7 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



into action are the perceptions or senses ; and for their exercise, certain 

 organs, as the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the skin, are provided. 

 Through these organs the education of the infant takes place, begin- 

 ning at birth, and even, as there is good evidence for believing, before 

 birth. Were it not for these instruments, as they may be called, no 

 single point of knowledge could be acquired, no idea formed. The 

 brain, no matter how perfect its organization in other respects, might 

 as well, so far as thought, feeling, and all relations with the external 

 world are concerned, be a block of wood. 



The intellect of the infant is immature, for the reason that the part 

 of the brain which is concerned in the process of elaborating the high- 

 er qualities of the mind, is in a far more imperfect state of develop- 

 ment than is that part which has direct relations with the organs of 

 the special senses. The perceptions and the ideas that are elaborated 

 from them give all the exercise to the inchoate brain that it requires 

 for its full development. Through the perceptions the systematic edu- 

 cation of the child should be almost exclusively conducted during the 

 first ten or twelve years of life, and there should be no set lessons to 

 worry his power of attention, to spur his understanding, or to tax his 

 memory. He should be taught how to acquire knowledge by the use 

 of his senses, and there are facts enough surrounding him on all sides 

 to keep him as much engaged as is proper. His own reflections, started 

 into activity, as they will be by his perceptions and by the questions 

 he will ask, will do the rest. He will learn to read almost impercepti- 

 bly, of his own accord, with scarcely a word of instruction. If he does 

 not begin to look at books till he is ten years old, he will, by the time 

 a year has elapsed, read better than the child that has begun to learn 

 his letters at three or four. He starts in the race with an unwearied 

 and a better developed brain, and in the long run through life will win 

 more prizes than his precocious competitor. 



It is astonishing to find how greatly the perceptions of children are 

 neglected by those who have them in charge. I have frequently been 

 struck with the fact that even pupils who are considered to be well 

 advanced do not know how to use, with even moderate ability, their 

 sense-organs. I met not long ago with a boy of ten years who had 

 mastered, to the satisfaction of his admiring parents, several branches 

 of knowledge ; and yet, when shown a picture in a child's book, told to 

 look at it closely for a minute, and then to tell what he had seen, could 

 name only a man, a horse, and a tree. His little sister, seven years 

 old, who did not know how to read, and who was regarded by the 

 father and mother as being somewhat stupid, saw, under like circum- 

 stances, a man, a horse, a tree, two little birds on the ground, a cat 

 crawling through the bushes and about to spring on them, a house, a 

 woman standing in the door, and a well at the side of the house. I 

 had the satisfaction of telling the parents that at sixteen she would 

 know a good deal more than would the boy at that age, provided she 



