education which has been and is most common has reference almost exclusively to the world of the senses; some few philosophers and teachers are laboring to make it conform to the world of the understanding; few or none labor to make it conform to the world of Instinct, to the absolute Truth and Reality of things. This last is Mr. Alcott's work. To call attention to this work, to show by his instructions what it is, and by his example how it may be and is to be done, is what he regards as his mission. As a partial experiment, as an intimation of what may under more favorable circumstances be accomplished, he had these Conversations recorded as they occurred, and has finally published them to the world.

Having thus far glanced at what may be called Mr. Alcott's metaphysical system, we may now proceed without much difficulty to seize his theory of education, and to a general comprehension of his views of Childhood and of Religion. These views have struck many minds as absurd, but the absurdity, we think we find in the views of others, is often an absurdity for which we alone are responsible. We assign to others very frequently the absurd views which originate with ourselves; and it is a good rule for us to observe, that so long as a man's views appear to us to be wholly absurd, if he be a man of but tolerable understanding, we should judge ourselves ignorant of his real meaning.

Instinct, which must be carefully distinguished from Impulse, is according to Mr. Alcott's theory the Divine in Man. It is the Incarnate God. Our instincts are all divine and holy, and being the immediate actings, or promptings of the Divinity, they constitute the criterion of Truth and Duty. They are what there is in man the most real and absolute. They are then the most Godlike, the most Divine, partake the most of God; they are then to be regarded as the highest in man, to which all else in him is to be subordinated. The instincts are to be followed as the supreme law of the soul.

The instincts, inasmuch as they are the Divine in man, the Incarnate God, contain all the truth, goodness, reality there is in man. The Divine in man, or the God Incarnate, is one with the Universal, the Absolute God. There is nothing in the sensible universe, nor in the intelligible universe, that is not in the Absolute God. All things are in God, and God is in man. In our instincts then are included, in their law, their reality, both the world of sense and the world of the understanding. To know these worlds then we must look within, not abroad. To become acquainted with God and his manifestations we must study the instincts. Knowledge, truth, goodness, all that can deserve to be called by either name, must be drawn out of the soul, not poured into it. Human culture, therefore, as the word education, (from e and duco,) literally implies, is merely drawing forth what exists, though enveloped, in the soul from the beginning.

As the child is born with all the instincts and with them more active and pure than they are in after life, it follows that the child is born in possession of all truth, goodness, worth, human nature can aspire to. Therefore said Jesus, "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Childhood is therefore to be reverenced. The wise men from the East do always hail with joy the star of the new-born babe, and haste to the cradle to present their offerings and to worship. The educator must sit down with reverence and awe at the feet of the child, and listen. Till this be done, little progress can be expected in human culture.

The child is pure and holy. It obeys freely and without reserve its Divine Instincts. It smiles, loves, acts, as God commands. The true end, or one of the great ends of Human Culture must be to preserve the child in the grown up man. Most people at a very early day lose the child, and go through life bewailing their lost childhood. The whole family of man may be represented as the distracted mother, who

wept with loud lamentation for her children, because they were not. The only exception to this is, that they too often lose their childhood without being conscious of their loss. Childhood is lost ; the innocency, the freedom, the light of the instincts are obscured, and all but annihilated, by the false modes of life which are adopted; by the wrong state of society which prevails; by intemperance, in eating, drinking, sleeping, and the like; and by the mistaken education which men have unwisely encouraged, an education which tends perpetually to raise sense and understanding above Divine Instinct, and to subject us to shadows and illusions, rather than to truth and reality. Hence, the necessity of strict temperance in all the habits of the body, and of early attention to the instincts, so that they may be called forth and strengthened before the senses and the understanding have established their dominion over us.

