own steps
while learning to walk. So the child is emboldened to send out its
young, unpractised thoughts, by the confidence it has in the guidance
and protection of its teacher. To acquire and retain the proper
ascendancy over the mind of a child, two things are essential, ample
knowledge and entire honesty. Shallowness and pretension may mislead for
a while. But to hold a child firmly and permanently, the teacher must
abound in knowledge, and must have thoroughly honest convictions.

The next condition to great teaching power is confidence in one's self.
A timid, irresolute, hesitating utterance of one's own convictions fails
to produce conviction in the minds of others. I do not recommend
self-conceit. It is not necessary to be dogmatic. Yet a certain style of
self-assertion, bordering very closely upon these qualities, is needed
in the teacher. In the higher regions of science and opinion, there are
of course many points about which no one, at least no one well informed,
would undertake to speak with authority. Such subjects it becomes us all
to approach with reverent humility, as at the best only inquirers after
truth. But the case is very different with teachers of the common
branches concerned in our present remarks. On these points the teacher
ought to have a certainty and a readiness of knowledge, so as to be
thoroughly self-reliant before the class. Teaching is like fighting.
Self-reliance is half the battle.

Equally important with the former is it to have the affection of one's
pupils. Writers on metaphysics now-a-days dwell much, and very properly,
on the influence of the body upon the mind, and the necessity of a
healthy condition of the former in order to the full clearness and
strength of our intellectual apprehensions. There is a still more
intimate connection between our moral emotions and our mental action.
The wish is father to the thought, in more senses than that intended by
Shakspeare. If the intellect is the seeing power of the soul, the
affections are the atmosphere through which we look. The same object may
appear to us very differently, as it is seen through the colorless
medium of pure intellectual perception, or as it is enlarged and
glorified by the mellowing haze of fond affection, or as it is distorted
and obscured by the mists of prejudice and hate. When a child has a
thorough dislike for a subject or for his teacher, the difficulty of
learning is very greatly increased. Not only is the