Kr 
 
 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT IN ITS 
 SPONTANEITY AND ITS LIBERTY. 
 
 'tfSW\ 03 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 LITERARY SOCIETIES 
 
 OP 
 
 
 HAMILTON COLLEGE, 
 
 JULY 22, 1846. 
 
 CLINTON, N. Y. 
 
 BY REV. LAURENS P. HICKOK, D. D. s 
 
 | (/* / / ZJF%aJ0E£5$8ESB* of Auburn Theological Seminary. 
 
 UTICA: 
 
 R. W. ROBERTS, PRINTER, 58 GENESEE STREET. 
 
 1846. 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT IN ITS 
 SPONTANEITY AND ITS LIBERTY. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 LITERAKY SOCIETIES 
 
 HAMILTON COLLEGE, 
 
 JULY 22, 1846, 
 
 CLINTON, N. Y. 
 
 BY REV. LAURENS Pv HICKOK, D. D, 
 
 UTICA: 
 
 R. W. ROBERTS, PRINTER, 58 GENESEE STREET. 
 1846. 
 
|0* > 
 
 
CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 Hamilton College, Sept. 16, 1846. 
 Rev. Dr. Hickok, 
 
 Sir : — The Phcenix Society of Hamilton College, through the 
 undersigned, their Committee, return thanks for the able and interesting 
 Address, you delivered before them at their last Anniversary, and 
 request a copy of the same for publication. 
 
 With the highest esteem, 
 Yours, &c, 
 
 L. TENNEY, 
 E. CLARK, 
 R. P. KEYES, 
 
 Auburn, Sept. 18, 1846. 
 Messrs. Tenney, Clark & Keyes, Committee, &c. 
 
 I comply with your request to be furnished with a copy of my 
 Address for publication, in the same spirit with which I prepared and 
 delivered it, and if the subject of "intellectual development and discipline," 
 shall in either way become more extensively studied, my end will have 
 been thereby attained. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 L. P. HICKOK. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 The plant grows. It is the development of a germ 
 from within, not an aggregation of elements put together 
 from the outside. The majestic oak has not been built 
 up by accumulating materials one upon another, but an 
 inner force diffusing itself throughout, has expanded it to 
 its maturity. The tree is a whole, having its root, stock 
 and branches in an organized unity. 
 
 This inner force is the life, which as one agency works 
 in and through every part. It assimilates to its own 
 incorporation every element which it receives, and ever- 
 more circumscribes its working within that original form 
 which is given to it, and which it is its sole task to expand 
 to its maturity. Mechanical agencies work on their 
 materials, and put them together in juxtaposition ; vital 
 agencies work in their elementary parts, and unite them 
 in one living body. In all mechanical operations the 
 product takes on the form determined for it by adventi- 
 tious circumstances ; but in all vital action, the form that 
 must be evolved is already prescribed in the rudiments of 
 the primitive germ. Thus heaps of gravel or shifting 
 hills of sand take on such shapes as may be given to 
 them, by the waves of the ocean or the winds of the 
 desert ; and lofty mountain ranges lift their bare rocks 
 and bleak summits to the sky, in such outlines as the 
 upheaving of volcanic action from beneath or the abrasion 
 of the warring elements from above has determined. 
 But every vegetable or animal form, has its archetype 
 within its own being, and in its maturity is the sponta- 
 
neous product of an inner working after its own primitive 
 law of development. 
 
 Now this law of vital action may be taken as an anala- 
 gon of that inner mental force, by which there is secured 
 a complete intellectual development. My general design 
 is to follow up this analogy, to the attainment of some 
 principles and the application of some maxims, which can 
 not safely be overlooked in either the training of other 
 minds or the discipline of our own. There are two 'points 
 of view from which this intellectual development is to be 
 contemplated. A mind already ripened to maturity, and 
 whose faculties have attained great compass, elasticity and 
 vigor, has reached this state through the energizing of an 
 inner force, perseveringly at work for the consummation 
 of its own end in the production of such an expanded 
 capacity. And now, one point of view is, to contemplate 
 this inner force as carrying on its work of mental devel- 
 opment, through an entirely spontaneous agency ; and in 
 this view of its spontaneity, we shall find a strict analogy 
 between the laws of vital and of intellectual development. 
 Here we shall find our principles ; and an exposition, of 
 the controlling authority which these must hold over all 
 the process of mental culture, is one end which I have 
 proposed to myself in this investigation. 
 
 But another point of view discloses a very striking 
 peculiarity. This inner mental force is very much subject- 
 ed to our voluntary control. In this point of liberty, the 
 analogy between vital and mental growth wholly fails. 
 Here we shall attain our maxims; the application of which 
 to all mental discipline, I have proposed as another end in 
 this discussion. 
 
 While, then, we are to look at the growth of mind in its 
 spontaneity for our principles, and at this growth in its 
 liberty for our maxims ; let it, also, be farther premised, 
 that the results which we now seek to attain respect rather 
 the intellectual than the moral character of the man ; and 
 
we are then prepared to proceed directly with our inves- 
 tigation. 
 