The body in its true state is to the soul what the outward universe is to God, its veil or covering, or more properly, its symbol which marks to the senses the place where it is. What are called bodily appetites and inclinations, come from the soul, not from the body; proceeding from the soul, they should be regarded, in themselves, as of like purity and divinity, as any of the instincts of our nature. The exercise of them all, and in all cases, should be regarded as a religious exercise, and should be performed with all the feelings of awe and responsibleness, with which we accompany the most solemn act of religious worship. All the functions of the body, as we call them, but which are really functions of the soul, are holy, and should be early surrounded with holy and purifying associations. Hence the conversations in the volumes before us with the children, on the mysterious phenomena attending the production and birth of a new member to the human family, or what Mr. Alcott calls the Incarnation of Spirit, conversations which have caused him much reproach, and done him, for the moment, we fear no little injury.

His motives were pure and praiseworthy, and his theory seemed to require him to take the course he did, and he should not be censured; but for ourselves, we regard as one of the most certain instincts of our nature, that one which leads us to throw a veil over the mysterious phenomena by which the human race is preserved and its members multiplied. Mr. Alcott's theory requires him to respect all the Instincts, and why this less than others? In attempting to eradicate it, he appears to us to be inconsistent with himself, and likely to encourage more prurient fancies than he will be able to suppress. Nature in this has provided better, in our judgment, for the preservation of chastity in thought and in deed, than man can do by any system of culture he can devise.

Pursuing the rules implied in these general principles, the educator aims to call forth into full glory and activity the grace and truth with which man is endowed. He labors to train up the human being committed to his care, in obedience to the Highest, to see, and respect, and love all things in the light, not of the senses, not of the intellect even, but of Faith, of Instinct, of the Spirit of God, — the "true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world." If he succeeds in realizing his aim, the result is a perfect Man, "armed at all points, to use the Body, Nature, and Life for his growth and renewal, and to hold dominion over the fluctuating things of the Outward." Realize this in the case of every child born into the world, and you have reformed the world, made earth a heaven, and men the sons of God in very deed. This is the end Mr. Alcott contemplates; this end he believes can be attained by his method of viewing and disciplining the soul, and by no other. Hence the magnitude of the work he is engaged in, the importance of his doctrine, and his method of culture to the human race.

If now for the word God, we substitute the word Spirit, and call spirit absolute Being, and the absolute, the real universe, which lies back of the sensi55

VOL. I. NO. IV.

ble universe and the intelligible, also spirit, and therefore regard all power, force, cause, reality, as spirit, and spirit everywhere as identical, we may, with the expositions we have made, attain to a proximate notion of Mr. Alcott's theory of God, Man, and Nature, as well as of Human Culture. He sees spirit everywhere, and in everything he seeks spirit. Spirit regarded as the cause and law of organization is God; spirit organized is the universe; spirit incarnated is man. An identity therefore runs through God, Man, and Nature; they are all one in the fulness of universal and everlasting spirit.

Spirit, though incarnate in the case of every human being, attains rarely to anything like a perfect manifestation. A perfect manifestation, however, is not to be expected, because there are no bounds to the growth of spirit. Many bright specimens of the worth men may attain to have been exhibited at distant intervals in the world's history; among which Moses, Socrates, and Jesus are the worthiest. Of these three Jesus stands first.

With this estimate of the character of Jesus, the Records of his life must of course be regarded as the most suitable text book for the educator. They give the children for their study the model nearest to perfection, that can as yet be found. Besides all this, the identity of spirit, and therefore of human nature in all ages and countries of the world, implies an identity between Jesus, or the Instincts of Jesus, and the Instincts of the child. The coincidence, which we may discover between the manifestations of the pure Instincts of Childhood and those recorded of Jesus, becomes therefore a proof of the accuracy of the Record. If we can reproduce in children, as yet unspoiled, the phenomena recorded of Jesus, then we have a new proof, and a strong proof, that the Record is a faithful one. These Conversations on the Gospels, therefore, so far as the answers of the children may be regarded as a reproduction of Jesus, the doctrines or precepts ascribed to Jesus, constitute a class