reatise on education, which we do not purpose. The foregoing outlines
of plans for exercising the perceptions in early childhood, for
conducting object-lessons, for teaching drawing and geometry, must be
considered simply as illustrations of the method dictated by the general
principles previously specified. We believe that on examination they
will be found not only to progress from the simple to the complex, from
the indefinite to the definite, from the concrete to the abstract, from
the empirical to the rational; but to satisfy the further requirements,
that education shall be a repetition of civilisation in little, that it
shall be as much as possible a process of self-evolution, and that it
shall be pleasurable. The fulfilment of all these conditions by one type
of method, tends alike to verify the conditions, and to prove that type
of the method the right one. Mark too, that this method is the logical
outcome of the tendency characterising all modern improvements in
tuition--that it is but an adoption in full of the natural system which
they adopt partially--that it displays this complete adoption of the
natural system, both by conforming to the above principles, and by
following the suggestions which the unfolding mind itself gives:
facilitating its spontaneous activities, and so aiding the developments
which Nature is busy with. Thus there seems abundant reason to conclude,
that the mode of procedure above exemplified, closely approximates to
the true one.

* * * * *

A few paragraphs must be added in further inculcation of the two general
principles, that are alike the most important and the least attended to;
namely, the principle that throughout youth, as in early childhood and
in maturity, the process shall be one of self-instruction; and the
obverse principle, that the mental action induced shall be throughout
intrinsically grateful. If progression from simple to complex, from
indefinite to definite, and from concrete to abstract, be considered the
essential requirements as dictated by abstract psychology; then do the
requirements that knowledge shall be self-mastered, and pleasurably
mastered, become tests by which we may judge whether the dictates of
abstract psychology are being obeyed. If the first embody the leading
generalisations of the _science_ of mental growth, the last are the
chief canons of the _art_ of fostering mental growth. For manifestly, if
the steps in our