 The mind, as truly as the plant, has a spontaneous 
 growth. The rudiments of the future man are already in 
 the infant germ, and the most brilliant genius or profound 
 talent can only be a development of an already existing 
 potentiality. An opening bud and an expanding flowre 
 are objects of deeply interesting contemplation, as the 
 work goes on from day to day ; but how much more 
 intense the interest, while we watch the process of mental 
 growth from the first dawnings of infantile consciousness 
 upwards to the full maturity of manly thought and pur- 
 pose ! The inner conditions give the controlling law to 
 the entire process ; so that, knowing the law, we may 
 beforehand know that some things may, and some other 
 things may not, be brought out of the young mind. On 
 this ground alone is it, that education can ever become a 
 science. To educate, is to educe from mind, that which 
 inherently though incipiently belongs to mind ; and all 
 attempted mental culture and discipline, in the ignorance 
 or a neglect of these laws, is mere empiricism. 
 
 In tracing out the analogies of spontaneous development, 
 we may make an exposition of this as our first principle — 
 that no external culture can he effectual) except as the inner 
 agency is awakened into action. 
 
 External appliances are but occasions for the action of 
 the inner vital energy. The inherent vitality is the 
 efficient in the germination and growth of the plant, the 
 sunshine and the shower are but the conditions. Heat 
 and moisture and the most congenial soil are utterly inef- 
 fectual, when the seed or the root is without life. And 
 where the living germ is set in a fruitful place, it is by its 
 own quickening force within, that it is made to put forth, 
 " first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in 
 the ear." No culture can make the dead stock grow, nor 
 bring out fruit from dry branches. The work goes on 
 
8 
 
 within the plant, or it avails nothing how much is done on 
 the outside. The inner agency may require conditions for 
 putting forth its efficiency, but conditions result in no 
 development of the germ, except through the vital energiz- 
 ing of the quickening spirit within. 
 
 Spiritus intus alit, totamque iufusa per artus 
 Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpora miscet. 
 
 It is ever thus, also, with the development of the intel- 
 lect. The efficiency of the mind's growth is a force from 
 within itself. All external influences are but occasions 
 more or less favorable for the activity of this inner causa- 
 tion. No matter how propitious the surrounding conditions, 
 if this internal working is not going on, the mind can not 
 grow ; and no matter how inauspicious the outward 
 circumstances, if this inner mental energy be aroused the 
 mind will grow, and every faculty come out in all the 
 ripeness and richness of a matured development. In 
 every generation, there may be witnessed many a mind, 
 that has been placed in the midst of the most congenial 
 conditions and kindliest influences ; that has met the 
 happiest opportunities for lifting itself up to greatness ; 
 possessed advantages which others would have seized and 
 improved with avidity and success ; but which, because 
 the slumbering energy of its own stupid spirit was not 
 aroused, has remained torpid and imbecile, a dwarfed 
 and stinted intellect, unconscious of the smothered fires 
 and suppressed forces within, and incompetent to stand 
 alone amid the jostling movements of the world without. 
 Academic advantages and College privileges are invaluable 
 to a young man, as affording the most favorable conditions 
 for intellectual growth ; but the genial warmth, and 
 softening dew of heaven, are not more useless upon the 
 barren heath, than are all these kindly influences upon 
 the dormant faculties of the dunce, who will not wake 
 and can not think. 
 
It is often said, that the circumstances make the man. 
 The correct form of expressing the meaning here intended 
 is this, the circumstances give the man occasion for 
 making himself. No circumstances can avail any thing, 
 except as the inner kindling of genius shall seize upon 
 them and intrepidly use them for its purpose. The period 
 of our revolution was a time which emphatically " tried 
 men's souls," and forced them to stand amid scenes of 
 deep excitement and weighty responsibilities. It was the 
 occasion for a development of such mighty minds as 
 Adams, Franklin, Jay, and Washington. A noble band 
 of heroes with warm hearts and clear heads and iron will 
 were brought to act in concert, from different parts of 
 their distressed country, and who exhibited an earnestness, 
 wisdom, fortitude, and hardihood be} 7 ond all ordinary 
 example. But such were not all the minds on whom 
 these influences rested. There was many a weak and 
 stupid soul during all the spirit-stirring days of that great 
 conflict. No mind that did not make those scenes an 
 occasion for arousing up its inner energies, and calling 
 into action all its hidden forces, was made at all either 
 the greater or the better thereby. Then, as ever, minds 
 grew great and strong from the inner working of their 
 own native powers, and it was this ceaseless inner action 
 alone which sent such mighty men to move upon that field 
 of the world's history. Nor, though such stimulating 
 occasions do not occur, is the mind doomed to littleness 
 and weakness. The vital energy sleeps within, and 
 needs only to be aroused, and it may make its own 
 occasions, and create its own conditions, for expanding 
 every faculty to its broadest comprehension. No depres- 
 sing circumstances of obscurity, or poverty, or delayed 
 opportunity, need to hold it in its embryo state ; let the 
 strugglings of the inner life begin, and its growth is sure. 
 Let its pent up energies press till they find their fitting 
 time to strike, and like the hidden lightnings of the 
 
 B 
 
10 
 
 cloud, it will one day make itself to be seen, and heard, 
 and felt. 
 
