How to educate the feelings or affections, and bring the dispositions, aspirations, and passions into harmony with sound intelligence and morality . atten-tion to those presented from without. Its right direc-tion depends upon the development of the superiorfaculties; and if they be weak, the lower ones will seizepossession of this stronghold and occupy it for theirown ends. Where this is not the case, and the higherpowers hold their rightful supremacy, one of them maypredominate over the rest so much as to fix the atten-tion of the mind to the exclusion of others more sea-sonable ; it should
How to educate the feelings or affections, and bring the dispositions, aspirations, and passions into harmony with sound intelligence and morality . atten-tion to those presented from without. Its right direc-tion depends upon the development of the superiorfaculties; and if they be weak, the lower ones will seizepossession of this stronghold and occupy it for theirown ends. Where this is not the case, and the higherpowers hold their rightful supremacy, one of them maypredominate over the rest so much as to fix the atten-tion of the mind to the exclusion of others more sea-sonable ; it should be the endeavor of the teacher toascertain this leading faculty, and to counteract its un-due predominance by exciting the others. The direc-tion of this disposition will, therefore, depend upon theprevailing feeling, unless checked by the moral sensewhich teaches that it is right to give the whole mind tothe present duty. If, for instance, a child who has an inordinate loveof eating be receiving a lesson, an incidental allusion inthe course of it to the beloved subject may fill his mindwith ideas of good things in reversion j the same lesson. WM. M. PLATE XXII. CorbGentrativeness and Inhabilmeness. 157 may, from another association, induce a second roamingin imagination through the fields and woods; a third,to revel in the regions of romance—while the instructormarvels that his useful lesson makes so little impression. ^And all this with no deficiency, but merely a misdirec-tion of the f eehng of which we are speaking. A childof four years and a-half old, whose teacher had triedto explain to him the necessity of self-control on thispoint, showed that he was not too young to understandit. The next time he was occupied with his lesson, hisfavorite playmate entered the room; in a tone of com-mand he addressed himself, Me dont look up whenAnnie comes. Where there is no original want of this feeling it isoften much weakened by injudicious management ininfan
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