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Fiymri says—¦ ' We want our wants to know ; we w ^ H ^ our wants to feel . ' In the following' illustration , the evil and the remedy are both felicitously indicated : — * If the teachers of a large school , in some place where Christianity had never been heard of , were anxious to provide instruction for their pupils , and thought that the Greeks were the wisest people that ever lived , and their books the most valuable that could be collected ; if they
accordingly set about collecting all that they could get hold of that was written by Greeks , and for the sake of convenience bound up the whole in one volume , that volume would be somewhat like our Bible . The most valuable part of it would be the history of the life and death of Socrates , accompanied by accounts of his lectures and private teachings , and familiar conversations . There would be besides a pretty full account of his principal followers , and the letters they wrote on the subject of Socrates , and reports of their methods of learning during his life , and of teaching after his death . There would also be accounts of other instructors who had lived at various periods before him . There
would be several histories of Greece in different ages , and in the different circumstances through which its inhabitants had passed ; at one time they might appear a nation of barbarians , at another of heroes and philosophers ; they would have one kind of government in one age , and another in another ; now they would appear as conquerors in war and princes in peace , and now overcome , and oppressed and humbled . Mingled with these different histories , there would be poems , some long , some short ; epic poems , hymns , songs , and fables . They would contain traditions about the origin of the Grecian empire , narratives ,
some true and some fictitious , about good and bad men , triumphal verses to celebrate victories , and lamentations for defeat . Now if the children in this school had such a book put into their hands , with no further explanation than that they were to study it diligently , and learn as much out of it as they could , they might read it all their lives , and get but a very imperfect notion of what it really was . They would not know what happened at one time and what at another , how many of the events related really took place , and where , and why . They might store their memories with beautiful tales , or take to heart much
valuable instruction , and follow the advice of Socrates as much as they could ; but they would be much perplexed at little things , at every page , and might make tremeudoas mistakes about matters of more consequence , for want of information which ought to have been given them from the beginning , or which they should have been put in the way of finding for themselves . There would be little use in telling them that they might discover all they wanted to learn in the book itself , unless they were shown how . They would not know where to begin or how to proceed ; but if any person should once give them a hint to trv to find out how long Socrates lived , how many years in
private , and how many years as a public teacher ; if any one brought a map into the school , and pointed out the boundaries of the Grecian empire in different ages , and where the various philosophers were born , and how far they travelled ; on what mountains armies were collected ; on what plains battles were fought 5 if another teacher displayed pictures of the temples where the philosophers taught , and the gardens where they reposed themselves ; if another instructed the pupils how to
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Critical Notices . —Devotional Eocerci * ML&c . 719
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 719, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/69/
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