mnemonic images
(association); definition of the object deduced from preceding
judgments (system); new principles derived from the idea which is thus
deepened, and which will lead to practical application of a moral
order (method).

The teacher must guide the child's mind on these lines in every kind
of teaching; he must, however, never substitute his own intelligence
for that of the child, but rather make the child himself think, and
induce him to exercise his own activity. For instance, in the
association period, the master must not say: "Look at such and such
an object, and at such and such another; see how much alike they are,
etc...." He should ask the pupil: "What do you see when you look
around? Is there not something which is like, etc.?" Again, in the
definition period, the master should not say: "A bird is a vertebrate
animal covered with feathers; it has two limbs which have been
transformed into wings," but by rapid questions, corrections, and
analogies, he should induce the child to find the precise definition
for himself. If the mental process of Herbart's four periods is to
come naturally, it would be essential that great interest in the
object should exist; it is interest which would keep the mind amused,
or, as the famous pedagogist would say, plunged in the idea, and would
maintain it in a system nevertheless embracing multilateral ideas; and
hence it is necessary that "interest" should be awakened and should
persist in all instruction. It is well known that a pupil of Herbart's
must, to this end, supplement Herbart's four periods by a prior
period, that of interest; linking all new knowledge to the old, "going
from the known to the unknown," because what is absolutely new can
awake no interest.

"To make oneself interesting artificially," that is, interesting to
those who have no interest in us, is indeed a very difficult task; and
to arrest the attention hour after hour, and year after year, not of
one, but of a multitude of persons who have nothing in common with us,
not even years, is indeed a superhuman undertaking. Yet this is the
task of the teacher, or, as he would say, his "art": to make this
assembly of children whom he has reduced to immobility by discipline
follow him with their minds, understand what he says, and learn; an
internal action, which he cannot govern, as he governs the position
of their bodies, but which he must win by making himself interesting,
and by maintaining this int