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An Inquiry Into the Influence of Physical Causes Upon the Moral Faculty
An Inquiry Into the Influence of Physical Causes Upon the Moral Faculty Author:Benjamin Rush Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: society and conversation, upon the animal spirits, becomes an exciting cause, and like the stroke of the flint upon the steel, renders the sparks of vice both ac... more »tive and visible. By removing men out of the reach of this exciting cause, they are often reformed, especially if they are confined long enough to produce a sufficient chasm in their habits of vice. Where the benefit of reflection, and instruction from books, can be added to solitude and confinement, their good effects are still more certain. To this philosophers and poets in every age have assented, by describing the life of a hermit as a life of passive virtue. 11. Connected with solitude, as a mechanical means of promoting virtue, Silence deserves to be mentioned in this place. The late Dr. Fothergill, in his plan of education for that benevolent institution at Ackworth, which was the last care of his useful life, says every thing that can be said in favour of this necessary discipline, in the following words : " To habituate children from their early infancy, to silence and attention, is of the greatest advantage to them, not only as a preparative to their advancement in a religious life, but as the groundwork of a well-cultivated understanding. To have the active minds of children put under a kind of restraint—to be accustomed to turn their attention from external objects, and habituated to a degree of abstracted quiet, is a matter of great consequence, and lasting benefit to them. Although it cannot be supposed, that young and active minds are always engaged in silence as they ought to be, yet to be accustomed thus to quietness, is no small point gained towards fixing a habit of patience, and'recollection, which seldom forsakes those who have been properly instructed in this entrance of the school of wisdom, durin...« less