 Igneus est ollis vigor, et coelestis origo 
 Seminibus. 
 
 It is a most miserable, though not a very uncommon 
 delusion, to assume that greatness may often be fortuitous, 
 and that maturity and vigor of intellect may be reached 
 at a leap, when the critical exigency shall demand the 
 prompt action. This delusion may become the more 
 confirmed, by some instances of great talent in spite 
 of the neglect of early advantages ; or, sudden flashes 
 of great and brilliant success, while much time is passed 
 in indolence or devoted to pleasure. But these uncom- 
 mon cases are not exceptions to our principle. No 
 expanded intellectual development has ever occurred, 
 without the strong workings of the hidden force within. 
 If the process has been long deferred, the later action 
 must be proportionally the more energetic. The growth 
 can not be but as the work goes on within ; and it 
 is only when you are conscious of the effervescence 
 of this inner spirit, waking vivid imaginings, deep 
 thoughts, and high aspirations, warming the soul in 
 the glow and fervor of its own enthusiasm, that you have 
 any sure warrant that the mind is then in its process of 
 expansion. Whether more or less rapid, the development 
 only then goes on when the forces are struggling from 
 within. Demosthenes' eloquence, Caesar's rapid con- 
 quests, Buonaparte's terrible victories, and Canning's 
 keen political sagacity, are all illustrations of astonishing 
 intellectual developments under the working of an inherent 
 energy, invincible and perpetual. 
 
 A second principle is — that no cultivation can bring out 
 of the germ any other, or any more, than that which is con- 
 naturally within it. 
 
 External culture may occasion wide modifications in 
 the intensity and direction of the inner living energy, but 
 
11 
 
 when this is aroused to its greatest force, it can carry the 
 work onwards only within its own organization. It can 
 give expansion to that distinct and orderly rudimental 
 being alone, within which it has been made to take up its 
 lodging-place. This inner vitality creates nothing ; sub- 
 stitutes nothing in the place of that which already is ; it 
 can only make that, in which it is, to grow. When the 
 seed has fallen into the earth, and the genial influences of 
 the spring have supplied the conditions for the germinating 
 power to act, that awakened activity must exhaust itself 
 in the development of that which it finds already within 
 its own body. In the grain of wheat, it pushes out to 
 maturity the rudimental forms already there — the slender 
 leaf, the jointed cylindrical stalk, and the serrated bearded 
 ear : in the pea, its succulent stem, papilionaceous flower, 
 and pendant pods : in the pine cone, the tall taper shaft, 
 and at its top the spreading tufted branches. Change the 
 locality and the soil for these seeds as we may, vary the 
 methods of culture as we please, if still the vital force 
 exerts itself at all, it must subject itself in its action to the 
 law which its own germinal forms impose upon it. The 
 energy may be made more intense in one portion of the 
 organization, and diminished or withdrawn from another 
 portion, and thereby the proportions in actual development 
 may be indefinitely modified ; but that which is can still 
 only have been the growth of that which was. On which 
 side soever of the pine trunk the vital sap shall be urged, 
 it will still be the pine branch with its acuminous leaves, 
 and not the palm with its broad foliage, that is developed. 
 The acorn has not within it the form of the hawthorn, nor 
 can any method of culture bring that form out of it. It 
 has not within it the type of any animal, and no incuba- 
 tion can fetch a feathered fowl from it, nor can the warm 
 sands in which it may fall hatch it into an ostrich or a 
 tortoise. If there be any development it must take on the 
 form of the oak, inasmuch as that form only is given 
 
12 
 
 within it. Thus with the seed, the egg, and the embryon, 
 they must evolve themselves after the primeval type of 
 their own inner being. The law is in the germ, and the 
 vital force can not transcend it. It can expand that which 
 is, but by no means can it go back and originate a new, 
 nor go out and work in another, organization. 
 
 Thus, also, with the development of the intellect. It is 
 the product of a causation necessarily circumscribing itself, 
 and exhausting all its energizing within its own organism. 
 What it finds there it may expand to its maturity, but it 
 can originate no new faculty, nor make any change in the 
 constitutional capacities of the rudimental being. It is 
 competent, thus, to teach the parrot to talk, the falcon to 
 strike and bring back its prey, the dog to watch, carry 
 and fetch, &c, inasmuch as there is a native susceptibility 
 to instruction in these animated beings, and to these par- 
 ticular results. An inner power may be excited by which 
 such developments may be secured. But there are intel- 
 lectual processes to which no animal can attain. No 
 animal can make itself the object of its own reflection, and 
 thus teach itself by thinking without the experience of the 
 senses — can construct within its own subjective being the 
 diagrams of geometry, and use the intuitions of pure math- 
 ematics — can apprehend the maxims of morality, and 
 govern its actions by the Decalogue. There are no native 
 rudimental faculties for such attainments, and therefore no 
 cultivation can secure such a development. But in the 
 human mind, all those faculties which are essential to 
 humanity, and without which the being would be some- 
 thing other than man, exist in the constitutional elements 
 of his earliest being. The germ of the human intellect is 
 originally something other, and something more, than the 
 anima of the brute ; hence, the development of the human 
 transcends all that is possible in the animal. 
 
