THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
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��THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
��BY PROF. K. D. SANBORN, LL. D.
��" The voice of nature," says Plato, ■" is always to be heard and obeyed in teaching." In educating the young it is specially important to understand fully their constitutional tendencies, their idiosyncrasies both mental and physical. We need the same kind of knowledge to judge discreetly of men as they move andsact in society. An accurate estimate of what a man is by nature, is the only safe guide in our intercourse with him. Education may modify, regulate and guide the consti- tutional faculties of the soul, but it can not re-create or regenerate them. Human character results from the ■combined agency of innate tendencies and those complex influences which we denominate education. Apart from the efficacy of divine grace, every man will prove essentially true to his native instincts ; or, as it is commonly termed, ■" his natural bent." In the savage and the philosopher, hereditary tendencies predominate. In the former, they constitute nearly the whole character ; in the latter, they furnish the substratum upon which all the refinements of in- tellectual and moral culture are super- induced. No process of training, however, will free the soul from its in- mate appetencies. Says the Roman poet : ' Naiuram expellasfurca, tamen usque recur re ty
■" For Nature, driven out with proud dis- dain. All-powerful goddess, will return again."
Nature will continue to plead and en- force her rights, in despite of every temporary restraint. Manners are conventional ; dispositions are consti- tutional. The first are the gift of so- ciety ; the last, of nature. It is often asked whether successful heroes, states- men and artists, owe more to circum- stances or to endowments'. Horace answered that (juestion with great judgment nearly 2,000 years ago :
��" 'Tis long disputed whether poets claim From art. or nature, their best right to
fame ; But art, if not enriched by nature's vein, And a rude genius of uncultured strain Are useless both; but when in friendshi]>
joined A mutual succor in each other find."
A fertile soil and the genial influences of the sun and air are both essential to a rich harvest. The golden grain does not wave over stony places or bow its modest head in worship by the way-side. In the time of the Ameri- can Revolution there were many wise counselors and able commanders, but there was but one Washington. An- other man can not be named who could have been his substitute ; and yet all these patriots were trained in the same school and subjected to the influence of the same circumstances. Washington was born to rule, "To gov- ern men and guide the state." In his boyhood he was always selected to be the umpire in the disputes of his school-fellows. His veracity was never questioned. His judgment was never successfully impugned. Had he been educated in a Turkish seraglio, he would have enacted a very different part upon the theater of life ; still his character would have possessed essen- tially the same elements. He would have been the same serious, sagacious, prudent man he was at the head of the American armies. In any country on earth he would have been selected as state councilor. In Turkey^ or Russia he would have been the prime minister of the realm, and yet he seemed all unconscious of his own superior endowments. When John Adams nominated him to be com- mander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces, he was taken entirely by sur- prise, and left the hall in the utmost trepidation ; and when the thanks of Congress were tendered to him for
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