ody can take the principle of
consideration of native powers into account without being struck by the
fact that these powers differ in different individuals. The difference
applies not merely to their intensity, but even more to their quality
and arrangement. As Rouseau said: "Each individual is born with
a distinctive temperament. We indiscriminately employ children of
different bents on the same exercises; their education destroys the
special bent and leaves a dull uniformity. Therefore after we have
wasted our efforts in stunting the true gifts of nature we see the
short-lived and illusory brilliance we have substituted die away, while
the natural abilities we have crushed do not revive."

Lastly, the aim of following nature means to note the origin, the
waxing, and waning, of preferences and interests. Capacities bud and
bloom irregularly; there is no even four-abreast development. We must
strike while the iron is hot. Especially precious are the first dawnings
of power. More than we imagine, the ways in which the tendencies of
early childhood are treated fix fundamental dispositions and condition
the turn taken by powers that show themselves later. Educational concern
with the early years of life--as distinct from inculcation of useful
arts--dates almost entirely from the time of the emphasis by Pestalozzi
and Froebel, following Rousseau, of natural principles of growth.
The irregularity of growth and its significance is indicated in the
following passage of a student of the growth of the nervous system.
"While growth continues, things bodily and mental are lopsided, for
growth is never general, but is accentuated now at one spot, now at
another. The methods which shall recognize in the presence of these
enormous differences of endowment the dynamic values of natural
inequalities of growth, and utilize them, preferring irregularity to the
rounding out gained by pruning will most closely follow that which
takes place in the body and thus prove most effective." 1 Observation of
natural tendencies is difficult under conditions of restraint. They
show themselves most readily in a child's spontaneous sayings and
doings,--that is, in those he engages in when not put at set tasks and
when not aware of being under observation. It does not follow that
these tendencies are all desirable because they are natural; but it does
follow that since they are there, they are operative and must be
taken account of. We must see to it t