able to discover the beauty of things, so that their opposites, or the things prohibited, will cease to charm us. By knowledge we shall be able to discern the ugliness of the things prohibited, so that we shall be enabled to loathe them, if they should come into our way. And thus an education conducted upon the principles of knowledge may operate to the end proposed.

CHAP

CHAPTER V.

Education continued, as consisting of knowledge and prohibitions-Good which the Quakers have done by prohibitions without any considerable knowledge-greater good which they would do with it-Knowledge, then, a great desideratum in their education-favourable state of the Society for the communication of it with purity, or without detriment to morals-in what this knowledge should consist-general advantages of it-peculiar advantages which it would bring to the Society.

WHEN we consider that men have all the same moral nature, we wonder, at the first sight, at the great difference of conduct, which they exhibit on earth. But when we consider the power of education upon the mind, we seem to lose our surprise. If men in all countries were educated alike, we should find a greater resemblance in their character. It is, in short, education, which makes the man ; and as education appears to me to be of so much importance in life, I shall

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shall make it the subject of this and the succeeding chapter.

All education should have two objects in view; the opening of the understanding, and the improvement of the heart. Of the two, the latter is most important. There cannot be a question, whether the person of the most desirable character be the virtuous or the learned man. Without virtue, knowledge loses half its value. Wisdom without virtue may be said to be merely political; and such wisdom, whenever it belongs to a man, is little better than the cunning or craftiness of a fox. A man of a cultivated mind without an unshaken love of virtue is but a dwarf of a man. His food has done him no good, as it has not contributed to his growth. And it would have been better, for the honour of literature, if he had never been educated at all. The talents of man, indeed, considering him as a moral being, ought always to be subservient to religion. "All philosophy," says the learned Cudworth, " to a wise man, to a truly sanctified mind, as he in Plutarch speaketh, is but matter for Divinity to work upon. Religion is the queen of all those inward endowments

dowments of the soul; and all pure natural knowledge, all virgin and undeflowered arts and sciences, are her handmaids, that rise up and call her blessed."

Now, if the opening of the understanding and the improvement of the heart be the great objects to be attained, it will follow, that both knowledge and wise prohibitions should always be component parts of the education of youth. The latter the Quakers have adopted ever since the institution. of their Society. The former they have been generally backward to promote, at least to any considerable extent. That they have done good, however, by their prohibitions, though unaccompanied by any considerable knowledge, it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge. But this good has been chiefly confined to the children of those, who have occupied middle stations in the Society. Such children have undoubtedly arrived at the true wisdom of life at an early age, as I described in the first volume, and have done honour to the religion they professed. But prohibitions without knowledge have not been found to answer so well among the children of those, who have had the prospect

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of a large moneyed independence before them, and who have not been afraid either of the bad opinion of their own Society, or of the bad opinion of the world. It has been shown, however, that knowledge with prohibitions would in all probability be useful to these; that it would have a tendency to enable them, in the perilous situation in which they are placed, to stand against corrupt opinions and fashions; and, while they were living in the world, to live out of it or to deny it.

Peculiarly situated as the Quakers are, they have opportunities, beyond any other people, of ingrafting knowledge into their system of education without danger, or, in other words, of giving knowledge to their children with the purity, which Christianity would prescribe. The great misfortune in the world is, that a learned education is frequently thought more of than a virtuous one; that youth, while they obtain knowledge, are not properly watched and checked ; and that they are suffered to roam at large in the pursuit of science, and to cultivate or not, at their own option, the science, if I may so call it, of religion. Hence it will

happen,