profound contemplation, which enables man to analyze things, in order to discover their elements, as to form systems, that may be independant of local prejudices and habits, which nothing has so strong a tendency to remove, as the contemplation produced by travelling.

EDUCATION.

The present system of education, consists in raising or growing children, like plants, in the habits and prejudices of their ancestors, so that it rather envelops or forms, than develops or expands the faculties of the mind. The education of schools consists in putting children upon benches, the head nearly resting on the knees, for six hours together, in a manner to destroy muscular strength, while the mind is occupied for years with spelling and remembering words. In this operation, the memory is not aided by the resemblances, or differences between causes and effects, or by the contigruity of time, place, &c.

Thus memory is exclusively exercised, to the neglect of the other faculties, and glutted with so many useless things, that its true use, the retaining of our own ideas, produced by the profound exercise of meditation, is lost.

I would prefer, that the forenoon were passed at gymnastic games; and that the studies of the afternoon were terminated by discussions on morals, politics, and philosophy, in which language should be used, like colors, to describe all the varieties of thought by the approximative relations of words.

Female education should be nearly similar to that of boys. Their games may require less robust exercise, but their time ought to be occupied with both instruction and amusement, or the two combined. The governess should preside at their plays, as the preceptors at the schools for boys; thus the energies of the body and mind would be developed, and woman as well as man, would become capable of the corporeal and mental functions of life, and would do all that depends upon her, to secure the personal and material good of herself and of Na

ture.

As my gymnastic system is only proposed by way of experiment, it would be easy to observe the progress of

the infant mind, under the two-fold discipline of games and of literature, and to increase the proportion of one or the other, as it was found advantageous. I believe that the severe study of literature, would be deferred to riper years.

It is an outrage upon human nature, for a pedagogue to beat and maltreat a child, to try to make him learn the abstract notions of grammar, until his physical energies are impaired, and his mind, accustomed to remember rather than to think or reason, becomes as imbecile as his body.

If in the human body, the arm suffer the pain of a cautery, the matter now suffering, by constantly circulating in all the other parts of the body will enjoy a full retribution by the general health of the body; so in the body politic, the sufferings of a wounded soldier, will secure the good of the community, and as the particles of his body circulate in the bodies of all the happy citizens, by transmutation, the partial evil is followed by a general recompense; thus all men are equally interested in all Nature.

The animal instinct of self-love, opposes the doctrine of the identity of the personal mode with Nature, but the perfectibility of man, must break the barriers of instinct; then progress will be made in developing the great principle of the identity of all matter, whether of a mode, of a system, or of the Universe, and man will learn the most important truth. The sovereign upon his throne, is interested in the happiness of all his subjects, because his own modality, (which consists of two hundred pounds of matter under the action of two pounds of brain,) will in a short time, be all dispersed, and incorporated in millions of subjects, of slaves, and animals; being then under the action of several thousand pounds of brain, the retribution which it will experience, will be infinitely extended. Matter is the only thing which exists in Nature, and modality is only a train of operations of thought, which perpetually change, although the instinctive habits of men make them mistake the faculty for the substance, and prompts them to maintain a continual war of the mode against Nature, (the great material whole,) and prefer the interest of a point, and of an instant, to the great

circle of the Universe, which is to remain during millions

of ages.

The first philosophy of Nature, by developing the moral laws, and distinguishing them from physical laws, when the mind shall be capable of understanding it, will teach the lower classes of society, to suffer the indispensable proportions of partial evil, as composing part of the system of general good; and the higher classes, to protect all the others; to impart to them all possible support, and to qualify privations with the advantages they may themselves possess, by benevolence towards those who are in less fortunate condition, because the alternate transmutation of matter, causes each mode to become the multiplied patient of its own actions.

To the objection agains: this doctrine, that it is too remote from the conceptions of ordinary men, I reply, that it is unfortunately true, but I do not wholly despair of seeing the faculties of the mind perfected by an education, in which good sense shall be taught rather than science.

