CHILDREN LEARNING TO READ AND WRITE. 387 



well-known fact that a child's powers, whether physical or mental, 

 ripen in a certain rather definite order. There is, for instance, a 

 certain time in the life of the infant when the motor mechanism of 

 the legs ripens, before which the child can not be taught to walk, 

 while after that time he can not be kept from walking. Again, 

 at the age of seven, for instance, there is a mental readiness for some 

 things and an unreadiness for others. The brain is then very impres- 

 sionable and retentive, and a store of useful material, both motor and 

 sensory, may be permanently acquired with great economy of effort. 

 The imagination is active, and the child loves to listen to narration, 

 whether historical or mythical, which plays without effort of his will 

 upon his relatively small store of memory images. The powers of 

 analysis, comparison, and abstraction are little developed, and the 

 child has only a limited ability to detect mathematical or logical rela- 

 tions. The power of voluntary attention is slight, and can be exerted 

 for only a short time. All this may be stated physiologically by 

 saying that the brain activity is sensory and motor, but not central. 

 The sensory and motor mechanism has ripened, but not the associa- 

 tive. The brain is hardly more than a receiving, recording, and 

 reacting apparatus. It would be inaccurate, however, to express this 

 psychologically by saying that perception, memory, and will are the 

 mental powers that have ripened at the age of seven. This would be 

 true only if by perception we mean not apperception, which involves 

 a considerable development of associative readiness, but mere passive 

 apprehension through the senses, and if by memory we mean not 

 recollection, but mere retentiveness for that which interests, and if 

 by will we mean not volition, but only spontaneous movement and 

 readiness to form habits of action, including a large number of in- 

 stinctive movement psychoses, such as imitation, play, and language 

 in its spoken form. 



Following out, then, somewhat as above, the psychology of the 

 child, what kind of education would be particularly adapted to his 

 stage of development? We ask not what can the child be taught, 

 but what studies are for him most natural and therefore most eco- 

 nomical. In the first place, from the development of the senses and 

 the perceptive power above described, we infer that the child is ready 

 to acquire a knowledge of the world of objects around him through the 

 senses of sight, hearing, touch, temperature, taste, and smell. His 

 education will have to do with real things and their qualities, rather 

 than with symbols which stand for things. If we wish a general term 

 for this branch of instruction, we may call it natural science, or, to 

 distinguish it from science in its more mature form as the study 

 of laws and causes, we may call it natural history, or, more briefly, 

 Nature study. Although the appropriateness and economy of this 



