PRODUCTION OF STUPIDITY IN SCHOOLS. 139 



wild animals, excepting for the advantage of an occasional beating, 

 and their nervous centres have received few impressions unconnected 

 with the simplest wants of existence. Coincidently with an entire 

 absence of intellectual cultivation, they usually display a degree of sen- 

 sational acuteness not often found in the nurseries of the wealthy, and 

 arising from that habitual shifting for themselves in small matters 

 which is forced upon them by the absence of the tender and refined 

 affection that loves to anticipate the wants of infancy. They go to 

 school for a brief period, and the master strives to cram them with as 

 much knowledge as possible. They learn easily, but they learn only 

 sounds, and seldom know that it is possible to learn any thing more. 

 In many cottages there are children who, as they phrase it, " repeat a 

 piece " at the half-yearly examination. "We say, from frequent experi- 

 ments, that they will learn for this purpose a passage in any foreign 

 language as easily as in English ; or, that they will learn an English 

 paragraph backward way, if told to do so ; and that, in neither case, 

 will any curiosity be excited about the meaning of the composition. 

 In ordinary practice, the master explains what they repeat, saying this 

 means so-and-so ; and the pupils have sufficient sensational acuteness 

 to remember the sounds he utters, and to reproduce them when called 

 upon. They do not usually understand what "meaning" is. An 

 urchin may be able to say correctly that a word pointed out to him is 

 an adverb or a pronoun, may proceed to give a definition of either, 

 and examples of instances of its occurrence, and may produce an im- 

 pression that he understands all this, when the truth is that he has 

 only learned to make certain noises in a particular order, and when he 

 is unable to say any thing intelligible about the matter in language of 

 his own. Or he may repeat the multiplication-table, and even work 

 by it, saying that 7x8=56, without knowing what 56 is or what 7 

 times 8 means. He knows all about 7 or 8, not from schooling, but 

 from the lessons of life, from having had 7 nuts or 8 marbles ; but of 

 the 56 which is beyond his experience he knows nothing. The nature 

 of the mental operations of such children is perhaps as little known to 

 the teacher, to the vicar of the parish, or the kind ladies who take an 

 interest in the school, as the nature of the mental operations of the in- 

 habitants of Saturn. The adults distinctly understand a thing which 

 they feel to be very easy, and do not know that any children can talk 

 about it correctly without attaching an idea to their words. They of- 

 ten think the teaching satisfactory which enables the pupil to explain 

 things in set phrases. They do not realize the possibility that the 

 explanation may be as little understood as the statement which it 

 explains that it may be like the tortoise in the Hindoo myth, which 

 supports the elephant, but which, requh-ing support itself, only removes 

 the difficulty by a single step that it may be a second unknown quan- 

 tity balancing the first in the equation cc=y. Such, however, instead 

 of bare possibilities, are too frequently actual results. We have 