The efforts of philanthropists to establish a systematic course of conduct in the present state of universal contingency, will be badly received; for to me it appears that the proportion of wise and good men is not more than one in a thousand, and the passions of unreflecting men being heated by demagogues, wise and good men appear to thei to be as great fools as themselves really are.

Socrates, when on a certain occasion, the people saluted him with great applause, exclaimed, "What fault have I committed to be so popular." Wise and good men can only have the silent respect of men of similar cha

racter.

The Shakers, Moravians, and Dunkers, have attained an enviable state of peace and contentment, but as they are not free from superstition, they submit to painful privations in the worship of a personification of Nature, which they imagine will be only appeased by frightful sufferings after death, when according to their ideas, justice is to be rendered in a manner contrary to the laws of Nature.

I believe also, that it is possible for these societies in

proportion as they increase in intellectual energy, and after some generations have been educated in good sense rather than science, to triumph over the affections of animal instinct, in relation to parental love and authority, and observing that the institutions of their society gave to each individual the highest degree of personal enjoy ments, as health, strength, pleasure, peace, intellectual energy, and happiness, they would love each other with a purer affection than instinct alone can produce, and would be united in bands of rational friendship.

The great obstacles to these perfectible fraternities would be met in their first formation, before the rising generation shall have been prepared by education, to adopt the system. But it might be accomplished by enthusiasm. The first sect of brethren that might be denominated anti-bankrupts, would excite the attention of a nation, like a new religious sect, and its success would ensure the progress of human perfectibility, in true religion, that is, the common bond of interest, for this is the true import of the word religion; and in worship, or the cultivation of universal good, not the imbecile adulation of intellectual idolatry.

The practical happiness of the fraternity would be its first prophet or apostle, and no eloquence would be required to seduce man to liberty, health, wisdom, and happiness, which are always the great objects of pursuit, but which he mistakes through weakness of intellect.

In analyzing modal or personal existence, I observe that the human body absorbs by the pores a quantity of matter, which must be discharged; it is also continually changing its matter, by respiration, food, and the secretions, perspiration and the excretions.

The change of the mind, less rapid, can be learned by experience. Every person knows, that at the age of twenty years, he has not the same mind that he had at ten; he discovers also a constant variation of the mind, in the capacity of his memory, which is sometimes strong and vigorous, and at other times feeble; and if he should wish an instantaneous change, he has only to swallow a bottle of brandy.

Thus, it appears, that the personal mode on the body

of man, is only a form, constantly changing, with an organism designed to procure agreeable sensations, not only to the matter that we term "myself," "himself," or "yourself," but also for all the matter in the Universe, which is constantly entering this mode; so that the ageney of man communicates good or evil not merely to a quantity of matter under a particular form, but to all Nature, to which every form pertains, and the universal interest of which absorbs the consideration of partial, or personal good. It is of minor importance, that man secure enjoyment to a pound or two of brain in his present person, while his universal interest attaches him to the brain of all sensitive life.

Man is so accustomed to attribute the essence of Nature to mend power, that he loses sight of the substance or matter. He readily conceives, that the substance of the tree, and not its vegetative power, produces fruit; he knows too that it is the steam engine, and not the abstract power, that produces motion, and yet when he speaks of the mind, in spite of the experiments of trepanning, and the ligature of the nerves, which prove its materiality, he believes it to be a spiritual power, thus he deranges the intelligible constitution of things which ought to direct the operations of human reason to accomplish the sole end of its existence, universal good identified with partial happiness.

The personal modality of the human body possesses not permanent identity; it is only the succession of matter and of power so organized, that it seeks the economy of pleasing sensation towards all matter, which is unceasingly transmuted from one mode to others, like the modality of a river, the waters of which are perpetually changing. Thus the body of man is sometimes corpulent, sometimes emaciated, sometimes weak, sometimes strong, &c. showing the variations of identity which is the attribute of matter. The distinction between modality and identity is the first philosophy. Self and Nature possess an eternal unity of interest, of essence, and of power, independantly of al! organic change by composition and decomposition of the universal mass, during the perpetual existence of matter, of time, and of space.