he attempt to combine prematurely these two aims will
result in the imperfect attainment of both. During the earlier stages of
education the main interest must be in the construction for its own sake
of the language system or the number system, and while the real interest
may be introduced it must always be kept subsidiary to the main
interest--must first of all be taught for its own sake, and the
instrumental art only used for its furtherance in so far as the
acquirement of the former is not obstructed. _E.g._, the placing of
geography and history Readers in the hands of the child while he is
still struggling with the difficulties of language construction can only
result in the history and geography being imperfectly understood and the
organisation of the language system being delayed and hindered.

Once the elementary and subsidiary systems have been fairly well
organised and established, their function as means for the furtherance
of real interests should occupy a larger share of the child's attention
and of the time of the school. These real interests, however, must in
every case and at every stage be taught at first for their own sake, and
thereafter their relation to the instrumental art explained and applied.
Gradually, as they become better organised and more firmly established,
the elementary arts occupy a smaller and smaller share of attention,
until finally they function automatically, and the whole attention can
be directed to the furtherance of the real interests to which the
elementary arts are the indispensable means.

Hence we note three stages in the elementary education of the child--the
stage preceding the formal instruction in the elementary arts; the stage
in which the formal instruction should predominate and receive the
greater share of the child's attention; the stage in which the
elementary systems having been in great measure organised and
established, they may be utilised as means to the furtherance of the
real interests. The first stage corresponds to the Infant or
Kindergarten age: here the main object is to build up in the mind of the
child systems of ideas about the things of his environment; to extend,
by conversation and by reading to the child, the vocabulary of his own
language; to give him practice in the combining and recombining of
concrete groups of things, and to introduce him to a knowledge of the
various language forms in a concrete shape.

In the second stage, and here the wo