as the
new-born infant whose food is rationally regulated, is silent and
tranquil during the two hours of digestion and assimilation, and cries
out the moment the hour for a fresh meal has struck, so do these
children "ask for help," ask for "new materials," new "forms of work,"
as soon as they have accomplished their mysterious phenomena of
internal maturation, and ask for them _determinately_, indicating
_their most immediate need_, just as one in physical want would be
able to state distinctly whether he were hungry, thirsty, or sleepy. A
child, in like manner, asks for reading, or grammatical exercises, or
means for observing Nature. His sensibility manifests itself in a
lucid and intense desire, to which the teacher has only to respond.

It is evident that some _external_ basis is necessary in the
progressive development of such phenomena, and that the teacher, who
is to respond to the requests of the child in conscious evolution,
cannot do so adequately by haphazard means; he must be guided by
conditions previously determined by experience. In other words, those
external means already alluded to several times, that _staircase_, the
steps of which lead the soul upwards, must have been already
_established by experience_, just as all the preceding means of the
first development of the infant were established.

The construction of the ascending stairway, of the external means of
support for the soul in process of evolution, is gradually amplified,
like an inverted cone, the apex of which touches the very beginnings
of psychical life, resting upon that primitive impulse which attracts
the child of two and a half to the sensory stimuli, just as hunger
leads the new-born infant to perform the wonderful complex action of
sucking. And as these external means multiply, they are complicated
more and more by the growing psychical needs of the child, and
comprise within themselves the principles of culture.

The highest external organization is not based solely upon
psychological necessities, but also upon those factors which take into
account the cultural aspect itself. Each subject of study, as, for
instance, arithmetic, grammar, geometry, natural science, music,
literature, should be presented by means of external objects upon a
well-defined systematic plan. The essentially psychological character
of the preliminary work must now be supplemented by the collaboration
of specialists in each subject, in order to ensure th