n objects, the young child's store of old
experiences is mainly of objects and of their sensuous qualities and
uses. To teach the abstract and unfamiliar through these, therefore, is
an application of the law of apperception, since the object makes it
easier for the child's former knowledge to be related to the presented
problem.

=Limitations of Objective Method.=--It must be recognized, however, that
objective teaching is only a means to a higher end. The concrete is
valuable very often only as a means of grasping the abstract. The
progress of humanity has ever been from the sensuous and concrete to the
ideal and abstract. Not the objects themselves, but what the objects
symbolize is the important thing. It would be a pedagogical mistake,
then, to make instruction begin, continue, and end in the concrete. It
is evident, moreover, that no progress could be made through
object-teaching, unless the question and answer method is used in
conjunction.

THE ILLUSTRATIVE METHOD

=Characteristics of the Illustrative Method.=--In many cases it is
impossible or impracticable to bring the concrete object into the
school-room, or to take the pupils to see it outside. In such cases,
somewhat the same result may be obtained by means of some form of
graphic illustration of the object, as a picture, sketch, diagram, map,
model, lantern slide, etc. The graphic representation of an object may
present to the eye most of the characteristics that the actual object
would. For this reason pictures are being more and more used in
teaching, though it is a question whether teachers make as good use of
the pictures of the text-book, in geography for instance, as might be
made.

=Illustrative Method Involves Imagination.=--In the illustrative method,
however, the pupil, instead of being able to apply directly former
knowledge obtained through the senses, in interpreting the actual
object, must make use of his imagination to bridge over the gulf between
the actual object and the representation. When, for example, the child
is called upon to form his conception of the earth with its two
hemispheres through its representation on a globe, the knowledge will
become adequate only as the child's imagination is able to picture in
his mind the actual object out of his own experience of land, water,
form, and space, in harmony with the mere suggestions offered by the
model. It is evident, for the above reason, that the illustrative method
often dem