TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

In presenting to the public the following Translation of Madame Necker de Saussure's admirable Treatise on Education, it is necessary, in justice to her, to state that it does not contain the whole of the original work. Entertaining the highest opinion of the Education Progressive, the translator has often regretted that it was not more generally known in England; and has had reason to suppose that in some instances mothers have been deterred from reading it by its diffuseness and occasional tendency to metaphysical disquisition. Wishing, therefore, to make the work, in its English form, as popular and as generally useful as possible, many passages, excellent in themselves, but

which did not seem to bear directly on the practical part of the subject, have been entirely omitted; others have been considerably abridged; and the style has occasionally been so modified as to render it more consonant to the taste of the English reader.

How far the object which the translator had in view has been attained, it remains for the public to decide.

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SECT. II. How the greatest Improvement is to be made of the Natural and Social Inequalities of Human Beings

SECT. III. Influence of Education on the Strength of the Will

SECT. IV. Motives by which the Will is influenced. - Influence of Religion on the Will

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AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

WHEN I first undertook to write a sort of moral history of life, in which the various means of improvement offered at different ages should be pointed out, I expected to pass rapidly over the period of childhood. Impressed with the important idea that our existence here is only the prelude to another,—that our passage through this world is only an education for a better,— I wished to follow out this idea in all its bearings. My attention was attracted rather to the result of life, than to that preparation for life itself which occupies its commencement. I considered the education necessary during childhood to be a subject which, as a part of my plan, I was called upon to notice, but which had already been exhausted by the many distinguished writers who had devoted their thoughts to it.

But, on examining the subject more attentively, it appeared to me that it was still little un