 But, while all that is essential to humanity must be an 
 original inheritance of all minds, yet may there be peculiar 
 
13 
 
 and specific constitutional attributes which do not at all 
 belong to some minds. It is not essential to the common 
 humanity that every man should be a wit, or a mimic, or 
 a satirist, or even a poet. Some men may, perhaps, be 
 all these, and to some other men all these may, perhaps, 
 be impossibilities. In the native germ of some minds 
 there may be, and in others there may not be, the rudi- 
 ments for such specific development. The ancient dictum 
 expresses a truth for every age — -poeta nascitur, non fit. 
 In many other cases, the original germs may have the 
 same elementary attributes, and yet some admit of a much 
 farther development, and thus give their characteristic in 
 a higher degree, than others. It is not competent to all 
 minds that, by any culture, they should become distin- 
 guished mathematicians ; nor could all mathematicians 
 become great statesmen, orators, or philosophers ; nor 
 could all such again become eminent in painting and 
 sculpture. In many of these particulars, there may be a 
 native susceptibility which in its cultivation admits of 
 some development, but which is still small even in its 
 maturity, and no excitement of the inner action can carry 
 out its growth any farther. Differences of native endow- 
 ment will thus secure distinct characteristics and degrees 
 of attainment among men, which no modifications of 
 external cultivation can preclude. They could not be 
 made to grow alike, though the inner force in each were 
 quickened alike, inasmuch as the original rudiments were 
 themselves unlike. 
 
 While, therefore, it is the business of all education, 
 whether that of self-culture and discipline or that of 
 instructing others, to bring out in mature development 
 every opening faculty, and to this end is every favoring 
 external influence to be employed which may be an 
 occasion of stimulating the agency within ; yet is it wholly 
 absurd and vain to expect from the development of any 
 mind something other, and something more, than the 
 
14 
 
 native germ originally possessed. When the inner force 
 has been thoroughly aroused, and is directed in the best 
 manner, and is perpetuated in its action with quenchless 
 ardor and tireless vigor, then is the man making the most 
 of himself, and securing the most complete and compre- 
 hensive development of which his intellectual nature is 
 capable. When thus brought out in its maturity, his 
 comparative mental capacity is then the righteous measure 
 of his real worth and rank among other intelligences. 
 And when an instructor of youth has so arranged his 
 system of education, and adapted his plan of discipline, 
 and applied his stimulants, as the most effectually to 
 arouse and the most favorably to direct the working of 
 this internal energy of the intellect, he has then filled his 
 whole province, and is faithfully fulfilling his whole duty, 
 and most successfully completing his work. If the minds 
 on which he works should many of them still prove to be 
 rude and dull, stinted and feebly developed, the reason 
 for this is to be sought either in the delinquencies of the 
 pupil or the parsimony of nature. Where the real mother 
 wit is wanting, no teaching can supply the deficiency. It 
 would exceed the tyranny of even Egyptian taskmasters, 
 to require the Faculty in our Colleges to render " the full 
 tale" of clear, strong, and long-headed men to the world, 
 when those heads had been given into their hand utterly 
 empty. We must, perforce, be content with bringing out 
 and maturing just what and how much of native talent the 
 original intellectual germ contains. 
 
 A third principle is — that no healthy growth can be 
 secured by forced processes and factitious appliances. 
 
 By an artificial supply of heat and moisture, it is easy 
 to force an unnatural and sickly growth in defiance of an 
 uncongenial locality or an improper season. Tropical 
 plants may thus be made to develop themselves in our 
 northern climate, and any seeds to germinate and grow 
 in the winter. But these productions of the hot-house 
 
15 
 
 can never come to their maturity, and ripen and perfect 
 their fruit where they are, nor bide the sharp changes 
 and rough blasts of an out-door exposure. The needful 
 conditions of light, and air, and temperature, are not 
 supplied in their full and free proportions, and though the 
 plant unfolds, yet is its stock weak, its branches stinted, 
 and its fruit insipid. 
 
 Nor can any factitious applications of that which still 
 belongs to, and is borrowed from, something else be of 
 any benefit. To the plant or the animal, all is a foreign 
 substance which is not vitalized and assimilated to itself 
 through its own proper action. The scion inserted from 
 another stock attains no incorporation into its new stem, 
 except as the one vital action from the root enters it and 
 diffuses itself throughout. The limbs of one animal can 
 not be enlarged and strengthened by the food digested in 
 the stomach, and the blood which flows in the veins of 
 another. 
 
