ei Bambini_) is to produce _disciplined children_.

It is this internal organization which gives them a special "type," or
character, the type or character _required_ to continue the free
exercise of activities for the _conquests of culture_ in successive
stages.

The elementary school period presents itself insensibly as a
continuation of the "Children's Houses." In these, _behavior is a
habit_ superposed on and fused with the earlier _habit of work_.
Henceforth it will be sufficient to present the material of further
culture, and the child, gradually exercising himself upon it, will
pass from one intellectual stage of culture to another.

The difference shown in the successive ages arises from an
intellectual interest which is no longer merely the impulse to
exercise oneself by repetition of the exercises, but is a higher
interest directed to the work itself, and tending to complete an
external work, or to complete a branch of knowledge as a whole. Thus
the child creates and seeks for things organized in themselves; for
instance, he desires to compose a design by means of combinations of
geometrical figures with the metal insets, and devotes himself to this
work with the greatest intensity until he has completed it. Again, we
see a child occupied for seven or eight consecutive days with the same
work. Another child becomes interested in the potentialities of
numbers or in the arithmetical frame, and perseveres with the same
work for days, until his knowledge of it has matured.

Upon a basis of interior order produced by internal organization, the
mind then builds up its castle with the same leisurely calm with which
a living organism grows spontaneously after birth.

We can give but a primary idea at present of the _practical
possibility_ of determining _average levels_ of interior development
according to age. We shall further require many perfect experiments,
in which homogeneous children, completely suitable environment, and
trained teachers will afford adequate material for observation. Then
students will be able to undertake a scientific work, which will
perhaps be characterized by a precision superior even to that with
which it is at present possible to measure the body, and give the
mathematical averages of growth.

We must consider, however, that the indications available to-day
represent a long, systematic toil, and that they rest upon the still
greater labor of finding external material means for natu