ht whose
thorough mastery in the lower grades is necessary to successful
progress. They are the important and central ideas of the subject. It
was a marked quality of Pestalozzi to sift out these simple
fundamentals and to master them. It is for us to make these simple
elements intelligible and interesting by the use of concrete _types_
and illustrations drawn from nature and from human life. If we speak
of history and nature as the two chief subjects of study, the simple,
fundamental relations of persons to each other in society, and the
simple, typical objects, forces, and laws of nature constitute the
basis of all knowledge. These elements we desire to master. But to
make them attractive to children, they should not be presented in bald
and sterile outlines, but in typical forms. All actions and human
relations must appear in attractive _personification_.

Persons speak and act and virtues shine forth in them. We do not study
nature's laws at first, but the beautiful, _typical life forms_ in
nature, the lily, the oak, Cinderella, and William Tell. For children,
then, the underlying ideas and principles of every study, in order to
start the interest, must be revealed in the most beautiful illustrative
forms which can be furnished by nature, poetry, and art. The story of
William Tell, although it comes all the way from the Alps and from the
distant traditional history of the Swiss, is one of the best things
with which to illustrate and impress manliness and patriotism. The
fairy stories for still younger children, are the best means for
teaching kindness or unselfishness, because they are so chaste, and
beautiful, and graceful, even to the child's thought. The most
attractive type-forms and life-personifications of fundamental ideas in
history and nature are the really interesting objects of study for
children. To put it in a simple, practical form--objects and human
actions, if well selected, are the best means in the world to excite
curiosity and the strong spirit of inquiry. While dwelling upon this
thought of the attractiveness of type-forms as personified in things or
persons, we catch a glimpse of a far-reaching truth in education.

The idea of _culture epochs_, as typical of the steps of progress in
the race, and also of the periods of growth in the child, offers a deep
perspective into educational problems. In the progress of mankind from
a primitive state of barbarism to the present state of cu