 The analogy, in both these particulars, applied to the 
 intellect, will expose the emptiness, if it can not cure the 
 arrogance of many high pretensions in mental cultivation. 
 There are empirics in education as well as in medicine ; 
 and the quackery which meddles with mind is quite as 
 mischievous as that which tampers with the health of the 
 body. Specific rules, and assumed astonishing inventions 
 and improvements, in the art of teaching different branch- 
 es of science, become nearly as plenty, and about as 
 thoroughly puffed, as patent nostrums, while local " insti- 
 tutes" and itinerating lecturers rival in numbers our 
 modern medical theorists and travelling pill- venders. In 
 process of time it may perhaps be hoped that both these 
 evils shall cure themselves. When it shall be but a little 
 more fully seen, that those wonderful improvements in the 
 healing art only increase the numbers of the sick and the 
 dying, and these boasted new-lights in education rapidly 
 multiply all kinds of noisy, conceited, shallow pretenders, 
 
16 
 
 the community will become heartily tired of them both, 
 and buy wisdom from a most annoying experience. 
 Where mere dieams and empty speculations are made to 
 take the place of established laws of mental development, 
 and the most crude and superficial theories are made to 
 supplant old and long proved systems of thorough mental 
 discipline, it can not be long before the wort'hlessness of 
 the product will effectually convince the world of either 
 the folly or the knavery of the manufacturer. 
 
 No machinery for artificially forcing knowledge into 
 mind, or for heaping accomplishments upon mind, can 
 subserve any good purpose. Precocious developments 
 are usually unhealthy, and ordinarily soon blighted ; and 
 all ambitious attempts to bring the young mind to an early 
 maturity, and make the child to exhibit the characteristics 
 and attainments of an adult, by the process of a precise 
 training and constrained imitation and affected speech, is 
 merely a mechanical torturing of nature, and about as 
 successful as would be the application of presses and 
 pullies to the young shoot, for forcing it in a season to the 
 tall oak, the growth of a century. Inventions for teaching 
 languages, and grammar, and elocution, and the art of 
 composition in both prose and poetry, by a few arbitrary 
 rules, and in the process of a half a dozen lectures, 
 constitute another species of modern literary charlatanry ; 
 and which would be quite equaled in propriety and utility 
 by hanging artificial flowers and fruits amid the green 
 leaves of a barren fig-tree. All attempts of one mind to 
 transfer to itself the attainments of another, and superin- 
 duce upon itself the erudition of the other by merely 
 adopting his conclusions, and learning to repeat his senti- 
 ments by rote, and which is no very uncommon method 
 of seeming to be a very wise and learned man, are yet 
 alike vain and foolish. A man may take his almanac, 
 just as the printer gives it to him, without the capacity to 
 correct any error made by the press, or even to determine 
 
17 
 
 whether there is any error. He simply transfers to 
 himself the copy just as it is. The most superficial 
 observation detects the deceitful pretension, and despises 
 the silly affectation. Grapes may hang upon thorns, and 
 figs be stuck upon thistles, but no man will be deluded 
 into the belief that they ever grew there. So, again, the 
 man may try to be learned by rules, and technical terms, 
 and phrases which embody abstract principles ; and thus 
 make his memory the go-cart to carry round artificial 
 examples and prescribed formulas, which are to be prac- 
 tically but mechanically applied to the cases that come up 
 in his experience, and all to be determined by the arbitrary 
 standard ; instead of relying upon a mind properly 
 disciplined and developed, which flashes out the light of 
 its own sound judgment upon its pathway in every critical 
 emergency. 
 
 All these merely factitious and mechanical processes 
 for training the intellect, overlook wholly the very nature 
 and law of mental development. They exclude utterly 
 the universal fact that no mind really grows except in its 
 own action. They seek to make the mind take on its 
 increase from without, and not to expand from its own 
 energy within. Its attainments are to be already packed 
 up by other hands and laid on it, rather than the products 
 of its own teeming vitality, and which it may at all times 
 use free and gracefully as the body may its members. 
 Many such a burdened and overlaid mind is found in all 
 communities. Garrulous, pedantic, and conceited, such a 
 man obtrudes his counsel and opinion on all occasions, 
 and wastes his words and wisdom with unsparing prodi- 
 gality, conscious that there is enough more in the place 
 from whence so much has already come. His mind is a 
 mere receptacle, and by tapping it at any time, there runs 
 out just what has been put in. Its whole use is to hold 
 the content until it is needed, and then pour out the quan- 
 tum sufhcit. Science is a mere bundle of facts and 
 
18 
 
 formulas, which may be transferred and distributed 
 from one mind to another, as the merchant supplies his 
 customers. 
 
 Now, a clear and correct view of the process of mental 
 development to its maturity, so far as it is a spontaneous 
 growth through the action of an inner force, will correct 
 the above unphilosophical and hurtful methods of instruc- 
 tion. Let every mind attain the thorough conviction, that it 
 must itself work if it would grow ; and let no confidence 
 be placed in any boasted schemes of education or self- 
 discipline which dispense at all with this controlling law 
 of intellectual expansion. No benefit ever did nor ever 
 will accrue, by attempting such a work without, or against 
 nature. 
 
