all its actions; in about twelve months it
has learned the most difficult art of balancing itself so as to walk, and
also to speak a few words; at from two to two and a half years of age,
only thirty months from birth, it has learned a language which it speaks,
and has become familiar with a vast number of things surrounding it. From
a state of entire ignorance it has in thirty months learned what would
fill volumes. Horses, cows, pigs, dogs, toys, whips, birds, people, trees,
houses, fruit, food, clothes, music, sounds, parents, friends, and a
thousand other things are all familiar to it. Without professional
teachers, almost without effort, all this valuable and indispensable
knowledge has been acquired, through the unconscious adoption on the part
of the mother of the true system of education--_e duco_--I lead forth, and
hence nurse, cherish, build up, develop.

The child feels or reaches out, like the tendril, to the material world,
seeking to make itself acquainted with that world; even the young infant
soon begins to observe closely, soon knows its mother from all other
persons, clings to her, loves her above all; soon it recognizes light from
darkness, sweet from bitter; soon, when it sees a dog it will recognize it
and jump with delight almost out of its mother's arms; it will show an
eager delight to watch the motions of the horse, and imitates the sounds
employed by adults when driving. He spreads forth the tentacles of his
feeble mind for knowledge, and his mind "grows by what it feeds upon," and
it is for those intrusted with the infant's training to respond
intelligently to the child's desire, to place within its reach the mental
food adapted to its digestion, to nourish and develop it so that its
mental hunger shall be at once gratified and excited anew.

It is here, and to this end, that the able teacher steps in, to perfect
the development of the future man and woman. He educates, by assisting the
natural unfolding of the intellectual germ, he places within reach of the
child-mind the food needed to its growth, and the child-mind reaches out
its tentacles and absorbs the nourishment offered to it. Thus the mind
grows from _within outward_, and the teacher aids its development, as the
careful husbandman by tilling and enriching the soil according to the
nature of the plant he cultivates, produces a healthy and fruitful plant.

The true teacher does not seek to teach by simply putting books into the
child