FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 429 



grouped about some central truth as to enforce that truth at each recurrence, 

 while the same central truth will servo to bring from remotest memory most 

 of the facts that support it. 



For a familiar illustration take Geography — that usually miscellaneous col- 

 lector of isolated facts, astronomical, topographical, historical and statistical, 

 which most of us spend several years of our lives in remembering and forget- 

 ting, under tiie impression that at some future time such information may be 

 useful to us. We may take the same facts gathered about the main central 

 truths concerning the relation of a man's abode to his actions, then extended to 

 the elements of national power or weakness, and we shall have a group of sub- 

 jects, or topics, logically connected, easily applied, stimulating further re- 

 search and serving, like the index of a book, to recall your thoughts of years 

 long past. 



All studies are made a means of mental growth according as some such scien- 

 tific basis is found for them. Chemistry, with its wonderful array of facts, is 

 one of the best disciplinary studies, because those facts are so closely linked to 

 a few central principles as exact as mathematics. So the study of a strange 

 language, under proper teaching, gives a better understanding of the principles 

 of language than the same time spent upon our own, because these principles 

 are constantly illustrated by the effort needed to comprehend and express. In 

 such ways both sciences and languages are made to establish the habit of 

 thoughtfulness, while they also embrace a larger fund of information than 

 could be mastered by any other process. After these, the more strictly mental 

 sciences will help one to understand his methods of thinking and establish his 

 habits more firmly. 



•Such a course, for such a purpose, involves the element of time, and the 

 steady pull of years always outweighs the rapid spirt of cramming. In the 

 four to six years thus employed, say between the ages of fifteen and twenty- 

 one, this youth must be so occupied in daily labor with his hands as to main- 

 tain the spirit of industry and cultivate the tact so essential in any of the arts. 

 Such labor needs to be honest and earnest, and at the same time illustrative of 

 the principles mastered in study. It must be full of details, again and again 

 repeated, so that the work becomes an aiiplication of the new truth to a real 

 life. All the regularity, all the responsibility, all the accuracy must be re- 

 quired that would be in any apprenticeship. The whole must bring the stu- 

 dent into the great company of producers, under the general laws of production. 

 His work and wages must have their proper relation, and all the machinery of 

 strict accounts must accustom him to business habits. 



Such work can be found in many of the trades ; but, as I have already shown, 

 the tendency of most of the arts is to so subdivide labor as to narrow the field 

 of thought and action. This, for such a purpose as ours, cannot be done. 

 Whatever trade shall furnish such work must give to each student variety 

 enough to interest his thoughts in its many applications of his studies. Blended 

 with the daily practice, under the same corps of instructors, must be whatever 

 of purely technical study occupies a place in his course. How extensive this 

 ought to be will depend upon the time spent in gaining an education. It must 

 not exclude the discipline of scientific thought, and it must include enough to 

 make every day's labor more interesting and instructive. 



In this plan, of course, that constant practice of one motion till routine has 

 made it second nature, is postponed till this preliminary training is finished. 

 And yet, tlie every day toil in a variety of details has made those details 



