ten successively to a recitation on a given topic, conducted by
one hundred qualified and faithful instructors, would find the methods
and no-methods of introducing to the century of classes the truths of
this self-same subject to be--and we do not mean in the personal
element, which ought to vary, but in the radical substance and order of
the theme--quite as numerous as the workmen observed; in fact, a
conflicting and confusing display. Now, do causes, in any realm of
being, forbear to produce fruit in effects? Are the laws of psychologic
sequence less rigid and certain than those laws of physical sequence
which determine in material nature every phenomenon, from planet-paths
in space to the gathering of dew-drops on a leaf? If it were so, falsity
or confusion in intellectual method might be pronounced a thing of
trifling import, or wholly indifferent. But such suppositions are the
seemings only of postulates floating through the brains of Ignorance or
Un-heed, who really postulate nothing at all. If, on the contrary, we
admit this inflexible relation of cause and result in the mental, as
well as in the material world, and if we admit also that our
school-methods are yet fragmentary, varying and tentative, then we are
compelled to the conclusion, that at least the greater number of our
schools are falling short, in the time and with the outlay invested, of
doing their best and largest work, while in very many of our schools
there must be steadily going forward a positive and potent
mis-education!

If it be urged that these are in a degree deductive conclusions, let
them be submitted to the test of fact. At least two important
circumstances, it is admitted, will come in to complicate the inquiry:
first, one purpose of school training is to divert the forming mind in a
degree from sense toward thought, the latter being a less observable
sort of product than that curiosity and store of facts attendant on
activity of the merely perceptive powers; secondly, there is the growing
absorption of the mental powers with increase of age in the practical,
in meeting the necessities of life, which more and more displaces
intellectual activity as a set pursuit, and leaves it to be manifested
rather in the means than the ends, rather in the quality than in the
products of one's thinking, and, at the best, rather as an embellishment
than as the business of a career. And yet, in the mind which has passed
through a proper school-training