his attention to them. By thorough teaching, I mean, actually to excite in the mind of the pupil clear ideas of the subject taught, so far as it is susceptible of them, as distinguished from the presentation to the memory of the mere verbal forms of these ideas.

"Words are like leaves, and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found."

Language is not, necessarily, evidence of thought in the mind of the person using it, any more than the signs of language are evidence of thought in the book upon whose pages they are impressed; in both cases it is but the representative of thought, and, in itself, whether written or spoken, should be regarded only as a medium