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ITS

PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS.

DEDICATED TO

THE TEACHERS OF THE UNITED STATES.

BY

EDWARD D. MANSFIELD,

AUTHOR OF THE POLITICAL GRAMMAR, ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY A. S. BARNES & CO.
NO. 51 JOHN-STREET.

CINCINNATI:-H. W. DERBY & CO.

с

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year Eighteen Hundred and fifty,

By A. S. BARNES & COMPANY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

1K83 -M284

PREFACE.

I HAVE only one thing to say, by way of preface. This little work is suggestive of principles, and not intended to point out a course of studies. Its aim is to excite attention to what should be the elements of an American education; or, in other words, what are the ideas connected with a republican and Christian education in this period of rapid development. I wished to turn the thoughts of those engaged in the direction of youth to the fact, that it was the entire soul, in all its faculties, which needed education, and not any one of its talents; and that this was a need especially of our country and times. To do this, requires a complete discipline of mind and an analysis of society.

If any one should say that this is a philosophical discussion of general subjects, and not

a directory treatise on practical topics, I admit the justice of the remark, and reply, that such only it was intended to be. On the philosophy of American education, I thought I might offer my reflections without presumption, while on the particular mode of actual instruction I was not qualified to advise.

Brief and imperfect as my reflections on this momentous subject are, I send them out as a well-meant, if not a valuable, offering to the teachers of the United States. They may, perhaps, aid some persons in contemplating those higher and nobler principles which lie beyond the details of books and the modes of instruction;—in fine, those principles which concern universal nature, and direct the destiny of the soul.

August 29th, 1850,

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