e leadings of nature,
cultivating in childhood those faculties which seem most naturally to
flourish in childish years, and reserving for maturer years the
cultivation of those faculties which in the order of nature do not show
much vigor until near the age of manhood, and which require for their
full development a general ripening of all the other powers. The
development of a human being is in some respects like that of a plant.
There is one stage of growth suitable for the appearance and maturity of
the leaf, another for the flower, a third for the fruit, and still a
fourth for the perfected and ripened seed.

The analogy has of course many limitations. In the human plant, for
instance, one class of faculties, after maturing, does not disappear in
order to make place for another class, as the flower disappears before
there can be fruit. Nor, again, is any class of faculties wanting
altogether until the season for their development and maturity. The
faculties all exist together--leaf, flower, fruit, and seed--at the same
time, but each has its own best time for ripening.

While these principles have received the general assent of educators,
there has been a wide divergence among them as to some of the practical
applications. Which faculties do most naturally ripen early in life, and
which late in life?

According to my own observation, the latest of the human powers in
maturing, as it is the most consummate, is the Judgment. Next in the
order of maturity, and next also in majesty and excellence, is the
Reasoning power. Reason is minister to the judgment, furnishing to the
latter materials for its action, as all the other powers, memory, fancy,
imagination, and so forth, are ministers to reason, and supply it with
its materials. The reasoning power lacks true vigor and muscle, the
judgment is little to be relied on, until we approach manhood. Nature
withholds from these faculties an earlier development, for the very
reason, apparently, that they can ordinarily have but scanty materials
for action until after the efflorescence of the other faculties. The
mind must first be well filled with knowledge, which the other faculties
have gathered and stored, before reason and judgment can have full scope
for action.

Going to the other end of the scale, I have as little doubt that the
earliest of all the faculties to bud and blossom, is the Memory.
Children not only commit to memory with ease, but they take actual
pleasure