necessary to let him follow these three stages all at
once, in one stage with one set of things, and in another stage with
another.

Everyone admits that the first thing a genius does with such a
convenient, three-part system, or chart for a soul, is to knock it
endwise. He does it because he can. Others would if they could. He
insists from his earliest days on doing all three parts, everything, one
set of things after the other--description, comparison, creation, and
original research sometimes all at once. He learns even words all ways
at once. All of these processes are applied to each thing that a genius
learns in his life, not the three parts of his life. One might as well
say to a child, "Now, dear little lad, your life is going to be made up
of eating, sleeping, and living. You must get your eating all done up
now, these first ten years, and then you can get your sleeping done up,
and then you can take a spell at living--or putting things together."

The first axiom of true pedagogics is that nothing can be taught except
the outside or letter of a thing. The second axiom is that there is
nothing gained in teaching a pupil the outside of a thing if he has not
the inside--the spirit or relations of it. Teachers do not dare to
believe this. They think it is true only of men of genius. They admit
that men of genius can be educated through the inside or by calling out
the spirit, by drawing out their powers of originality from the first,
but they argue that with common pupils this process should not be
allowed. They are not worthy of it. That is to say, the more ordinary
men are and the more they need brains, the less they shall be allowed to
have them.

Inasmuch, then, as the inside cannot be taught and there is no object in
teaching the outside, the question remains how to get the right inside
at work producing the right outside. This is a purely spiritual question
and brings us to the third axiom. Every human being born into the world
is entitled to a special study and a special answer all to himself. If,
as President Thwing very truly says, "The higher education as well as
the lower is to be organised about the unit of the individual student,"
what follows? The organisation must be such as to make it possible for
every teacher to study and serve each individual student as a special
being by himself. In other words, if this last statement of Dr. Thwing's
is to be acted on, it makes havoc with his first. It requi