196 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



only then will they know geometry. "Through the 

 eyes and the hand to the brain " that is the true prin- 

 ciple of economy of time in teaching. I remember as if 

 it were yesterday, how geometry suddenly acquired for 

 me a new meaning, and how this new meaning facili- 

 tated all ulterior studies. It was as we were mastering 

 a Montgolfier balloon, and I remarked that the angles at 

 the summits of each of the twenty strips of paper out 

 of which the balloon was going to be made must cover 

 less than the fifth part of a right angle each. I remem- 

 ber, next, how the sinuses and the tangents ceased to 

 be mere cabalistic signs when they permitted us to cal- 

 culate the length of a stick in a working profile of a 

 fortification ; and how geometry in space became plain 

 when we began to make on a small scale a bastion with 

 embrasures and barbettes an occupation which ob- 

 viously was soon prohibited on account of the state into 

 which we brought our clothes. " You look like navvies," 

 was the reproach addressed to us by our intelligent 

 educators, while we were proud precisely of being 

 navvies, and of discovering the use of geometry. 



By compelling our children to study real things from 

 mere graphical representations, instead of making those 

 things themselves, we compel them to waste the most 

 precious time ; we uselessly worry their minds ; we 

 accustom them to the worst methods of learning ; we 

 kill independent thought in the bud ; and very seldom 

 we succeed in conveying a real knowledge of what we 

 are teaching. Superficiality, parrot-like repetition, slav- 

 ishness and inertia of mind are the results of our method 

 of education. We do not teach our children how to 

 learn. The very beginnings of science are taught on 

 the same pernicious system. In most schools even 

 arithmetic is taught in the abstract way, and mere rules 

 are -stuffed into the poor little heads. The idea of a 

 unit, which is arbitrary and can be changed at will in 

 our measurement (the match, the box of matches, the 



