er and health will be improved by
the continual gratification resulting from a due supply of these
impressions which every child so greedily assimilates. Space, could it
be spared, might here be well filled by some suggestions towards a more
systematic ministration to these simplest of the perceptions. But it
must suffice to point out that any such ministration, recognising the
general law of evolution from the indefinite to the definite, should
proceed upon the corollary that in the development of every faculty,
markedly contrasted impressions are the first to be distinguished; that
hence sounds greatly differing in loudness and pitch, colours very
remote from each other, and substances widely unlike in hardness or
texture, should be the first supplied; and that in each case the
progression must be by slow degrees to impressions more nearly allied.

Passing on to object-lessons, which manifestly form a natural
continuation of this primary culture of the senses, it is to be
remarked, that the system commonly pursued is wholly at variance with
the method of Nature, as exhibited alike in infancy, in adult life, and
in the course of civilisation. "The child," says M. Marcel, "must be
_shown_ how all the parts of an object are connected, etc.;" and the
various manuals of these object-lessons severally contain lists of the
facts which the child is to be _told_ respecting each of the things put
before it. Now it needs but a glance at the daily life of the infant to
see that all the knowledge of things which is gained before the
acquirement of speech, is self-gained--that the qualities of hardness
and weight associated with certain appearances, the possession of
particular forms and colours by particular persons, the production of
special sounds by animals of special aspects, are phenomena which it
observes for itself. In manhood too, when there are no longer teachers
at hand, the observations and inferences hourly required for guidance
must be made unhelped; and success in life depends upon the accuracy and
completeness with which they are made. Is it probable, then, that while
the process displayed in the evolution of humanity at large is repeated
alike by the infant and the man, a reverse process must be followed
during the period between infancy and manhood? and that too, even in so
simple a thing as learning the properties of objects? Is it not obvious,
on the contrary, that one method must be pursued throughout? And is no