tives that are deemed so difficult to sustain; those which prompt to action for the general good. How do you contrive to extirpate that formidable obstacle, self-interest?"

Douglas." So far from extirpating self-interest, which would perhaps be impossible, the constitution of our societies is built upon that principle. It is true that mutual co-operation gives it a direction widely different from that which it receives from individual competition for under the latter, each member seeks his own gratification, regardless, and generally at the expense, of others. In our community, self-interest prompts me to promote the health, the activity, the good habits, intelligence, and happiness of all my fellow citizens,—and why?

"1st, The pleasures of sympathy are thereby en

joyed and considerably heightened.

"2nd, The more generally the qualities I have enumerated prevail, the more will order and good conduct in all the departments occasion less exertion to be required from each individual.

"3rd, As I feel conscious that both the body and mind require exercise for the preservation of health, and as my early associations and acquired habits are connected with utility, I

am influenced by the union of powerful motives to an active promotion of the general welfare.

"4th, As I am desirous of amiable and intelligent

companions, I am deeply interested in the

improvement of the rising generation.

Parents must be doubly anxious that other children should partake, equally with their own, the benefits of instruction; since they would mutually assist each other, and the characters of their children might be deteriorated by a collision with inferior minds.”

Saadi. "There is an important principle of education which in Persia is deemed indispensable, but I do not find it adopted in your colleges;—I mean that of emulation, or an ambition to excel others."

66

Douglas.- Your remark reminds me of a manuscript volume in this library, in which a youth of our community, about ten years since, inserted all the valuable principles of education that he could find in the works composed prior to the introduction of the co-operative system: and it is curious to observe how long each principle was recognised as true before it was reduced to practice. In this volume are some admirable remarks by St. Pierre upon the principle of emulation, which I will read to you, as conveying our own opinions upon that subject.

"Emulation, we are told, is a stimulant; for this reason precisely it ought to be reprobated. Men without art and without artifice, leave strong spices to those whose taste is weakened: present not to the children of your country any aliments but such as are gentle and simple, like themselves and like you. The fever must not be thrown into their blood, in order to make it circulate : permit it to flow in its natural course; nature has made sufficient provision to this effect at an age of such restlessness and activity. The disquietude of adolescence, the passions of youth, the anxieties of manhood, will one day excite an inflammation but too violent to admit of being cooled by all your efforts.

"Emulation fills the whole career of life with solicitude, uneasiness, and vain desires; and when old age has slackened all our movements, it continues to stimulate us by unprofitable regret.

"Had I any occasion in infancy to surpass my companions in drinking, in eating, in walking, in order to find pleasure in these? Wherefore should it be necessary for me to learn to outstrip them in my studies, in order to acquire a relish for learning? Have I not acquired the faculty of speaking and of reasoning without emulation? Are not the functions of the soul as natural and as agreeable as those of the body? If they sadden our children, it is the fault of our mode of education, and not that of science. It is not from want of appetite on their part. Behold what imitators they are of every thing which they see done, and of every thing which they hear said! Do you wish then to attract children to your exercises; act as nature does in recommending hers; draw them with words of love.

"Emulation is the cause of most of the ills of human life. It is the root of ambition; for emulation produces

the desire of being the first; and the desire of being the first is the essence of ambition, which ramifies itself, conformably to positions, from which issue almost all the miseries of society.

"Positive ambition generates the love of applause, of personal and exclusive prerogatives for a man's self or for his corps, of immense property in dignities, in lands and in employments; in a word, it produces avarice, that calm ambition of gold, in which all the ambitious finish their course. But avarice alone drags in its train an infinite number of evils, by depriving multitudes of other citizens of the means of subsistence, and produces, by a necessary re-action, robberies, prostitutions, quackery, superstition.

rance.

"Negative ambition generates in its turn jealousy, evilspeaking, calumnies, quarrels, litigation, duels, intoleOf all these particular ambitions a national ambition is composed, which manifests itself in a people by the love of conquest, and in their prince by the love of despotism; from national ambition flow imposts, slavery, tyrannies and war, a sufficient scourge of itself for the human

race.

""I was long under the conviction that ambition must be natural to man; but now I consider it as a simple result from our education. We are involved so early in the prejudices of so many whose interest is concerned to communicate them to us, that it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish through the rest of life what is natural to us and what artificial. In order to form a judgement of the institutions of our societies we must withdraw to a distance from them.""-St. Pierre.

"Although we concur generally in these opinions, yet there are some few expressions with which we

do not accord.

The works of St. Pierre were first

published in the seventeen-hundred-and-ninetieth year of the Christian æra; but it was not until forty years afterwards, when infant schools were first established in this country, that any plan of education was generally adopted in which emulation was excluded. Here is also an extract from the work of an author who was distinguished, both as a senator and as a Christian, for the faithful performance of his duties, to which he made many personal sacrifices, and his opinions were therefore always listened to with respect.

""The desire of human estimation, and distinction, and honour, of the admiration and applause of our fellow creatures, if we take it in its full comprehension, and in all its various modifications, from the thirst of glory to the dread of shame, is the passion of which the empire is by far the most general, and perhaps the authority the most commanding. Though its power be most conspicuous and least controllable in the higher classes of society, it seems, like some resistless conqueror, to spare neither age, nor sex, nor condition; and taking ten thousand shapes, insinuating itself under the most specious pretexts, and sheltering itself when necessary under the most artful disguises, it winds its way in secret, when it dares not openly avow itself, and mixes in all we think, and speak, and do. It is in some instances the determined and declared pursuit, and cónfessedly the main practical principle; but where this is not the case, it is not seldom the grand spring