tiveness; fourth, illustrations based upon
his experience. The teacher cannot be too careful to consider what is
of interest to a child. We cannot measure the interests of a child by
the interests of an adult. Here the study of child nature is the only
safe and adequate guidance.

#40. How Knowledge Reaches the Soul.#--There are but five gateways to
the soul of a child, called the senses:--Seeing, hearing, touching,
tasting, smelling. There are no other channels of approach. Whatever
increases the breadth of this sense-approach in a subject of study
increases the interest of the learner in that subject. If I tell a
child about a _ball_, I utilize his sense of hearing; if I show him a
ball, at the same time I describe it, I utilize seeing and hearing; if
I hand him a ball, as I describe it, I utilize touching, seeing, and
hearing. A single fact reaching consciousness through the senses and
recognized in consciousness is called a percept or a particular
notion. It is sometimes called an idea. The soul in giving expression
to an idea uses a word or some other sign for the idea. Thus words are
the signs of ideas.

#41.# When other facts of a similar character reach consciousness, and
are identified there with the first percept, the percept becomes a
concept, general notion or general idea, just as the percept is an
individual idea; that is, the percept stands for one object
apprehended in consciousness; the concept stands for a group of
similar objects under one name apprehended in consciousness. All the
common nouns are concepts just as all proper nouns are percepts. For
example, in the sentence, "Washington was a brave man," it is plain
that "Washington" is a particular idea or percept and "man" is a
general idea or concept.

#42. Judgment and Reasoning.#--The aim of the teacher is, first, to
secure clear percepts, and then rapidly to change these percepts into
concepts, which is only another way of saying that good teaching
relates the things in the soul in such a way as to give the child the
fewest possible terms with which to carry the largest possible number
of particular facts. Concepts are the shorthand of the soul's
language. When these concepts are compared and their agreement or
disagreement noted the soul is forming judgments. When these judgments
are expressed in language the soul is forming sentences. When these
judgments are compared and their agreement or disagreement noted, the
soul is reasoning. Senten