AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 477 



itself. She was sent to the grocer's to buy a bushel of apples, com- 

 pared quarts, pecks, etc., together, and was never troubled with the 

 senseless memorization of tables. 



After knowledge of the rainbow and the points of the compass, the 

 third cosmic notion acquired was that of perspective. This was first 

 learned by watching ships passing over the water near which the child 

 was playing, and observing their diminution of size as the distance in- 

 creased. This observation made a profound impression upon the child ; 

 it was, perhaps, the first time that she learned that appearances do not 

 always correspond to the reality of things, and that simple perceptions 

 must be constantly controlled by an effort of the reasoning intellect. 

 A year later, thus, when the child was five years old, the subject of 

 perspective was reviewed in a different connection. She tried to draw 

 a cube, and was shown the device by which a slanting line is made to 

 represent a retreat from the foreground to a distance. This new dis- 

 covery proved as exciting as the first had been, and it was speedily 

 tested on all the pictures hanging in the room. On the first occasion, 

 perspective had appeared like a great and astonishing fact of the ex- 

 ternal universe ; on the second, like an immense achievement of the 

 human intellect, which had thus contrived to accomplish the appar- 

 ently impossible namely, the representation of solid objects on a flat 

 surface. The lifting of such large horizons makes epochs in the history 

 of the intellect ! The study was not confined to the form or line, but ex- 

 tended to observation of the effect of li^ht and shade the darkness of a 

 receding surface, the brightness of the nearest point of a spherical sur- 

 face, etc. Then the child reproduced these effects in her own drawing. 



At this time the child began the study of geographical maps, as 

 another method of emphasizing space conceptions. For so young a 

 child the dissecting map was much simpler than would have been the 

 attempt to make actual surveys of familiar localities, as is sometimes 

 recommended. These were deferred till a little later. By the aid of 

 the dissecting map, the child learned the outline of each of the United 

 States, and their exact relations to each other, while still quite unable 

 to read the names printed upon the models. In putting the map to- 

 gether, the compass was again brought into requisition, and the table 

 on which the map was constructed turned until it faced the real north. 

 The relative situation of places was always learned by reference to the 

 compass, and not by arbitrary signs. 



With so young a child it was impossible to associate much real in- 

 formation with these unknown states whose geometrical outlines she 

 studied ; therefore, every facility was offered to establish associations 

 of fantasy, either with the shape of the pieces or with the names, as- 

 sociation which the child usually discovered for herself. Thus, she de- 

 scribed Virginia as a kneeling camel ; Texas, for some reason which I 

 could not appreciate, as a man leaning on his pipe ; Maine, as a dog's 

 head ; Tennessee, as a boy's sled, etc. 



