194 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



is regulated beforehand has often become a small 

 prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its 

 foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost im- 

 possible to imagine, without having tried it, how many 

 sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and 

 taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the 

 children's minds ; and, if a series of concentric 

 courses adapted to the various phases of develop- 

 ment of the human being were generally accepted 

 in education, the first series in all sciences, save soci- 

 ology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, 

 so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth 

 and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoologi- 

 cal, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of 

 the laws of those phenomena to the next series of deeper 

 and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all 

 know how children like to make toys themselves, how 

 they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if 

 they see them at work in the workshop or the building- 

 yard. But the parents either stupidly paralyse that 

 passion, or do not know how to utilise it. Most of them 

 despise manual work and prefer sending their children 

 to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin's teach- 

 ings about saving money, to seeing them at a work 

 which is good for the " lower classes only ". They 

 thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more 

 difficult 



And then come the school years, and time is wasted 

 again to an incredible extent Take, for instance, 

 mathematics, which every one ought to know, because 

 it is the basis of all subsequent education, and which so 

 few really learn in our schools. In geometry, time is 

 foolishly wasted by using a method which merely con- 

 sists in committing geometry to memory. In most cases, 

 the boy reads again and again the proof of a theorem 

 till his memory has retained the succession of reasonings. 

 Therefore, nine boys out of ten, if asked to prove an 



