On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell.

  • Dora Greenwell
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    limit human responsibility is in no degree to lessen it* If we are bound on one side, we are free upon another; and if man’s freedom, according to Lavater’s illustration, is only that of a bird within its cage, we have enough to do within our given boundaries, and need not fret that we can never overpass them. If our physical constitution is unalterable, our moral nature contains within it the germ and promise of infinite expansion. If humanity must still deplore its deep inadequacy, must still confess to a chasm never to be filled up between its bright intention and its faltering deed, —if it must say with St. Paul, ‘ how to perform I find not,’ it may say with him, ‘ to will is present with me! Let nature bind man to the earth by fetters which cannot as yet be broken; he is the prisoner of a glorious hope, heir to a freedom to which every human affection, every heavenward aspiration testifies. He is a being who can will, who can desire, who can love, who can pray; a being rich in * ‘ The freedom of the bird in its cage is an exact emblem of human liberty. Man possesses his given circle of activity, and that defined boundary it is impossible for him to surmount, and within it his sphere of action lies. Each individual must continue what he is, with the granted possibility of maturing and exerting himself to a determinate point. An exact conception of human nature, and a proper idea of the limits to which it is confined, are of great service in making us lowly, courageous, meek, and active.’ ‘ When we have learnt,’ Lavater adds, ‘ that human power and capacity, whether for feeling or action, are bounded things, and can extend the application of this truth from ourselves to others, we have found what constitutes the germ of all social charity and tolerance, and may hope to hold in check the hate¬ ful tyranny which leads every one to make his own individuality the standard of good, and to think that nothing can be right or good that deviates from it. Every man has his own individuality. When we perceive this we shall perhaps cease to demand ardent sensibility from the abstract reasoner, or the depth and exactness of this reasoner from the person in whose temperament feeling bears sway. We shall learn to look in all that has to do with our fellow-men to that which is, and not to that which is wanting. God has many vessels, of gold, of silver, and of wood ; the gold may be unused and rusty, yet it remains a precious metal; the wooden one may happen to be more useful than it is, yet it must ever remain a wooden vessel Neither care, thought, education, nor activity, can bestow on us another nature.’
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