that, first, his whole time shall be
given to every scholar; and secondly, each scholar's mind shall be
exercised with every part of the lesson, and just as much when others
are reciting, as when it is his own time to recite. A teacher who can do
this is teaching every scholar, all the time, just as much as if he had
no scholar but that one.

Even this does not state the whole case. A scholar in such a class
learns more in a given time, than he would if he were alone and the
teacher's entire time were given exclusively to him. The human mind is
wonderfully quickened by sympathy. In a crowd each catches, in some
mysterious manner, an impulse from his fellows. The influence of
associated numbers, all engaged upon the same thought, is universally to
rouse the mind to a higher exercise of its powers. A mind that is dull,
lethargic, and heavy in its movements when moving solitarily, often
effects, when under a social and sympathetic impulse, achievements that
are a wonder to itself.

The teacher, then, who knows how thus to make a unit of twenty or thirty
pupils, really multiplies himself twenty or thirty-fold, besides giving
to the whole class an increased momentum such as always belongs to an
aggregated mass. I have seen a teacher instruct a class of forty in such
a way, as, in the first place, to secure the subordinate end of
ascertaining and registering with a sufficient degree of exactness how
much each scholar knows of the lesson by his own preparation, and
secondly, to secure, during the whole hour, the active exercise and
cooperation of each individual mind, under the powerful stimulus of the
social instinct, and of a keenly awakened attention. Such a teacher
accomplishes more in one hour than the slave of the individual method
can accomplish in forty hours. A scholar in such a class learns more in
one hour than he would learn in forty hours, in a class of equal numbers
taught on the other plan. Such teaching is labor-saving and time-saving,
in their highest perfection, employed upon the noblest of ends.

V.

ON OBSERVING A PROPER ORDER IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES.

Education may be defined to be the process of developing in due order
and proportion all the good and desirable parts of human nature. On this
point all educators are substantially agreed. Another truth, to which
there is a general theoretical assent, is, that, in the order in which
we develop the faculties, we should follow th