24 THE NEW METHOD 



and body a part of nature's dominion, and subject to 

 lier laws ? 



Nature's ways are everywhere models of economy. 

 By one simple means she accomplishes a thousand 

 grand results. She lights and warms, irrigates and 

 animates, and holds in never-ending cycles a hundred 

 worlds by one central fire. 



The normal course of scholastic education, begins 

 in the systematic training of the child, into habits of 

 careful and minute observation. While curiosity is 

 awake, the child is led to appeal directly to nature 

 for information, and by observing personally, her 

 objects, facts and phenomena, there is awakened 

 within him, such a love of knowledge, as the prevail- 

 ing methods of teaching can never inspire. Begin- 

 ning in the concrete and simple, with familiar objects, 

 drawn from a single science or department of nature, 

 we proceed by gradual steps toward the complex and 

 abstract, and to objects more remote and varied. 

 Losing no time for mere mental discipline, the 

 scholar gains the highest possible discipline, in the 

 acquisition of the most useful knowledge. 



But it is not my design to try to show what the 

 normal system is in these few sentences. Hundreds 

 of pages would be required to convey anything like 

 a clear idea of all its processes. Let it suffice, for 

 the present, to say that its principles have been ad- 



