Excerpt from Selected Essays
The history of education may be divided into four periods. The first, commencing with the fall of man and extending to the Deluge, comprehends a term of two thousand years, and may be denominated the patriarchal. It is probable that, in this period, the whole race was in a semi-barbarous condition; they wandered in deserts and forests, depending upon fishing and the chase for subsistence, and consuming all their time and expending all their energies in procuring the necessaries of lite. They had no agriculture, commerce, navigation, arts, or science worthy of the name. Their wars were collisions of brute force; their governments were of the simplest kind, growing, in most instances, out of the influence of aged patriarchs or veteran chiefs; their arts were few and rude; their sciences consisted of a few phenomena, perverted to superstitious purposes; their religion, though based upon important revelations, was obscured, if not obliterated, by vain imaginations. The little knowledge which they possessed was transmitted only by tradition, as they had no written language. Their wealth was poverty, their courage ferocity, their wisdom superstition, their religion idolatry. God was the only teacher, and it was but now and then that he opened heaven and let down a truth upon them.
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