382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



psychology unite in crying out against the waste of the years 

 from three to six. Says Prof. Bain, in his Education as a Sci- 

 ence : " The brain grows with great rapidity up to seven years of 

 age. It then attains an average weight of forty ounces in the 

 male ; from that time it grows, but at a diminishing rate, till 

 twenty, when it has nearly attained its greatest size." It would 

 seem pretty clear that there is some connection between intellect- 

 ual power and brain-growth. Whatever it can take hold of, it 

 can fix and ingrain with an intensity proportionate to its rate of 

 growth, and we begin too late if we allow time to pass by when 

 good and useful impressions could be made with perfect safety 

 to physical and mental health, and nearly all thoughtful teachers 

 and psychologists agree that for certain classes of impressions 

 the first six or seven years of life are worth all the rest put to- 

 gether : it is at this period that curiosity to see and to know is at 

 its intensest." 



In the town of Christchurch, England, we hear of children 

 under six put to making the delicate chains that connect the 

 mainsprings of watches to the works, because when older their 

 fingers are too large and clumsy ; and of still smaller ones in 

 London who are made to rub in the nitrate of silver used in dye- 

 ing sealskins, because their tiny slender fingers can pass effect- 

 ively in and out among the hairs ; but there can be no delight in 

 this work to the poor child-slave, such as is felt in the kinder- 

 garten, where, seated at a table in company with others of his own 

 age, the child plaits strips of straw or leather or colored paper, or 

 models from clay a nest of birds and its eggs, or forms a minia- 

 ture house and garden and fence, from pretty materials after a pat- 

 tern of his own designing, in which his mind has passed through 

 the natural stages of perception, observation, comparison, judg- 

 ment, conclusion, and production. Then a pretty song, descriptive 

 of some incident or process, in which all join, is followed by mild 

 gymnastic exercises adapted to the childish frame, and thus, as 

 the Baroness von Billow says: "In playful work or workful 

 play the child finds a relief for, and a satisfaction of, his active 

 impulses, and receives an elementary groundwork for all later 

 work, whether artistic or professional." Many of the articles made 

 are intended as special gifts for some birthday or for Christmas, 

 or they are sold to procure the means of dressing a Christmas 

 tree for some poor or sick child, for it is one of the fundamental 

 principles of the system to teach the child consideration for others, 

 and also to give him a true respect for useful work " work which 

 is at the same time a fulfillment of duty is the only true basis of 

 moral culture." But it is necessary that such work should satisfy 

 the child's instinct of love, and the object of it must be to give 

 pleasure to others, and a system of education such as is demanded 



