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"death in the pot." There is evil in excess; there is evil in scant measure. Men suffer from too much air and from too little; from over-feeding and from under-feeding; from excessive sleep and from too little sleep; from too violent exercise and from too little exercise. We must know not only what, but also how much, our bodies need. The specialists aver that most men have a streak of insanity in them. A thoroughly sane mind is as rare as a thoroughly healthy body. To keep the mind well balanced, to preserve it in good order, to enable it to work clearly, quickly, efficiently, regularly, requires a knowledge of the mind and of the conditions of mental health. The ministers assure us that all men are diseased morally. Life abundantly bears out their assertion. No man is perfectly healthy, morally; for perfect health is a perfect balance of all the moral powers. Every faculty has its own disease. The conscience may become cruel-witness the Inquisition. Religion may become superstition-witness the history of all pagan and some forms of the Christian religion. Love may become sentiment-witness the story of many a child ruined by the false love of a doting mother, And observe that every man's body, mind, and spirit is distinct from every other man's. Its conditions of health are peculiar. What is one man's meat is another man's poison. One man needs cereals, another meat; one man needs to read more fiction, another needs to abandon it altogether. One man needs to cultivate his reverence, another his conscience, a third his sympathy. To produce, to cultivate, to maintain health of body, mind, and spirit, every man has need to know his own nature, the laws of his own being, the condition of his own health.

2. Self-knowledge is equally indispensable to growth, education, development. Some of the Hebrew scholars tell us that the familiar text in Proverbs about child-training should read: Train up a child in his own way, that is, according to the bent of his natural genius, and when he is old he will not

depart from it. Whether this is sound exegesis or not, it is certainly sound philosophy. We must know the nature of what we would develop. We must understand what it is before we begin to shape and fashion it for its future. Selfknowledge is the condition of self-culture. Are you deficient in imagination? You must both know that fact, and what are the methods of developing imagination, or you cannot grow symmetrically. Has God endowed your boy with qualities which fit him for the merchant? you only waste your time, and destroy his usefulness, by trying to make a minister of him. If Martin Luther's father could have had his way we should have had no Reformation, or a very different one; for he wanted to make a lawyer of Martin.) History is full of instances of men who knew their own nature better than their parents did, and so came to something in spite of parental blunders; and still fuller of instances of men who neither knew themselves nor were understood by their parents, and so came to nothing. The best seed will produce fruit only in the hands of one who knows what it is, and therefore what soil and cultivation it requires. Moral development requires moral self-knowledge. There is not one specific for all sins. Christ is not the world's medicine, but the world's physician; and his prescriptions are various for various disorders. To grow in holiness is to grow in healthiness; and this requires a knowledge of your own nature, that you may know what needs feeding and what needs pruning. Some men are weak through lack of self-esteem, and some men through too much. Some men pay too much attention to other people's opinion, and some men too little. Some men pay a blind reverence too easily, and some scarcely know what reverence means. Each nature requires its own education. The training which will help the man of undue self-esteem, will hurt the man who has too little. A chief end of life is to grow aright; and no man can grow aright unless he understands the principles of his own nature.

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3. For the same reasons a knowledge of the principles of human nature is essential to the highest and best usefulness. A knowledge of human nature is the first condition of the successful conduct of life. Every business man, lawyer, doctor, statesman, needs it. If a man should attempt to farm without any knowledge of seeds and soils, or to mine without any knowledge of metals, he would be sure to fail; how can he succeed in dealing with men if he knows nothing about human nature. The merchant needs this knowledge to select his salesmen; the salesman to sell his goods; the doctor to secure and retain the confidence of his patients; the statesman to adapt his laws and policies to men as they are; the editor to provide intellectual food that actual readers will read and profit by. All successful men have a knowledge of human nature. Sometimes they have acquired it empirically, not scientifically; that is, they have picked it up by their dealings among men, not by a careful study of principles; but in one way or the other they have got it.

4. This knowledge is essential to the well-being of the family. Every girl ought to be taught the general principles of human nature, for it is probable that she will be a mother, and she needs this knowledge to know how to care for and to train her children. One of the great causes of domestic infelicities, quarrels, and divorces is ignorance of human nature. The husband and wife do not know either themselves or each other; they do not know how to correct their own faults or the faults they see in each other. If they did, they would have hope of curing the present evil; and hope would give patience; and patience would prevent bickerings, and strife, and separation.

5. Especially is this knowledge of human nature necessary to all men whose professional duty it is to train or instruct others. The teacher needs it. It is more necessary to him than a knowledge of Greek, or Latin, or mathematics. He must know the minds which he is to mold and the laws by

which they are to be molded. There have been many scholars greater than Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, but never a greater teacher, because he knew so thoroughly well boynature and its laws. The minister needs it. It is more necessary to him than a knowledge of Hebrew or theology. He must know the natures he is to cure, and how to cure them. He must know the pathology of pride, vanity, covetousness, ambition, passion, if he would either mend the manners or change the lives of his congregation.

The object of this little treatise is to afford some help to ministers, teachers, parents, and men and women generally, who wish to understand the general principles of human nature, and to aid them in a study of men, and women, and children, for the purpose of protecting them from temptation, developing them, and building them up into a Christian manhood and womanhood-perfect men in Christ Jesus. Its object is wholly practical; its style will be as simple and plain as I can make it.

CHAPTER II.

A PRELIMINARY QUESTION.

Ir has been greatly discussed among philosophers whether the mind is simple or complex; whether it is one and individual, or made up of various distinct powers and faculties; whether one and the same power imagines, reasons, remembers, feels, or whether there are distinct powers, of which one imagines, another reasons, a third remembers, a fourth feels. Let me first get this question clearly before the reader's mind. Man is equipped with various senses, each of which has its own peculiar function. It can perform that function, and no other. The ear can hear, but it cannot see; the eye can see, but it cannot taste; the palate can taste, but it cannot smell. The body is composite. It is made up of different organs or faculties. The whole man is an orchestra; each organ is a single instrument. If that is broken, or gets out of tune, no other can take its place. Now some persons suppose that the mind is similarly a composite; that it is made up of a variety of faculties and powers; that there is one power or faculty which reasons, another which compares, a third which remembers or recalls, a fourth which imagines, etc. Those who hold this opinion, however, are not agreed as to how many mental faculties or powers there are. Some suppose there are very few, others that there are very many. A very common classification or division of the mind is into three powers or classes of powers: the reason, the sensibilities or feelings, and the will. Others divide these generic classes again into a great variety of reasoning and feeling powers, each confined to its own exercise or function, as the ear to hearing and the eye to seeing.

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