's hand, and bidding it to learn; he addresses himself to those
faculties and powers of the child's mind, which bring it in relation with
the world in which it lives. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and
thence observation, judgment, perception, reason, memory, hope,
imagination, and the love of the beautiful are appealed to, developed and
strengthened by natural exercise, even as the organs and limbs of the body
are developed and strengthened by gymnastic and other appropriate
exercises.

Education, mental and physical, is but the ABSORPTION of surrounding
elements into the mind and body--an arrangement an assimilation of
materials so as to incorporate them into the being to whose nourishment
they are applied, just as the tree or plant assimilates to its growth and
subsistence the materials which it draws from the air and the soil.

It is thus apparent that a great change in the system and principles now
adopted in teaching is required, and if we change the principles we must,
of course, change the instruments. These are now adapted to the method of
teaching from WITHOUT inward. If we are to invert the system, and teach
from within outward, then must our means and appliances be adapted to this
change. The task, the forcing process, the stuffing and cramming must all
give way to the natural mental growth, fostered, cherished, unfolded by
culture, in accord with nature and with law. The inquiry then arises: What
are to be the new means and appliances for mental culture? We have but to
turn again to Nature as our teacher and our guide; her instincts are
unerring. The seed germinates and pushes forth its root from within
outward. The expansion or growth takes place by means of the elements
which it attracts to itself, when these are placed within its reach, and
towards which it stretches forth its organs. These elements it assimilates
into and makes a part of itself. This process of Nature, so familiar to
most of us, serves to illustrate exactly what should take place in
intellectual growth. The mind hungers and feels out for and is impelled by
a natural internal impulse to gather to itself the elements of knowledge;
the wise teacher steps forward and becomes to the germinating intellect
what the sun and dew and rain are to the plant. The mind must be fed in
conformity with its longings, its wants, its desires. "Blessed are they
that hunger and thirst after righteousness." The teacher develops this
hunger and thirst by