Excerpt from Mother's Manual, and Infant Instructer: Designed for Infant or Primary Schools, and Families

IN the following pages, an attempt has been made to arrange a series of exercises, founded upon the primary principles, constituent of the mind. Among these principles, the sensitive faculty has been regarded as fundamental, and as the instrument by which the other faculties are successively formed. The principle of curiosity, imitation, the influence of first impressions, and the power of habit, have also been regarded as important mediums in intellectual development, and in the ultimate formation of human character.

In this work we have regarded it as an established truth, that the development of the mental faculties, like those of the physical powers, is the result of exercise; that successive order is to be observed in the gradual unfolding of these faculties, and that each requires appropriate exercises adapted to its nature. The moral and the intellectual powers, sensation, memory, attention, thought, understanding, discrimination, judgment, and reason, each re quires a process of its own.

In order, however, to render this, or any other system, effectual, there is one principle that must never be lost sight of by parents or instructors, - a principle, which from its comprehensive nature, and the important consequences flowing from it, ought to form the first lesson, and first habit, ought to constitute the vital spirit of every future relation in life, pervade the whole character, and form the very atmosphere of the nursery and school-room: I mean obedience.

Obedience stands in the same relation to the moral virtues, that the sensitive faculty does to the intellectual powers; with children it is the substitute for knowledge and experience. The child who is obedient avails himself of the judgment of his seniors, and will understand and practise the duties of his various relations, the filial, the fraternal, the social and religious; since from habitual obedience to parents and instructors, the transition to obedience to civil, moral and divine laws, is easy and natural. With all thy teaching there fore, teach thy child Obedience.

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