948 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



stimulated by the promise of the most brilliant reward,, even there 

 such cases, though natuially more numerous than here, are only 

 exceptional still. In fact their system would almost seem to have 

 been expressly made for the production of these exceptions, and 

 nothing else, without the slightest thought of or legard for the 

 greatest good of the greatest number; for certainly it could not 

 have accomplitshed the thing better, if it had been really devised 

 with that deliberate intent. No system of performing the work 

 of education, or for performing any other work, can be called a 

 good system, which fails with the great majority and succeeds only 

 with the few. 



But then, if the ai'gument so often used in defense of our sj^s- 

 tem, derived from the great value of the jplassical knowledge it is 

 presumed to impart, be fallacious, is not at least that which rests 

 upon the disciplinary efficacy of classical study more substantial? 

 Upon this point, again, there is some reason to believe that our 

 educationists accept too readily what might be for what is. If 

 mental discipline consists in invigorating the mental faculties by 

 wholesome exercise, and in training them to habits of method in 

 exercise, it is indeed certain that the study of language, under- 

 taken at the suitable stage in the process of culture, must prove 

 a most efficacious instrumentality — perhaps the most efficacious 

 of all — for accomplishing this object. But to place before the 

 immature mind a subject which might possibl}^ later call into 

 exercise certain of its powers, say for instance comparison, judg- 

 ment, reasoning, is not by any means to insure that, under the 

 actual circumstances, it will do so. It may hardly awaken an 

 active faculty at all, and ma}- remain merely matter of conscious- 

 ness and memory. And especially is it probable that in early life 

 the higher faculties, the reflective and reasoning powers will fail 

 to respond to the provocatives addressed to them, when those 

 provocatives consist of abstractions which are not themselves con- 

 ceived without effort. 



The first step, for instance, in the process of reasoning, is com- 

 parison. The easiest efforts of comparison are made when the 

 objects are objects of simple perception ; and if nature dictates 

 anything on the subject of education too plainly to admit of mis- 

 take, it is that children should first be taught to compare by the 

 help of visible things. But if this plain dictate of nature is dis- 

 regarded, and we present to immature minds, as sul^jects of 

 thought, definitions (for instance) of the parts of speech, or the 



