EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 393 



3. The cumulation of the instances is essential to the driving home 

 of a generality. A continuous, undistracted iteration of the point of 

 agreement is the only way to produce an adequate impression of a 

 great general idea. I cannot now consider the various ol)Stacles en- 

 countered in this attempt, nor explain how seldom it can he adhered 

 to in the highest examples. It must suffice to remark that tlie inter- 

 est special to tlie individual examples is perpetually carrying off tiie 

 attention ; and pupil and master aie both liable to be turned aside by 

 the seduction. 



There is another aspect of the power of similarity, under which it 

 is a valuable aid to memory or retention. Wlien we have to learn 

 an exercise absolutely new, we must ingrain every step by the plastic 

 adhesiveness of the brain, and must give time and oj^portunity for the 

 adhesive links to be matured. But wlien we come to an exercise con- 

 taining parts already acquired by the plastic operation, w^e are saved 

 the labor of forging fresh links as regards these, and need only to 

 master what is new to us. When we have knoAvn all about one plant, 

 we can easily learn the other plants of the same species or genus; we 

 need only to master the points of variety. 



The bearing of this circumstance on mental groAvth nnist be ap- 

 parent at once. After a certain number of acquirements in the various 

 regions of study manual art, language, visible pictures nothing that 

 occurs is absolutely new ; the amount of novel matter is continually 

 decreasing as oar knowledge increases. Our adhesive faculty is not 

 improving as we grow in years ; very much the contrary : but our 

 facility in taking in new knowledge improves steadily; the fact being 

 that the knowledge is so little new that the forging of fresh adhesions 

 is reduced to a very limited compass. The most original air of music 

 that the most original genius could compose would be very soon 

 learned by an instructed musician. 



In the practice of the schoolmaster's art, this great fact will be 

 perpetually manifesting itself. The operation can be aided and 

 guided in those cases where the agreement really existing is not felt. 

 It is one of the teaching arts to make the pupils see the old in the 

 new, as far as the agreement reaches ; and to pose them upon this 

 very circumstance. The obstacles are the very same as already de- 

 sci-ibed, and the means of overcoming them the same. Orderly juxta- 

 position is requsite for matters of comidexity ; and we may have also 

 to counterwork the attractions of individuality, 



CoNSTRUCTivEXEss. In many parts of our education, the stress lies 

 not in simple memory, or the tenacious holding of what has been pre- 

 sented to the mind, but in making us perform some new operation, 

 something that we were previously unable to do. Such are the first 

 stages of our instruction in speaking, in writing, and in all the me- 

 chanical or manual arts. So also in the higlier intellectual processes, 

 as in the imagining of wdiat we have not seen. I do not go so far as 