 And now, if minds grew like trees altogether sponta- 
 neously, we should here have finished our work by 
 exhausting the subject. But the analagon, exact thus far, 
 wholly ceases beyond this. The inner efficiency of plants 
 and animals in their development is wholly necessitated 
 by its conditions. As within law, its working is orderly, 
 progressively, perpetually, wherever the conditions are 
 given ; but, as under necessity it must keep its determined 
 pathway, with no capability to swerve from the laws 
 imposed upon it. Hence, trees and animals grow and die, 
 under fixed laws and particular conditions determined for 
 them, and with no responsibility to either the law or the 
 condition. But in the growth of mind this analogy does 
 not hold. In its spontaneity, the law necessitates that, like 
 the plant, all its unfoldings must be effected through the 
 agency of an inner force, and that this inner force can 
 push to maturity those rudiments only which are already 
 given ; but altogether beyond this, mind has within itself 
 the high prerogative of a voluntary control over the action 
 and the direction of this inner energy. It may for itself 
 determine, amid all the conditions of its being, whether 
 the living power within shall lie smothered and suppressed, 
 
19 
 
 or whether it shall be aroused and pour itself through 
 every intellectual faculty. It possesses a liberty, whereby 
 it is competent for itself to decide, whether it shall take 
 the laws of spontaneity into identity with its own being, 
 and spread itself forth in any or all the prescribed forms 
 which those laws shall give to it ; or, whether it shall lie, 
 like the seed beneath the frosts of winter, torpid and 
 inert as the clods which cover it. There is, therefore, in 
 every mind, that which makes the manner of its being 
 awful ; throwing upon itself the responsibility of both 
 whether it shall grow, and, under the laws of spontaneity, 
 how it shall grow. 
 
 That lay, more than historic, is prophetic, 
 Wherein, of the budding and the opening 
 Of a human spirit, thou shalt dare to tell 
 What may be told, to the understanding mind 
 Kevealable ; and what within the mind, 
 J, By vital breathings secret as the soul 
 
 Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart 
 
 Thoughts all too deep for words! — 
 
 Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears, 
 
 Of tides obedient to an inner force, 
 
 And currents self-determined. 
 
 This additional fact, of a liberty in intellectual develop- 
 ment, makes it necessary that we pursue this subject 
 some farther, though the time demands that we progress 
 more rapidly. The spontaneity of the process has 
 furnished us with some first principles in mental 
 cultivation, the liberty of this process will now supply 
 some a priori maxims in the same field. These maxims 
 are, at least, quite as important as the principles. 
 
 The first maxim, under this consideration of liberty, is 
 — that every mind is responsible for the full development of its 
 intellectual germ. 
 
 Responsibility reaches to the full extent of the liberty. 
 Where simple spontaneity only is, there no obligation can 
 be imposed. The condition being supplied, the agency 
 
20 
 
 goes out in its blindness without an alternative. But, by 
 how much the mind is competent to affect itself in the 
 freedom of its agency, by so much is it the subject of 
 inalienable responsibility. It has no capacity to put the 
 rudiments of originally new faculties within itself; nor, 
 lo give those which it already possesses, any farther 
 growth and broader development than their full maturity. 
 If creative energy, out of itself, were exerted to superin- 
 duce new endowments upon original rudiments, the mind 
 may be said to have a capacity to receive more ; but this 
 is simply the capacity of a void, and would be only 
 saying, that where Omnipotence has created some rudi- 
 mental faculties, there is room for the same creative 
 energy to go farther, if he please, and create more. Such 
 a capacity confers no responsibility. The determination, 
 whether Omnipotence shall create new faculties in any 
 mind, is nothing for which that mind can be made 
 accountable. 
 
 But, for the kindling up the inner energy, and diffusing 
 its vivifying force through the entire organism of its own 
 being, and thus forcing out every elementary faculty to 
 complete maturity, so far as the conditions and the time 
 may be supplied, for this every mind is responsible, 
 because all this comes within its liberty. If one talent be 
 " hid in the earth," the slothful servant must be called to 
 account for it. The entire mental germ is a trust commit- 
 ted ; the end to be attained is its full development ; this 
 can be secured in no way except through its own inner 
 working, and this is within the sphere of its liberty ; there 
 must, therefore, • be responsibility in this stewardship. 
 The end of its being is attained only in its growing. 
 That seed, which, when cast into the earth, does not 
 germinate, might as well have been a pebble. The end 
 for which it exists as a seed is not attained. And so also 
 that intellect, by how much it fails of being developed to 
 its perfect stature, might as well have been a clod. Mind, 
 
21 
 
 immortal mind, is worthless, if it will not grow ; and as 
 it grows only in its own action, every obligation presses 
 upon it, that it keep the inner work going on, until it has 
 become completely ripened. 
 
 A second maxim is — that every mind is under the obligation 
 to secure a symmetrical development. 
 
 Monsters are not of nature's make, but the product in 
 some way of an obstruction or perversion of nature. 
 The seed has within itself the rudiments for the well- 
 formed and complete plant, and if in the process of 
 development the plant become stinted, or distorted and 
 misshapen, there must be some external interference, 
 deranging the spontaneous law of its inner action. 
 
