THE violent political partisans of education might be offended even with the word objection; as if to offer an objection were to set yourself against education, and to shew yourself to be an enemy of knowledge. If they were philosophers, they would see that such sensitiveness shews a misunderstanding of the magnitude of the subject, and of the constitution of the world. For education is a great, a boundless power; and no such power can be set in motion among men, whose faculties are disordered, and whose will is mixed, without producing, greatly and conspicuously, both good and evil.

The objections to education, urged by many enlightened men, are, that it tends to produce danger to religion, and danger to the state. Observe, that the education spoken of by them is essentially and pre-eminently-intellectual. True, that the education of Scotland has been something more-religious-not a gift of the state, however that might assist, but emanating from, and dependant on, its Church, laid on it by deep persecutions. But without peculiar cir-. cumstances which may give it this character, or considering it without this character, which is the proper way of learning its own nature, Education is intellectual. It is a cultivation of man's intellectual faculties, of his understanding, and his powers of reasoning. It has, therefore, a tendency to raise in him a very high opinion of those faculties, and to induce VOL. XXVII. NO. CLXI.

him to form an undue estimate of their power and province.

What is the effect of this? Generally-self-confidence, a feeling either good or evil-purified, it is good, and a necessary part of goodunpurified, it is immoral. But secondly and specifically, the effect is confidence in those particular powers, -an effect not necessarily ill either, -but more easily ill, and more difficult to guard. For moral self-confidence is purified by morality, which is in the power of every one, but intellectual self-confidence is purified only by the very highest instruction, which is necessarily reserved for very few.

Intellectual self-confidence thus produced by intellectual cultivation, is, in the first place, confidence in the powers of the human mind generally; then, in those of the human being himself. It has been seen in the last age of the history of the human mind, what confidence in the sufficiency of the human faculties generally may be in result. We have seen that the evil caused thereby has been tremendous. To extend the same confidence to orders hitherto uninstructed, is, unless guarded against, to extend to them the possibility, perhaps the probability, of the same result,-to make them partakers in the proud error of self-misled philosophy,-to carry down into their privacy of life, their humble security and their obscure peace, the dazzling illusions and ambitious falsehoods, which hu

A

man wit, at its height of power, armed against itself with its brightest_weapons, taught in mysteries, and amplest in resources, has been able to muster to its own destruction.

The intellectual self-confidence of the individual mind tends to similar effects. Necessarily so; because the human mind at large is only the assemblage, or collection of single minds; and speaking of it, we mean only to speak comprehensively of some common manifestation of the majority of minds, which manifestation, when the mind we speak of is that of an age, is always the more determined and vehement through the power of sympathy. Therefore, a disposition due to the circumstances of the times, a disorder, if it be such, ---breaks out with more force than is due to the action of these circumstances on the single mind,--like one in the physical world, which, while "it is hung in the sick air," is also infectious from touch to touch, and from breath to breath.

Whatever, therefore, is manifested conspicuously, comprehensively, and with great power, in the mind of an age, as the effect of any cause acting on the mind of the age---say confidence in the powers of the human mind-that will, in degree, be manifested as the effect of the same cause, acting on the single mind, within the single mind. If that effect be to the one irreligion, immorality, and political license, to the other it will be irreligion, immorality, and political

license.

Now, the effect of individual intellectual self-confidence appears to be morally good or ill, just as it is determined. Thus, it is easy to conceive such confidence, even when undue, and undirected, remaining within moral limits. That a man, through it, should be harsh and arrogant, rash, overbearing, untractable, refractory to direction and control, and most wilful in all his habits, is, in truth, what must be called an immoral effect, since it is a state of mind contrary to that which a perfect moral discipline tends to produce. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that it should still remain, so to speak, within the limits of morality. Because such a man may still bow down before the Moral Law, revering its sanctions, conforming to its greater

obligations, only not perceiving that there are innumerable lesser obligations with which he does not comply. But let there, for such a man's calamity, prevail in the society any kind of immoral opinion, sprung, as has been averred, from the confidence of the human mind in itself, and then such a man will be found more than all others, unless some very strong individual peculiarity, or bias, hold him back from it, predisposed to embrace that pernicious opinion. We are looking here to the lower orders. In the highest instruction, individual intellectual self-confidence is frequently the parent or finder out of dangerous opinions. In its lower degrees, it usually waits, but is not unwilling to be misled.

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But why should the opinion produced by the self-confidence of the human intellect, be irreligious, immoral, adverse to political establishment? For two reasons, which are such as to make the consequences nearly universal. First, many of the reasons and doctrines of religion, many of the reasons of morality, many of the reasons of political obedience, are unfathomable to the human intellect, at least such as it is at present with the great majority of the cultivated orders of the most enlightened nations. There are difficulties in the philosophy of the world, to the height of which it has not yet attained. Now, the human mind, confident in its own sufficiency, will not, cannot, believe what it cannot understand. ceives not, because it cannot pierce, penetrate, explore, and expound the dogmatic mysteries of religion; it has no faith in any secrets behind the veil which it cannot lift. It denies morality, because its law, too, is laid in depths of its own mysterious nature, which its own research has not yet laid bare, and possibly never will. It is unwilling even to hearken often to the still small voice of conscience, for it is like the voice of the unknown God. It refuses political obedience, because it has conceived but one reason for obedience, namely, the interest of the individual in the welfare of the whole; and yet it finds institutions challenging obedience, some of which have sprung up in imagination, some in passion, some out of the subsiding conflict of the blindest forces; but it does not discern what hand led