ervade and regulate the conduct of those that are less
active. A careful appliance of this principle of individuation,
therefore, is always of importance in education; but it ought never to
be forgotten, that it is more peculiarly valuable and necessary at the
commencement, than at any other period of a child's progress in
learning. We shall advert to a few of the methods by which it may be
applied in ordinary school education, in contrast with some instances in
which it is neglected.

In teaching the alphabet to children, the principle of individuation is
indispensable; and its neglect has been productive of serious and
permanent mischief. A child of good capacity, by a proper attention to
this principle, will, with pleasure and ease, learn the names and forms
of the letters, with the labour of only a few hours;[15] while, by
neglecting the principle, the same child would, after years of
irritation and weariness, be still found ignorant of its alphabet. The
overlooking of the principle at this period has done an immense deal of
injury to the cause of education. It has, at the very starting post in
the race of improvement, quenched and destroyed all the real, as well as
the imaginary delights of learning and knowledge. It has given the tyro
such an erroneous but overwhelming impression of the difficulties and
miseries which he must endure in his future advance, that the disgust
then created has often so interwoven itself with his every feeling, that
education has during life appeared to him the natural and necessary
enemy to every kind of enjoyment.

It used to be common, and the practice may still we believe be found
lingering among some of the lovers of antiquity, to make a child
commence at the letter A, and proceed along the alphabet without
stopping till he arrived at Z; and this lesson not unfrequently included
both the alphabets of capitals and small letters. Now the cruelty of
such an exercise with a child will at once be apparent, if we shall only
change its form. If a teacher were to read over to an infant twice a-day
a whole page or paragraph _without stopping_ of Caesar or Cicero in
Latin, and demand that on hearing it he shall learn it, we could at once
judge of the difficulty, and the feelings of a volatile mind chained to
the constant and daily repetition of such a task; and if this exercise
were termed its "education," we can easily conceive the amount of
affection that the child would learn to cherish