 The intellectual germ is also in its original being 
 capable of an orderly, well-balanced, symmetrical devel- 
 opment. It is doubtless true, that each mind has that 
 within its earliest rudimental being, which discriminates it 
 from all other minds, but yet each, in its maturity, may be 
 made a complete and consistent whole, if not perverted 
 in its process of growth. How much unavoidable condi- 
 tions, and unconsciousness of what the man might make 
 of himself, may excuse a faulty development, we will not 
 here attempt to decide ; but inasmuch as the arousing and 
 directing of the mental energy is within the man's control, 
 and that occasions also for the discipline of any faculty 
 may be made by the man himself, it follows that every 
 mind must assume for itself the chief responsibility for the 
 form and qualities which it takes on in its growth. 
 Circumstances sometimes seem to favor the development 
 of some one faculty more than others, and a redundancy 
 of the mental force energizes in this direction, while the 
 requisite action is thereby diverted from others. The 
 mind, in this way, often acquires peculiarities and 
 idiosyncrasies which are wholly factitious, and always 
 very undesirable. Not seldom is the distortion found to 
 
$ 
 
 22 
 
 be quite uncomfortable to others, and greatly detrimental 
 to the man himself. 
 
 But such a mind is itself to blame, for permitting that 
 it should thus have become unbalanced and one-sided. 
 The perverse inclination, tending inordinately in one 
 direction, should have been counteracted, and the inner 
 power made to diffuse itself more equably. Other facul- 
 ties should have been brought out in their vigor, and if 
 any important rudiments had seemed to be naturally more 
 feeble, the cherishing influence should have been made 
 especially to spend itself upon that which was lacking. 
 Each mind is bound to make itself its own object of 
 watchful observation while it is growing, and subject 
 itself to the correcting hand of its own workmanship. It 
 should skillfully turn itself, and temper the inner force 
 by which its expansion is carried on wisely, as the glass- 
 blower does his vessel, that it may while pliant and 
 yielding assume the required shape, and be perfected in 
 capacity and symmetry. 
 
 There is a strong liability, often in the young and 
 growing intellect, because the employment of some favor- 
 ite faculty is more gratifying, to keep that in constant 
 exercise ; the result of which must, of course, be that this 
 favored faculty has become overgrown, and others have 
 been dwarfed ; and that mind must henceforth limp on 
 through life, because its faculties, like " the legs of the 
 lame are not equal." The man is " the architect of his 
 own fortune," not only ; and moreover is the author of his 
 own moral character, not merely ; but he should be made 
 to feel that it is his own agency which shapes his intellect- 
 ual proportions. Every man, in reference to his growth 
 intellectually, is a self-made man, and if he has made 
 himself one-sided and monstrously misshapen, it is 
 directly his own fault. Others may have their share of 
 blame in applying the wrong stimulants, and surrounding 
 him by ill-judged conditions, but his is the blame of yield- 
 
I 
 
 23 
 
 ing to the conditions, and permitting occasions to shape 
 his intellectual development in undirected spontaneity, 
 without awakening in his liberty, and taking the direction 
 of this so momentous a process. The lily may grow in 
 beauty and glorious array, beyond the splendor of Solo- 
 mon's royal robes, without toil ; but, nor Solomon's, nor 
 any mortal's wisdom, and sound, strong, self-balanced 
 judgment will be attained, without great self-exertion and 
 careful self-discipline. The man, by careful study and 
 watchful discipline may so control his intellectual growth, 
 that at its maturity every mental effort shall be free and 
 joyous, as the limbs of childhood in their sports ; or, he 
 may so leave the whole process to perverting influences, 
 that all confidence in his mental capacity for special 
 emergencies, shall like the proverb, be as " a broken 
 tooth, or a foot out of joint." 
 
 A third maxim is — that personal retribution is inevitable. 
 
 "Just as the twig is bent, the tree 's inclined." 
 
 No sooner, by some external violence, does any obliquity 
 take place in the tender stem of the growing plant, than 
 the flowing sap rushes on through the distortion, and the 
 inner vital force conforms to the direction, and the deform- 
 ity is perpetuated. Henceforth the stock grows out of 
 shape. But, while the tree may thus become the subject 
 of deformity, and necessarily exhibit through all its after 
 life, the violence which it received in the greenness of its 
 youth ; yet will the tree be spared the deep mortification 
 and shame, which originates in a consciousness, that the 
 perpetuated deformity is the consequence of its own 
 action. 
 
 But there is no such escape for the human mind. The 
 consequences of all youthful delinquencies and obliquities 
 inhere through all its future growth, and become thereby 
 permanent defects, as in the case of the tree ; and then, 
 moreover, there is the constant conviction of its own 
 
