act the
attributes themselves, without any guidance or order. Thus they create
in a passive being an artificial chaos, more limited than that which
the natural world would offer.

The "objective" method now in use, which consists in presenting an
object and noting all its attributes--that is, describing it, is
nothing but a "sensory" variation on the customary mnemonic method;
instead of describing an absent object, a present object is described;
instead of the imagination alone working to effect its reconstruction,
the senses intervene; this is done so that the distinctive qualities
of the object itself should be better remembered. The passive mind
receives images, which are limited to the objects presented; and which
are "stored up" without any order. As a fact, every object may have
infinite attributes; and if, as often happens in object-lessons, the
origins and ultimate ends of the object itself are included among
these attributes, the mind has literally to range throughout the
universe. If, for instance, in an object lesson on coffee, which I
heard given in a Kindergarten school, the object is described and the
attention of the children directed to its size, its color, its shape,
its aroma, its flavor, its temperature; and then if the teacher goes
on to describe the plant and the manner in which the substance was
brought to Europe across the ocean, and, finally, lighting a
spirit-lamp, boils the water, grinds the berries and prepares the
beverage, the mind has been led to wander in infinite spaces, but the
subject has not been exhausted. For it would be possible to go on to
describe the exciting effects of coffee, caffeine, which is extracted
from the berry, and many other things. Such an analysis would spread
like spilt oil until finally dispersed, and the outcome would be of no
use in any way. If, indeed, we should ask a child so instructed: "What
is coffee, then?" he might well reply: "It is such a long story that I
cannot remember it." A notion so vague (I cannot certainly say so
complete!) fatigues and encumbers the mind and can never transform
itself into a dynamic excitation of similar associations. The efforts
the child makes will be, at the most, efforts of memory to recall the
history of coffee. If associations are formed in his mind, they will
be inferior associations of contiguity: his mind will wander from the
teacher who is speaking to the ocean that was traversed, to the
dining-table at home on whic