i 3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



possessed also "by the lower animals, and are sufficient to explain all 

 the particulars of their conduct. 



It is manifest, therefore, that the education of a child may he con- 

 ducted, in the direction, and to the extent, in which it is possible to 

 educate a horse, a dog, or an elephant, without necessarily trenching 

 upon or at all arousing any faculty that is distinctly human in its 

 nature. The child, moreover, possesses an endowment, of a purely 

 sensational or animal kind, in wdrich brutes are deficient, namely, the 

 power (subsidiary to the gift of language) to remember a great num 

 ber of sounds, and to imitate them with facility ; so that, just to the 

 extent of this power, the sensational educability of the human race 

 exceeds that of the lower animals. 



It should be remembered, moreover, that the functional activity of 

 the sensorial tract of the encephalon is an absolute necessity of 

 animal existence ; and that, in men and brutes alike, it is provided for 

 by an energetic tendency to spontaneous development under tbe 

 influence of its appropriate excitants. In what may be termed the 

 natural life, a blind submission to the promptings of sensations, 

 present or remembered, would in all ordinary cases supply the wants, 

 or gratify the passions of man. It is only in life modified by human 

 aggregation that these promptings require to be controlled by an 

 exercise of will, guided by a prior exercise of judgment ; and, there- 

 fore, while Divine Providence has endowed the human race with sensa- 

 tional faculties that are called into vigorous action by daily wants or 

 by physical impressions from without, we may observe that the higher 

 powers of the mind, in a great majority of instances, cannot be ma- 

 tured excepting by assiduous cultivation. 



In this respect, however, there is probably a considerable original 

 diversity between individuals ; and we are much inclined to think that 

 herein consists the chief cause of gradations of ability among persons 

 who neither greatly surpass an average standard nor fall greatly short 

 of it. Observation teaches that it is far more easy in some children 

 than in others to carry instruction beyond the sense-perceptions, and 

 to call the intellect into activity ; but, it teaches, also, that the sup- 

 posed difficulty often arises from an improper selection or application 

 of the means employed, and is simply a failure to open a lock with a 

 wrong key. The apparently dull child not unfrequently receives the 

 necessary stimulus from a trivial circumstance, from a conversation, a 

 book, or a pursuit, and may grow into a gifted man ; while a parallel 

 transformation may be accomplished much later in life, under the 

 influence of some new opportunity for action. It is possible that, in 

 minds of the highest order, the intellectual faculties may possess the 

 character of spontaneity which is commonly limited to the sensorial 

 tract; but, in all ordinary cases, these faculties require to be excited in 

 the pupil by their presence and their activity in the teacher. 



The sensational and intellectual functions of the human brain are 



