954 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



He Tvill understand what we require of him, and he will he encour- 

 aged because he understands. 



I do not mean to assert that any judicious course of instruction 

 can be devised which shall present nothing but a series of unmin- 

 gled delights. I am not of the visionary class who l)elieve that 

 continuous mental efibrt will ever, under any system, be attended, 

 for the majority of individuals, with the same exhilaration and 

 eagerness of spirit with which the same individuals are found to 

 pursue the athletic sports by which their physical powers may be 

 developed. They who, like Herbert Spencer, take such a ground 

 as this, only injure the cause they would befriend, and weaken 

 the force of their otherwise unanswerable arguments. The effort 

 which is useful, whether it be ph3'sical or mental, must always 

 partake of the character of labor, and labor brings with it some- 

 times weariness and pain. But what I do say is, that the labor 

 need not be made a repulsive labor, as it always must be when it 

 Ijrings with it no recognizable, or at least no adequate profit ; but 

 may be made so richly productive as actually to become positively 

 attractive. 



Now, in what I have just said, I believe there is nothing which 

 is not, in the al)stract, perfectly orthodox — nothing which will 

 not meet the approval of every educationist who hears me. I 

 wish to inquire, therefore, to what extent it is practically true, 

 that in our established system of liberal culture, we conform to 

 the order which nature points out to us ? Is it true that we make 

 the development and training of the perceptive faculties the first 

 object of our attention ? Is it, as it ought to be, our first great 

 aim to improve the powers of oljservation, of analysis, of induc- 

 tion, of classification ? Are all the studies which we prescribe to 

 boj^s, as preparatory to their introduction to the abstruser subjects 

 of grammar, and logic, and ethics, and rhetoric, and metaphysics, 

 directed to this end ? Is there even a single one of them that is ? 

 We know that it is not so. Beyond those most elementary 

 branches of knowledge which are indispensable as furnishing the 

 implem.ents by which all other knowledge is to be acquired — 

 beyond orthography and reading and writing, the simplest rules 

 of arithmetic, and perhaps some imperfect outlines of geography — 

 t(j the great majority of the youth of this country destined for 

 college, nothing at all is taught of any description, before they 

 are required to devote themselves exclusively to the study of the 

 most difficult languages ever spoken by man, and this by the 



