development of the psychic life of the
child. With such objects at his disposal, every teacher may realize
the ideal of _liberty in the school_.

This long, occult experiment--suggested to me, as I have already said,
by Itard and Seguin--is, in fact, my initial contribution to
education.

All this preparatory work has served for the determination of the
method now well known, but it is also the key to its continuation.

* * * * *

=The material of development is necessary only as a starting point=.--In
the organization of the external means of development, there remains a
material impress of the internal development, and of that which the
soul needs in its progress, during its course, and in its flights. The
material part does not contain the impress of the whole soul, any more
than the impress of the foot is the impress of the whole body; the
aviation-ground is not the sphere of action proper to the aeroplane,
but it is the part of _terra-firma_ necessary for flight, and it is
also the resting-place, the refuge, the _hangar_ to which the
aeroplane must always return. Thus in psychical formation there is a
necessary material part from which the spirit rises, and where it
should find repose, refuge, and a point of support, Without this it
could not grow and rise "freely."

In order that it may be a true support it ought "to reproduce its
forms" and contain them in the part corresponding to the peculiar
functions of the material aid. Thus, for instance, in the first period
of the psychical life, the material corresponds to the primitive
exercises of the senses--it is in quality and quantity determined by
the sensory needs given by nature--and permits an exercise of the
activities sufficient to _mature_ a superior psychical state of
observation and abstraction. _Vice versa_, nothing corresponds in the
material to the subsequent career which the childish spirit
accomplishes with such delight and with so much acquisition of
knowledge. But we then see the spirit eager for higher kinds of
exercise--and now we witness the same primitive phenomenon of
attention, which will exercise itself henceforth upon the alphabet and
arithmetical material, repeating in a more complex form methodical
exercises of the intelligence by linking auditory images with the
visible and motor images of the spoken and written word; and in the
positive study of quantities, proportions, and number. The same
concomitant phenomena of