24 
 
 neglect, or direct agency, in entailing this perpetual 
 deformity upon itself. The results of such obliquity, in 
 every case, are not mere traces upon the sand which may 
 be readily and completely erased by after-action, but they 
 henceforth grow into its very being, and oblige the inner 
 energy, ever after, to work in and through the modifica- 
 tions thus induced and perpetuated. And such permanent 
 modification of the intellectual growth, for good or evil, 
 stands out as a constant memento of the mind's own wise 
 or wicked direction of its inner action. If the develop- 
 ment has resulted in mature intellectual strength and 
 beauty, the spirit rejoices not merely in its own actual 
 worth, but in the superadded blessedness of a modest 
 self-approbation, that this is the product of its own sacri- 
 fice and watchful care ; but if it has only ripened into 
 deformity, or been blasted in imbecility, there is not 
 merely the mortification of inherent weakness and worth- 
 lessness, but the deeper anguish of remorse in the 
 consciousness that this has been self-inflicted. From 
 whence can come the curse so bitter, as to live the 
 blighted monument of one's own shame ! to bear about, 
 in the deformity of our own being, the remembrance of 
 our early folly ! and feel the testimony, in a perpetual 
 incompetency, that we have ourselves secured for us the 
 necessity that the good should rebuke us, and that the 
 wicked should despise us, — on the other band, I can 
 conceive of no superior blessedness to that which must 
 await the perpetual experience of the immortal mind in 
 its developed greatness and goodness, working on in the 
 freeness and the fullness of its strength, giving to its 
 Maker the glory and the grace of its high endowments, 
 while it is permitted to be the eternal witness of the light 
 and happiness which spring up constant along its onward 
 pathway. 
 
 Let it ever be held in remembrance, that every moment 
 the mind is growing into that shape, which its own direc- 
 
25 
 
 tion of the inner force is securing for it ; and that this is a 
 growth which can never turn backward, to change the 
 development of the passing hour, but constantly goes 
 forward to perpetuate and confirm in the future the open- 
 ings and shapings of the present. Every mind must first 
 fashion its own features, and then wear them forever. 
 
 A full and clear sense of personal responsibility for our 
 intellectual growth, and the deep conviction that our own 
 minds must eternally bear within themselves the retribu- 
 tive results of the manner in which they permit themselves 
 to be developed, would throw a sacred dignity and awe 
 around all that belongs to the conditions and the direction 
 of the inner working force, exceedingly proper and salutary 
 for every young and forming intellect. 
 
 Suns shine unseen, and thunders roll unheard, 
 By minds quite conscious of then high descent, 
 Their present province and then future prize, 
 
 Gentlemen, members of the Literary Societies 
 here present. 
 
 These principles and maxims have a direct application 
 to your highest interests in precisely your present position. 
 With you it is now the spring-time of your being. Every 
 thing within is germinating quick and fresh, and you stand 
 in companionship with budding and blossoming intellectual 
 nature all around you. Every thing favors mental devel- 
 opment. It is the time for growing, not by the forcing- 
 process of confined artificial warmth and vapor in the 
 green-house, but in the free air, and amid the open sun- 
 shine and showers of heaven. A wise and well-proved 
 course of cultivation is here applied, and it is rationally 
 expected, that the few years' residence within these Halls, 
 and under these propitious influences, shall send you forth 
 to the advanced stage of professional preparation, and 
 thence to the labors and responsibilities of active life, 
 
26 
 
 with minds expanded, strengthened, disciplined, and 
 ready to be ripened into full maturity in your first encoun- 
 ters with the stormy world. 
 
 Every field amid the wide activities of man, whether 
 of professional, agricultural, mechanical, or mercantile 
 pursuits, is becoming broader; opening higher interests ; 
 filling with more ardent, hardy, and determined competi- 
 tors ; and those minds, which are to succeed in the 
 coming struggles and conflicts of the next generation, 
 must be more vigorous, prompt, and persevering, than 
 even the great men of the past and present age. The 
 walks of literature and the paths of science branch off in 
 more varied directions, and extend much farther, and are 
 trod by a much greater throng, than in former centuries ; 
 and the demands of humanity and active Christian benev- 
 olence are louder and more extensive and urgent than 
 ever before. The world never called for so much talent, 
 earnestness, decision, and moral and intellectual strength, 
 from any one of the past generations of her children, as 
 she will ask from those who are to tread her surface 
 contemporary with you. It may moreover be hoped, that 
 the thousands of every past age, who have been enrolled 
 in the armies and pressed into the navies of the nations, 
 and whose grand end has been to learn the art and 
 practice the work of human butchery the most success- 
 fully, may hereafter be permitted mainly to crowd the 
 marts of trade and commerce, and the shops and fields of 
 peaceful industry, and thereby invention shall be quick- 
 ened and competition heightened to their greatest intensity. 
 Every thing indicates that God is preparing a work for 
 man to accomplish, which it will demand the highest and 
 the choicest type of manhood to meet. Mind is to be 
 combined with mind, and work amid and upon mind, and 
 it can be the strong and sound mind only, which shall 
 fulfill the mission of its age. The work of intellectual 
 cultivation and general melioration of outward condition, 
 
27 
 
 and the process of evangelizing and sanctifying the human 
 race, are to go on together. 
 
 Yours, my young friends, is the privilege to live in such 
 an era, and to you is now most kindly and profusely 
 given the favoring opportunities for growing to a meetness 
 to assume such high responsibilities. Give the mental 
 germ its utmost expansion ; and make it grow symmetri- 
 cally ; and then sacredly conscecrate every faculty to the 
 cause of Humanity, Religion, and Truth. 
 
 " He is the freeman whom the truth makes free," 
 Who lives as reason, not as passion bids ; 
 Who hears temptation sing, and yet turns not 
 Aside ; sees sin bedeck her flowery bed, 
 And yet will not go up; feels at his heart 
 The sword unsheathed, yet will not sell the truth. 
 
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