relative value
of different kinds of knowledge for purposes of discipline. This
division of our subject we are obliged to treat with comparative
brevity; and happily, no very lengthened treatment of it is needed.
Having found what is best for the one end, we have by implication found
what is best for the other. We may be quite sure that the acquirement of
those classes of facts which are most useful for regulating conduct,
involves a mental exercise best fitted for strengthening the faculties.
It would be utterly contrary to the beautiful economy of Nature, if one
kind of culture were needed for the gaining of information and another
kind were needed as a mental gymnastic. Everywhere throughout creation
we find faculties developed through the performance of those functions
which it is their office to perform; not through the performance of
artificial exercises devised to fit them for those functions. The Red
Indian acquires the swiftness and agility which make him a successful
hunter, by the actual pursuit of animals; and through the miscellaneous
activities of his life, he gains a better balance of physical powers
than gymnastics ever give. That skill in tracking enemies and prey which
he had reached after long practice, implies a subtlety of perception far
exceeding anything produced by artificial training. And similarly in all
cases. From the Bushman whose eye, habitually employed in identifying
distant objects that are to be pursued or fled from, has acquired a
telescopic range, to the accountant whose daily practice enables him to
add up several columns of figures simultaneously; we find that the
highest power of a faculty results from the discharge of those duties
which the conditions of life require it to discharge. And we may be
certain, _a priori_, that the same law holds throughout education. The
education of most value for guidance, must at the same time be the
education of most value for discipline. Let us consider the evidence.

One advantage claimed for that devotion to language-learning which forms
so prominent a feature in the ordinary _curriculum_, is, that the memory
is thereby strengthened. This is assumed to be an advantage peculiar to
the study of words. But the truth is, that the sciences afford far wider
fields for the exercise of memory. It is no slight task to remember
everything about our solar system; much more to remember all that is
known concerning the structure of our galaxy. The number of