Inaugural address delivered at the opening of Morrison College, Lexington, Kentucky : November 4th, 1833 / by the Rev. Benjamin O. Peers.

  • Peers, Benjamin O. (Benjamin Orrs), 1800-1842.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inaugural address delivered at the opening of Morrison College, Lexington, Kentucky : November 4th, 1833 / by the Rev. Benjamin O. Peers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    m very few months after the birth of an individual, his mind begins of its own accord to notice and classify objects ac- cording to the impressions which they make upon the senses. In a short time too, it begins to associate ideas with sounds, and the tongue is employed as an instrument for holding communion with other minds, a species of intercourse which continues through life, and exerts the most powerful influence on the intellectual character. This may be called the edu- cation of circumstances, in which surrounding objects and persons are the principal teachers. It is a work that must and will go on. This is the fiat of nature with regard to which we have neither option nor power. We may modify it in its progress, and we can do nothing more. Every child will be educated some how or other; whether well or ill, de- pends on art. Education in this sense is in a great degree involuntary and fortuitous, and my principal object is to as- certain how far and in what manner this process of sel-devel- opment may be assisted and guided by artificial measures. To devise and administer these measures devolves upon the educator, whose first object should be to ascertain the nature of the task assigned him, and the methods by which he may accomplish it. To determine this he should study to know precisely what nature herself has done, and what 8he has left for him to do. He should try to understand ex- actly what he can do, that he may attempt nothing imprac- ticable; assuming it as a postulate, that in what he can do, he has a measure of what he ought to do; in other words, he must carefully study the properties of mind, and the laws by which its operations are guided. The educator is an artist just as much as the sculptor or the carpenter, and fitness for his business as naturally presupposes an acquaintance with the material or subject, in which certain changes are to be produced, in the one case as in the other. The business of education consists of an art and a science, the art having its foundation in the science of mental philosophy; and he who „egects the latter, cannot, with any degree of skill and sue cess, conduct the former. The phenomena of intellect are